“There’s that nagging again.”

“I’m not nagging, Chris.” I can see he is getting more and more wound up by the continued evenness of my voice. I am right and he knows it. He hates it.

“Why don’t you just fuck off up to London,” he says. I smile inside.

Outside I glare at him. “If that’s what you want, Chris.”

Half an hour later I am on the train. I text my husband: When you have sobered up and calmed down, call me.

The best bit is that he will be contrition personified tomorrow when he replays our argument with a sober head, and I will be free from having to justify where I am for a few days, perhaps even the whole week. I smile as the possibilities stretch out in front of me.

My plan for Monday was to go to a fancy supermarket and find something to cook for Tom that evening, juggling a handful of work bits around my domestic goddess pretense. However, Mr. Seleucus Montgomery Patricio Titcomb had other ideas, and I end up having to schlep to his office for what he described as an “all hands powwow.” Normally I am the one who leads the workshops when a client finally realizes just how bad things are. But Mr. Titcomb is impervious to bad news and still thinks his company just needs a PR tart-up. He also thinks he can do my job better than I can, and so I am relegated to the corner while he spends four hours effectively recreating the same pattern of mistakes that led him to the brink of ruin in the first place.

It is gone six thirty when I finally make it back to Leah’s, stinking of the City and desperate for at least a shower before Tom arrives. My hair is still wet and I’ve not had time to reapply my makeup when he rings the bell at exactly seven. Normally I’m a stickler for punctuality but tonight it would have been preferable for him to be late.

He has wine in his hand and an expectant look on his face, stepping into the house with his nose slightly raised to catch the edge of what I’m cooking.

“I have a confession,” I tell him. “Things got away with me today and so I haven’t had time to cook.”

He laughs and pulls out his phone. “Takeaway?” He is already opening Just Eat.

We end up on the sofa, watching a movie and waiting for pizza to be delivered. It is perfect.

You know how in films the guy and the girl always fuck against a wall, her legs round his waist, his trousers simply unbuttoned in his haste to be inside her? I have never really understood the logistics of how this actually works in practice. The movie we are watching has that exact same scene and so I tell Tom. He grins. A huge charming grin. Stands up and reaches a hand out to me. Seconds later, my back is pressed against a wall, legs wrapped tightly round his waist and Jesus Christ he’s inside me. “It’s all about confidence,” he says.