He pulled a face as if I was being unreasonable. ‘Yes, well, some of us actually have to earn some money round here.’

‘Oh, come on. I work too.’

‘You work part-time, and it’s hardly demanding, is it? A bit of putting in full stops and taking out commas, a couple of days a week. You only started doing it so you could pay to leave Daisy with a childminder. Maybe if you’d focused on her, we wouldn’t be where we are now.’

‘Don’t you dare blame me.’

‘You’re the one who spends the most time with her.’

‘Yes, and it wouldn’t hurt you to take a bit more of an interest. I see other dads out with their kids all the time, in the park or whatever. You never do anything with her.’

‘That’s because it’s so bloody impossible!’

Daisy stopped pressing the button on the keyboard that played ‘Greensleeves’ and let out a long, high-pitched shriek.

‘You shouldn’t have raised your voice,’ I hissed at Mark as I rushed to reassure her. ‘She’s very sensitive to noise.’

A few minutes later I heard the front door slam.

I couldn’t believe it. How dare he? And where the hell had he gone?

He didn’t come back till much later, by which time I was more anxious than angry. I’d managed to get Daisy off to sleep and was in bed myself, waiting up for him, wondering whether I should start calling people to track down where he was, and trying and failing to read.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said as he came into the bedroom. ‘I just had to get out. If I didn’t I was going to kill somebody.’

‘Oh. And that’s meant to make me feel better?’

‘No,’ he said, taking his dressing-gown off the hook. ‘It’s meant to be the truth.’

‘Where have you been, anyway? I was worried.’

‘I went to the pub.’

‘Oh. That must have been nice. I’m sure some of us would love to go off to the pub once in a while.’

‘Well, if you hadn’t totally alienated my mother you might have a willing babysitter. But as it is, I don’t think anybody else would be up for dealing with Daisy, so you’re a bit stuck, aren’t you?’

And with that he went off to take a shower.

He’d started with an apology. Why hadn’t I tried to be nicer to him? But then, with his next breath he’d been talking about murder. It wasn’t much of a way to make peace.

I looked round at the bedroom: the framed photographs of our wedding and of us with Daisy trying to look happy, the designer dressing table Mark had picked out for me that I’d never used, and the mementoes of past foreign holidays: the vase from Turkey, the wood carving from New Zealand, the Italian glass candlesticks. So much stuff, so carefully curated: a life built out of perfect little things.

If this was how it was going to be between us… how on earth could we stay together?