Ian sat back in his chair, winced, then leaned forward again.

‘I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not being sexist,’ he said. ‘I never had a problem with her working, or with putting the girls in childcare. I did my bit around the house. I ironed my shirts. She was just – well, my mother would have said sluttish.’ He looked at me, trying to judge whether I minded, whether I was shocked. ‘In the original sense of the term, of course. A woman of untidy habits and appearance. Slovenly.’

I couldn’t think what to say. I chewed and chewed until the food in my mouth had liquefied.

‘You like historical tidbits: did you know that a slut was a lard-soaked rag, a sort of primitive lamp, back in the seventeenth century?’

I shook my head.

‘It was,’ Ian said. ‘Look it up.’

Ian’s assessment was that our waiter should be dismissed from his position. When we returned to the car, he enumerated the boy’s faults: he was hesitant, nervous, cringing. He was servile.

‘Shouldn’t waiters be servile?’

‘He was the wrong kind of servile. His misery was too visible.’

I pulled out onto the road. Ian grunted and shifted in his seat.

‘I thought he was nice,’ I said.

‘No-one should have to look at a face like that,’ Ian replied. ‘Not at those prices.’

It was when we were about halfway home that I noticed Ian was squirming. I’d had a glass of wine; Ian had drunk the rest of the bottle. He’d also eaten more than I had – I was surprised by how much he could consume, given how petite he was.

He bent forward, a hand pressed to his side.

‘Is everything okay?’

I heard him take a ragged breath.

‘Fine,’ he said.

I tried to drive slowly, aware in the silence that I could hear him breathing, see the swell of his belly rising and falling. He let out a groan, and then an undisguised trumpet of wind. I kept my eyes trained on the road as the sulphurous odour filled the car.

I took the turnoff and drove up and down the hills over which Ian’s suburb was elegantly draped.

When I pulled up outside the house, Ian didn’t move. I took the keys out of the ignition.

‘Is there – can I do something to help?’

He’d clamped his eyes shut, and when he opened them, there was a lizardish expression on his face as he weighed the severity of his pain against the ignominy of my assistance.

‘Maybe just to the door,’ he said.

I didn’t go home for two weeks.

That first night, I helped him up the driveway, putting my arm around the oversized grey sports coat, smelling the afterglow of restaurant and sulphur that surrounded him.