And then there were the gifts from Ariel. Little nothings, really. Cheap trinkets from China Town: yin and yang notepaper, joss sticks, badges with Buddhist symbols on them. The truth was that I wouldn’t have been so jealous if I hadn’t met him. He was sylph-like and moved as if dancing every step. And there was I, cumbersome, big, static. Still, I think I could have got over it had I not seen how he looked at her, like prey. And more than that, how she didn’t see it. I couldn’t believe that she didn’t know about men who preyed.

Our argument came with a smiling face. A small jade Buddha. It had been a Christmas present (Grace didn’t even see how facile that was, a Buddhist statue at Christmas). She had unwrapped the tissue in front of me and pulled the little figure into the morning light and gazed at it a second too long. Stroked the smooth head a little too delicately.

‘So thoughtful of him,’ she’d said and placed it carefully on the mantel.

A day or two later I accidentally knocked it off. It was a common-or-garden dusting accident.

‘Xander!’ she said when she saw the chip. ‘You did that deliberately!’

‘It was an accident!’ I said, laughing. The laughter went down badly, so in the end to prove it was an accident I agreed that Grace could have it in the bedroom. We only had one bedside table, so there it stayed, in benign splendour, next to me.

The smiling green man made my stomach turn every time I saw it. So one night, as I turned out the light, I winked at the statue and rolled into bed. Later, when it was dark and Grace was fully entombed in sleep, the Lord Buddha suffered another terrible accident. This time, he shattered into a thousand glistening lives.

In the morning, Grace left. Left me.

It was a Saturday and she packed a bag and strode darkly out of the house.

‘Where are you going? It was an accident.’

She said nothing except what she signalled by slamming the front door as she left.