Tony and I sold our house, and I bought a much smaller one with my half of the money and Stanley came to live in it with us. For a few months I was shockingly happy, even in the face of my children’s discomfort and Tony’s misery. But then, slowly and inevitably, things began to go wrong. Stanley did less carpentry and spent more time in the pub. Then he went off with a travelling production of The Rocky Horror Show and met Dinah, who was playing Janet.

I was afraid that I would die without him, but I also thought that to be abandoned was no more than I deserved.

It’s not a very original story and I’m not proud of this portion of my life. I’m sorry for what I did and regret that I can’t put it right, not for Jack and Lola, or Tony either. Remembering the hurt I caused by abandoning my family makes me recoil and wish I could slam shut the doors of recollection. I can’t, of course, and I think about the damage every day.

But even so, and with the benefit of experience, what I really think – now that Mel has asked me – is that you can compromise in love as in all other things. If you have to, that is. But it’s much better not. If you give up your independence to share your life with someone, it should be a state of existence that improves on being single.

Sometimes, not all the time of course, but sometimes, when you’re sitting down to breakfast opposite each other or getting into a car together or just lying quietly in each other’s arms, you should catch your breath and think, being with this person here and now is what lends reason to and makes logic of everything else in the world.

I thought this, for just long enough, about being with Stanley.

If you don’t have these times that snag your breath and make you smile with happiness, and if all you are doing instead is rubbing along, wrapping up the packages of irritation and disappointment and sliding them out of sight, then you would be better off alone.

‘Is it enough to share your life with someone you like well enough, but don’t love?’ I repeated.

Mel nodded.

‘No, it’s not enough,’ I said.

‘Of course it isn’t,’ she agreed.

Mel and I knew that we were fortunate, because we’d often discussed it. We had evenings like this one. We could do our work, eat out, book holidays, see friends, choose films, argue about politics, cook meals, laugh and talk a lot. Once in a while drink too much. True love in addition would have been magnificent, but I knew that I didn’t want to sacrifice any of the above just to settle for a compromise, for a merely pale and ersatz version of love.