John looked at me over his shoulder and laughed out loud. ‘Kate? Christ, no. We never should have got married in the first place. We weren’t right for each other from the start but we were young, I was so sure she was the one. You know what they say, when you wear rose-tinted glasses, all the red flags are just flags.’ He shielded his eyes from the sun. ‘People don’t change, you know, no matter how much time you give them. You just start to lower your expectations until, eventually, you’re on the floor.’

John moved underneath a big oak tree. I stopped a little way away, just outside of the tree’s shadow, and squinted up at him.

‘That’s not true,’ I murmured.

‘I’m not talking about your boyfriend,’ he said stiffly.

‘Yes, you are,’ I replied. ‘But it doesn’t matter. I didn’t expect Patrick to change, I don’t want Patrick to change. I want things to be exactly how they were before.’

‘But you can’t turn the clock back, Ros.’ He shook his head sadly and scratched his nose. For moment, I thought I saw the glimmer of tears in his eyes but in the next moment, they were gone. ‘Trust me, I’ve tried.’

‘You’re not me, you don’t know,’ I said firmly. It was true, it was true, it was true. I had everything I wanted, everything I’d longed for. Patrick, my friends, my job.

‘Ros, what’s going on?’ John stretched up to wrap his hands around an overhead bough. ‘You’re upset.’

‘No, I’m not,’ I answered as I snapped a leaf from one of the low-hanging branches, following its veins with my fingernail. ‘Why would you say I’m upset?’

‘OK, not upset,’ he replied. ‘You seem angry. I’m not like Patrick. I don’t play games, I’m not clever with words and I don’t say things I don’t mean.’

‘You’ve met him twice,’ I reminded him, my temper beginning to flare. Perhaps he was right, perhaps I was angry. ‘You don’t even know him.’

John let go of the tree and took a step towards me. ‘And does he know you?’

I crunched the leaf in my hand.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means that when you’re on your own you’re funny and interesting and kind and I want to know everything about you. But when he’s there, you’re awkward and weird and always deferring to him,’ he said, coming closer. ‘If I had to choose, I think I preferred it when we first met and you were just rude.’

‘I wasn’t rude when we first met,’ I replied, too heated to hear him. ‘I was embarrassed. You were – doing what you were doing, after all.’