Winston harped on and on about AIDS, Leonard wished he would leave it alone, but with this Grim Reaper campaign there was no avoiding it. The traffic lights turned red, leaving Leonard stopped near the huge accusing sign. He hated this campaign, and he hated this poster; he turned away.

Sylvie, in contrast, was staring at the billboard. And when the lights changed and Leonard drove through the intersection, she turned her head to hold it in view a little longer. Then she uttered words that chilled him far more than the Grim Reaper.

‘Leonard,’ she said, ‘I hope you’re being careful.’

Sylvie had not planned these words. In truth, the knowledge that minted them was so buried, so untouchable, she could not say how long she had known. There are secrets in every marriage, invisible crevices you skirt around as you eat together, socialise with friends, go on holiday. You see a shadow, you know to swerve, you become sure-footed, an expert at avoidance. But once the words have been uttered and the knowledge exposed, it can’t be buried again.

As the ghastly sign slipped out of sight, Sylvie registered a sickening distaste that might have blown into full-strength revulsion if she were someone else, or, for that matter, if Leonard were a different person. She looked at him. He was driving with determined concentration, lips pressed together and eyes not blinking. His moustache, she noticed, was silvery in the night light. This was Leonard. He was her husband. As for this knowledge? It had been incubating their entire marriage.

She knew that in 1962, Leonard was reading Walt Whitman; in 1963, he read W.H. Auden; in 1964, Cavafy; in 1965, Lorca. Leonard was a poet, she reasoned, so of course he would read other poets. In 1966, he read Alan Ginsberg; in 1967, Siegfried Sassoon. She knew that most of these poets were homosexuals, maybe all of them were. There was an unmarried uncle of her mother’s, a grower of orchids, who was said to be ‘that way’. He’d always struck Sylvie as not much different from other men. And Leonard was her husband; they had a son. She did not think you could be homosexual and married.

She knew that on each of their beach holidays, Leonard took long walks by himself. She knew that Leonard preferred to take his business trips without her. She knew there were days when he would shove his dirty clothes deep in the laundry basket, rather than leave them on the floor for her to pick up. She knew where his gaze was drawn when they were at the beach, at a restaurant, or walking down the street.