Monday was the day she changed the sheets, and he could hear her in the laundry. There was the jagged clack when she twisted the dial of the machine, the clunk in the pipes as the water entered the bowl, and then a pause. And now she’s back in the hallway. He expects her to go into one of the bedrooms to make the bed with clean sheets, but instead she is continuing up the hall, she’s heading this way. He wants her to join him if she’s preparing to forgive him, and to ignore him if she’s thinking of leaving.

She’s standing in the doorway. He stiffens for the worst.

‘You haven’t answered me, Leonard. Have you been careful?’

He can’t meet her gaze.

‘I insist on an answer,’ she says. ‘If you’ve endangered me, or, God forbid, our son, I need to know.’

He can feel how angry she is, and chillingly controlled.

Still not meeting her gaze, he assures her that she and Andrew are entirely safe. ‘I give you my word.’

‘Your word means nothing to me now.’

The cruel and punishing statement hits right on target.

He speaks in a rush. ‘It’s not what you think.’

‘Then what is it, Leonard?’ Her words are cut from ice. ‘What exactly is it?’

How to talk about something you’ve never talked about? How to say the unsayable? But he has to try. ‘I love you, Sylvie, I always have and I always will. This makes no difference to how I feel about you. It’s never made any difference. It’s irrelevant, totally separate from us and our marriage.’

She is staring at him; her face is hard and blank. ‘I wouldn’t call it irrelevant,’ she says quietly. ‘No, definitely not irrelevant.’

‘But no husband and wife share everything.’

‘This is not a hobby, Leonard. It’s not golf, or chess, or collecting letters. This is who you have sex with.’ She stands silent and staring a moment longer, enough time for her words to take effect, then she turns and leaves the room.

Let her be angry, he is thinking, let her get it out of her system, then maybe she’ll soften and forgive me. (But forgive him for what? For being himself?) He feels like a trespasser in his own marriage, but at least he still has a marriage. He has to bide his time, sit it out, remind her by his actions why they’ve been happily married for over thirty years. He wants another thirty; he can’t imagine life without her. And what would life be like for her without him? Has she thought about that?