My husband is not an unintelligent man, but this is seemingly way beyond his comprehension.

Then I look at Greg and get a rush of love for him. He’s still a handsome chap. He’s tall, in excellent shape for a man coming up to forty. He wears his dark hair cropped forward now to disguise that it’s thinning. My husband frowns permanently as if he’s carrying the world on his shoulders and I know that he’s worked hard and worried for us all of our married life. The tracks of our troubled years are etched into his forehead now. I feel guilty for all the times I’ve looked at him critically lately. I should give a little. If I can get him away to myself, who knows? A little passion might spark again. What does it matter whether it’s the Costa del Sol or Cairo or Cromer? We’ll go together and we’ll have a great time. We’ll be spontaneous and free and have fun.

‘Cromer will be lovely,’ I say.

I’ll make damn sure that it is.

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Lauren drives up from London to have dinner with me. It’s Wednesday and I don’t often see her on a Wednesday. That’s another one of my home alone nights as Greg goes down to the fishing club then. He’s been a member since he was fifteen and I could count on one hand the number of times he’s missed it. Greg Ashton is nothing if not a creature of habit.

I can’t see the attraction of it myself. All they do is stand around with a pint of beer talking about fishing. But then I can’t actually see the fascination with fishing either, though I’ve tolerated it throughout my married life.

Sometimes, when we were first married, before we had the children, I used to go along with Greg and sit by the bank with my book, perhaps a bottle of Blue Nun or some awful cheap wine that was all we could run to. But I didn’t like the hours of waiting for anything to happen and then when Greg did catch a fish, I couldn’t bear to see it dangling from the hook, flapping for breath on the bank. All I wanted him to do was throw the poor thing back in as soon as humanly possible. It always seemed to hurt the fish so much, though my husband assured me that it didn’t. Of course, when the children came along, it was impossible to go – wriggling toddlers and deep water are not a marriage made in heaven. And I became a permanent fishing widow.