‘It’s a friendly separation, sweetie, no harm has been done. You come and see them whenever you want to. Give me a bit of warning; school and all that, you know? Just come down to Mother’s when you feel like it, and as this is your house, paid for from your parsimonious pocket, you’ll be snug as a bug here, won’t you? No kids banging about to disturb your scribbling, and I won’t be driven dotty by your ruddy typewriter. Mrs Nicholls will stay on, I bet. Do better for you than I could. And with more enthusiasm. You’ll have to give her extra, of course, for meals and so on. She’s fab with Lancashire hot pot and mutton stew. You’ll get huge.’

‘I’ll eat out, I expect. Go down to the Grapes.’

‘Super potato salad there.’ She set down her mug. ‘I’ll get on to solicitors and things when I’m settled. Or you can. As you like. I’d better see if Annie is awake. She’ll be late again. That child has sleeping-sickness.’

She got up, tied the belt of her dressing-gown tightly, and the front-door bell rang. She turned and looked at me accusingly.

‘Now, who’s that? At this time in the morning?’

‘Mail perhaps. It’s his time.’

She went out into the hall leaving me looking at the pot of yoghurt with the spoon sticking in it.

The sooner she’d packed and gone and cleared off to her wretched mother in Chalfont St Giles the better. Then I’d be able to think, to try and sort things out, to salvage something from the crumbled debris of a once apparently happy union.

I’d miss the kids, in a way. But nothing else. I could flog the house for a good price and clear off somewhere smaller, without pitch pine kitchens, the chintzy bedroom, the mushy little flowers spattering about the wallpaper.

Falling out of love was every bit as easy as falling in love, it seemed to me. As far as I was concerned, Helen was an empty yoghurt pot … there weren’t any scrapings left. Love, as she called it, had died over a pretty short period of time. Almost as soon as the carnal interest dried up. Pity. Finally expired for good last night in the sitting-room with its striped walls, Knole settee, tiddly little tables with bits of Royal Doulton, some fake Louis-junk, and a Magicole fire in the Adam fireplace she’d found in the Portobello Road.

‘Real piece of Adam, that. Came from the Adelphi.’

Adam my backside. But she’d liked it and bought it, and had it fitted. So.

‘It’s the post. A packet for you, hence doorbell. No duty to pay, and a gas bill. That’s all.’

‘Why no duty?’

‘I don’t know why no duty.’