Again a brief silence. Then he couldn’t resist asking, ‘What would you do, Amelia, if by some remote chance Martin were to return?’

‘I would request a divorce,’ she said, again without a moment’s hesitation.

He propped himself on an elbow and gazed down at her, thinking how lovely she looked.

Amelia laughed; he seemed so very serious. ‘Don’t worry, Samuel,’ she said, ‘please don’t worry. I wasn’t seeking a marriage proposal, I was simply acknowledging the fact that I didn’t love Martin. That I never loved Martin. Just as he never loved me. I didn’t know that, you see, not until now. I must say it comes as a great relief to find out.’

It was true. In the four short days of their affair, Amelia’s entire life had changed; the view she’d had of herself throughout her marriage, the guilt she’d suffered, the blame she’d shouldered, all had disappeared with the awakening of her sexuality. She wasn’t frigid after all. She had never been frigid. And poor Martin, who had wasted those years trying so desperately to satisfy her … That hadn’t been her fault.

She recalled their furtive coupling in the darkened room, aware of her parents’ proximity in the bedroom across the hall, how she’d blamed herself for having forced such a situation upon Martin, a private man at the best of times. Little wonder the intimacy of their marriage had been found wanting. And as Martin had stifled any sound he might have wished to make, servicing her as best he could in the hope she would conceive the child they both wanted, her lack of passion must surely have further smothered his desire.

She recalled also the terrible night when she and her mother had been walking down The Strand. A balmy evening, dusk, there’d been a couple furtively kissing beneath a palm tree, well away from the street lights, difficult to see. She had paid them no attention herself. But her mother had.

‘Good God,’ her mother had quietly exclaimed, coming to a standstill. The couple had broken apart, and it was Martin who had stepped out of the shadows.

‘Evening,’ he said, joining them. ‘A pleasant night for a stroll.’

They’d continued, the three of them, walking down The Strand as if nothing had happened. But Amelia had seen, as had her mother, that the person walking rapidly away in the opposite direction was a man.

She’d blamed herself for that, too. To what terrible lengths had her sexual inadequacy driven her husband that he should seek solace in such an unnatural way?

No-one had ever mentioned that night. But not long after, her parents had moved to Brisbane, leaving the house to her.

‘You and your husband need privacy, Amelia,’ her mother had said tightly, she too perhaps blaming herself, perhaps believing such deviancy in a marriage might be the result of parental intrusion.

But following the departure of her parents and the privacy the house afforded them, nothing had changed. Things had remained exactly the same. And Amelia had continued to blame herself and her frigidity.