I thought it would be safe enough. I’d talked April into coming over to the house, because I was tired and hadn’t quite shaken off the cold that had been lingering since Valentine’s Day. The other thing that had lingered was depression. Another festival of romance had come and gone with the two of us barely talking. It had felt, for most of our dinner out, like you would have preferred to be elsewhere.

April arrived all made up, caffeine-psyched and chewing on bubblegum. The bubblegum was a surprise, even for April. When she ‘Hey, sistered’ me at the front door in full-on Tennessee drawl, with the candy-pink gum rolling over her tongue, I wondered for a moment how she was going to fit in the talking and the chewing at once. But of course she managed it.

She talked, and I lined up wine glasses and bowls of nuts and olives while I laughed at her. I’m sure you can imagine the swiftness with which the plastic cork came out of the grim Rioja she’d brought with her. God knows why she can’t spend some of her streams of alimony on something nice to drink. But for some reason that’s just not her style.

I remember her asking about you.

‘He behaving, that old Niall?’

She was leaning on the breakfast bar across from me. Her gauzy black top drooped low enough to show a line of hot-pink bra and the scrawled tattoo across her left breast. I didn’t bother telling her she was flashing. She always knows exactly how much tit she’s got on show. She must have got dressed up to meet someone for lunch.

She asked if you were behaving. I tipped back some of the cheap crap and shrugged at her. ‘Niall’s fine. Back tomorrow.’

She fixed me with a very grey stare. ‘And do you miss him these days? When he’s away?’

‘We’re married,’ I told her. ‘We don’t do missing each other any more.’ And it was so deliberate, that comment. It was one of those things I say to pretend. To make out that I’m in the kind of relationship where we can joke about our marriage and not mean it.

And then, in my memory, it was later. We were no longer in the house, but in a club I didn’t remember going to. It didn’t worry me, because I was no longer me. I was Her. I could tell because of the warmth in me. Because of the satisfaction I felt with myself and my life.

For some reason Drunk Louise was telling April that she’d made a decision. That she was just going to get goddamn pregnant, whatever it took, and you, Niall, would have to deal with the consequences.