‘We still have sex,’ I was telling her. ‘I’ll just manufacture an accident. Once it’s done, he can’t force me to get rid of it, and then he’ll realise it was all I needed to motivate me to stop drinking.’

It seemed like the best plan I’d ever had. I was so convinced it was going to sort my life out for good. I felt fantastic. Powerful.

Which all vanished when April leaned towards me and said, ‘Honey, I saw Niall with his ex-wife.’

I don’t know how I would have reacted if I hadn’t been fairly merry already. As it was, even with the shield of a few glasses of wine between me and this truth – even with Drunk Louise ready in the wings – I wanted to be sick.

‘What do you mean, saw?’ I was wondering if she could have walked in on the two of you having sex, and at the same time I was thinking she must have made a mistake. The power of denial is strong, isn’t it?

‘I saw them drinking wine at Domo and they were … It was obvious something was going on.’ She gave a long, frustrated sigh, and jabbed at her drink with her straw. ‘Look, I’ve had suspicions for a while. But I do actually like Niall and I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. I know they work in the same field, and it’s good if they can get on, but this is clearly not right. If you’re genuinely going to have a child together … You can’t go into that blind. It’s too important.’ She gave me a very serious look. ‘Did he tell you they were meeting up?’

I actually hated her a little bit in that moment, for making me admit that you hadn’t told me anything. Isn’t that the worst? That the person I hated was not the person who’d been lying to me?

I couldn’t admit to her, either, that I’d long, long suspected that you were seeing Dina again. Worse, that I was certain you’d been seeing someone, and just put my head in the sand and hoped your affair had died a death.

‘When was this?’ I asked her.

‘Last Saturday,’ she said.

I’d been away all weekend, at a concert in Edinburgh. One of those rare occasions when I’d travelled and you’d stayed at home. You’d gone to meet Dina while I was away overnight, when you must have thought you were safe.

‘You said it looked wrong … Wrong how?’ I could hear how tight and stupid my voice had suddenly become. How shrill I sounded. I hate that word, but it’s still the best description for it.