He rolled a car across the sofa.

‘Why were you mean to her?’

‘It’s grown-up stuff, Wills. We were both a bit mean to each other, but we’re OK now.’

He began lining the cars up on one of the sofa cushions.

‘Are you sad, Daddy?’

The question stopped me in my tracks. I swallowed painfully, tears springing to my eyes, and turned away so that William wouldn’t see.

What a godawful mess we have made, your mother and me.

‘No, matey. I’m fine.’ I gestured towards the back garden, wiping my eyes quickly. ‘Do you want to play football, then?’

We went outside into the late afternoon drizzle, a net at each end of the garden, kicking his sponge ball until it was sodden and heavy with water. Before long William’s jeans were streaked with mud and wet grass and his coat was slick with rain. But it didn’t seem to bother him as he ran round, and kicked, and rolled over on the ground calling for penalties.

I let the tears come then, glad of the rain to disguise them.

Mel came out in a raincoat and stood by the back door, the hood pulled over her head. We looked at each other and for a moment I thought she was going to come and talk to me. She took a step towards me, faltered when she saw the look on my face.

I turned away. I didn’t want to talk.

She sat down on the swing seat instead and stared straight ahead, fresh tears on her cheeks. She felt like a stranger, like someone else’s wife. It was as if I standing outside someone else’s house in a different street, a different city, where I didn’t belong and never had. For the first time in years, I didn’t know what the future held – only that it held less hope than when I’d woken up this morning.

Mel had only ever talked about being unfaithful once. Truth or dare at the blurry tail end of a house party, before we were even engaged. A game of ‘stand up if you’ve ever’. The game played by drunken adults who had played spin the bottle when they were teenagers. As in ‘Stand up if you’ve ever . . . kissed a girl (aimed at the girls).’ ‘Stand up if you’ve ever had sex at work.’ ‘Stand up if you’ve ever been unfaithful.’ That last one had got her on her feet, swaying slightly and grinning a charmingly plastered grin in the middle of the room. She’d admitted to a single infidelity. But insisted it didn’t count, because it happened when she was still at school. Fifth form. I had asked her later, in the taxi home, but she’d just smiled and kissed me and said it was a long time ago. I’d forgotten about it. Until now.

William was winning our football game 9–8 when my mobile buzzed in my pocket.

I dug the phone out of my jeans and held a hand up to stop play. He ran straight past me and scored into the empty net.