The next days are a blur, as Maddy starts to pack up the house. She makes a point of spending as little time as possible with Trent, communicating with him in terse texts about the arrangements necessary for the move. He’s cross with her that she’s not more delighted he’s managed a quick sale, but when the first of the boxes leave in the van for the expensive storage unit, his precious golf clubs rattling in the back among them, reality seems to dawn. They’re actually leaving.

‘Can’t we talk?’ he asks, coming into their bedroom where she’s putting everything in her bedside drawer in a box. It’s stuff she hasn’t thought about for a while. Her grandmother’s dainty nineteen thirties watch, a folded piece of Filofax paper with a note from Jamie telling her that he loves her, her first Glastonbury wristband. She used to find it comforting having these keepsakes near to her as she slept, but she can’t connect to the person to whom they mattered so much. She can’t imagine that they’ll mean the same thing, or ever be in a space again in the same way. She’s written so much about the energy of spaces, about the synergy of objects and emotion, but now she sees that she was grasping at straws. Trying to find meaning where there wasn’t one. They are just things now that this is no longer a home.

‘What’s there to talk about?’ she asks, and he sighs and gives her his give-me-a-break look. Since she’s been home, she’s slept in Jamie’s room and Trent has been on the sofa in his office. But the sofa has gone and, in the bedroom, only their marital bed remains. The new buyers have bought it and she hopes it doesn’t bring them bad luck. Its presence and what it represents feels radioactive as they stand with it in between them.

‘I know there have been some things that have been said, but …’ he pauses. ‘But the thing is, I think we should start again.’

Maddy can hardly believe what she’s hearing. ‘Start again?’

‘Couldn’t we be how we used to be?’

She almost reacts with sarcasm, because that’s never going to be possible after what he’s done.

‘You can’t go backwards,’ Maddy says, shaking her head, remembering Helga on the beach.

‘Don’t you love me any more? Even a little bit? Because I still love you. I want to make things work.’

She stares at him, seeing the flirty look on his face. In a moment, he might suggest that they give the bed a go for old time’s sake. Where has this curveball suddenly come from? And why now? When they’ve almost moved out?

‘What about Helen? And you? You’re together with her. You chose her.’

‘She’s not important.’

Maddy can’t believe what she’s hearing. ‘And she knows that, does she? You’ve told her?’

Because he’ll be hedging his bets, Maddy thinks. As much as she hates Helen, this from Trent, at this late hour, is such a betrayal. Of them both.