‘But you mustn’t let them convince you that you have to choose.’

‘It’s not that, it’s about considering their feelings.’

‘In that case, I’ll give you some space to work out exactly what it is you want.’

On returning home, he’d kissed her goodbye at her garden gate, and that was the last she’d seen of him. There had been no phone calls and no text messages. The ones she particularly missed were those when she woke in the morning when he hadn’t actually spent the night with her. She missed those times in bed together too. But mostly she missed the companionship of him; the easy unconscious way they fitted together. How often did two people fit together as well as that? Did she really want to give that up?

‘You know, I always wondered about you and Colin,’ Geraldine said, rising from her chair and going to look out at the sodden garden through the rain and salt-streaked glass.

Roused from her thoughts, Naomi said, ‘What do you mean you always wondered about us?’

Geraldine spun round. Her movements were brusque and sudden, there was no elegant finesse to her. There never had been. ‘No marriage is perfect,’ she said, ‘but how would you sum up yours with Colin?’

‘Where on earth has that question come from?’

‘From a lifetime’s friendship, that’s where. So what’s your answer?’

‘I’m going to take a stab at you already thinking you know what the answer is?’

‘I know what the glib answer would be, but as to the real one, I’m not so sure you’re brave enough to say it out loud.’

‘Are any of us? How would you sum up yours?’

‘Oh, that’s easy. Brian and I irritate the hell out of each other, and we bicker constantly. It’s a habit, of course, and one we’ll never break. It’s part of the fabric of our relationship and has, if you will, seeped into the bricks and mortar and the very foundations of our marriage. It cements us together. Of course, it helps that he does what he’s told, and I never complain about the amount of time he spends on the golf course or the hours he spends watching the wretched game on TV.’

It was interesting that after all this time, Geraldine should ask about her marriage to Colin. Why now? And more to the point, why had her friend never broached the subject when nothing else was off limits to her? ‘You just said that there have been no lines between us that you felt you couldn’t cross,’ Naomi said.

Geraldine drank from her glass. ‘I lied,’ she said. ‘There was always one non-negotiable line which I felt I had to respect: your marriage.’ Resuming her seat, she went on. ‘You and Colin never bickered, did you?’

‘No,’ Naomi said. ‘But then I’m not the bickering sort.’

‘Too accommodating, that’s why,’ she said, helping herself to a stuffed olive from the dish on the coffee table in front of her. ‘Although when you opened the door to me earlier, you were fair spoiling for an all-out fight, never mind a good-natured bicker.’