But there were still things left to be done. As soon as she got back, she would shower and tidy up. She’d already cleaned the windows and watered the plants. The sheets were freshly laundered; they just needed to be pressed, then she could make the bed. The boeuf bourguignon, Reidar’s favourite stew, was simmering on the hob, awaiting final tasting and seasoning.

Since it was Friday, he would be having a pint after work and just before seven he would come home in his stinking work clothes, which she would put in the hamper for the last time while he took a shower. Then she would serve dinner and wait for him to join her at the table.

And somewhere around there, he would, if all went to plan, react to something being different and ask her why she wasn’t sitting down and eating with him. Sooner or later, he would taunt her about her failed diets and how they only ever made her bigger, when the truth was that she had in fact lost twenty-six pounds since she’d started running.

But this time, she wasn’t going to let him rant uninterrupted. In her calmest and most controlled voice, she was going to tell him that she was leaving him.

True, it would have been easier to simply leave a handwritten note on the table for him to find when he got home. But if she wanted him to sign the papers, she had no choice but to look him in the eyes and make him understand that her mind was made up and that they were never going to have dinner together again.

Depending on how his day had been, there was a risk that he might jump up from his chair and become physical. He wouldn’t hurt her. Not then and there. But he was not above throwing his plate and maybe even overturning the table. A more likely outcome, however, was that he would let his fury pump into the outermost arteries of his face while he asked her, calm as a pressure cooker, where the hell she was planning to go. How she could be naïve enough to think for even a second that she could get by without him.

Then he would paint himself into a corner even more by reminding her of their prenuptial agreement and asking her if her dippy little brain had managed to forget that the house, the car and most of the furniture de facto belonged to him.

Reidar loved saying de facto. It was as if he felt it made him two feet taller and his statement unequivocally true and irrevocable. It was at that point, when he was at his most cocksure and adrenaline-filled, she would put the divorce papers down on the table.