I was sure he was lying about Hadi Kattan but frankly I didn’t have the energy to argue with him now. If he had decided to deny it, the row could go on all night. I watched him rifle through the pile, dislodging the travel supplements stacked on the top. He came across an unopened bank statement and for a moment his eyes seemed to darken as he gazed at it. I had a sudden flash of inspiration.

‘Why don’t we all come?’ I looked at him, light in my eyes.

‘What?’ He pocketed the statement quickly. ‘Come where?’

‘To Vietnam. I’m serious, J – I mean, it’d be amazing, wouldn’t it? The kids would love it.’ I felt genuinely enthused. ‘It’s good to do these things now, J, before Alicia gets too big to take out of school. It’d be brilliant. A real bonding experience. We could go back to Nha Trang.’

James and I had travelled all the time before we had the children, it was part of the glue that held us together. We’d had such adventures; we’d seen such sights. He would come and meet me when I finished foreign assignments and we would discover new places, basking in the sun, pottering round parts of cities that the tourists never saw, drinking the local hooch or playing cards into the early hours under star-studded skies.

‘No way.’ James finished his beer and threw the bottle in the bin. ‘I’m flying in and flying straight out again. There’s too much to do here to have a holiday.’

I gazed at him and I wondered when this huge gulf had opened up between us. I’d been staring down into it, teetering on the edge for too long now.

‘It’s quite, kind of – solitary sometimes, you know – specially when you’re working all the time.’

‘But you like your own company. Pottering around the garden and all that.’

I gritted my teeth. ‘I do love the garden, yes, of course I do.’ He’d been working on the super-club project for months now, staying up all night again, chasing sponsors and investment deals. I was trying to be understanding; trying so very hard not to feel ignored. ‘But there’s only so many plants you can talk to before you feel a little mad.’

‘And only so many you can smoke.’

‘Shut up, J,’ I muttered. ‘Just forget it, OK?’

James backtracked. ‘Look, I wouldn’t be able to spend the time with you I wanted to. Next time, petal, I promise.’ He turned the football up. ‘Let’s book something nice for the summer. The Caribbean, yeah? Nice five-star all-inclusive, nanny service, all that malarkey. Just what the doctor ordered.’

I looked at him blankly. The old James would have rather stuck pins in his eyes than go all-inclusive, hermetically sealed into a ‘safe’ environment for overprivileged tourists.