‘I don’t understand you any more,’ he muttered, flopping backwards onto the settee as though someone had just pulled their hand out of a sock puppet. ‘I never know what you’re thinking and I am not a mind reader. You are very hard to talk to, Fran, very hard.’

Smiling sadly, I shook my head, watching while he gnawed on his thumbnail.

‘I’m not a bad person for wanting something else from life,’ I said, even though I wasn’t sure I believed it myself in that moment.

‘Say what you mean, you want something more,’ Stew corrected bitterly. ‘Something better.’

I looked around the living room and couldn’t see a single trace of myself anywhere. ‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s not fair. This is an amazing life for someone but that someone isn’t me. I’ve been trying really hard to fit in but I’ve been a square peg in a round hole for a very long time.’

He huffed a loud grunt of frustration and gave the third cushion a final solid kick. I watched as it skidded all the way out of the room, bumping to a halt against the legs of the kitchen table as Stew sat back down on the settee.

‘This is shit,’ he declared, solid words that came out rough around the edges. ‘I’m not doing it. I’m tired, you’ve just walked in the door, you’re not making sense. You go and have a bath, we’ll both get some sleep, and then talk about it tomorrow.’

Treading lightly across the room, as if afraid to make footprints that proved I’d been there at all, I sat down next to him. ‘There’s no point putting this off until tomorrow,’ I said. ‘It’s not going to make it any easier.’

‘Nothing happened with Bryony if that’s what all this is about.’ He wiped away a single angry tear and pulled his hand away from mine. ‘I went to fix her sink and she said why don’t you come over for tea and I was mad at you so I did, but that was all it was, tea.’

My heart ached as his tears began to fall freely. I hadn’t seen him cry since his nan’s funeral and for a moment I considered taking it all back, doing as he’d asked and pretending this conversation had never happened. But what good would that do now?

‘It’s not about Bryony, it’s about us,’ I said, wanting to squeeze his hand and make it better, but it didn’t feel right to touch him now. ‘All I know is, you’ve been my best friend for so long, and I don’t want to make my best friend miserable, but I don’t want to be miserable any more either.’

‘I asked you to marry me,’ he said in a hollow voice. ‘You said yes.’