How could I not have known? I kept asking myself. How could I have known? I kept telling myself.

Guilt gnawed at me. I thought back to when he’d first given me a lift home in his van; my dismay at seeing him again after all this time; all my preconceived ideas and prejudices against him. Born of what? Teenage hurt feelings and Ben’s troubled past? I’d judged him and I’d been so very wrong. All this time I’d assumed his joking and his flippant remarks proved that he didn’t take life seriously, when all along life couldn’t have been more serious for him.

Let that be a lesson to you, Liv: who ever knows what’s going on in someone else’s life? And yet I’d been so quick to form opinions. I felt ashamed. And then I thought about Stanley, and my heart broke for him.

So not exactly the kind of lustful thoughts that should have been running through my head as I headed home with a gorgeous man who clearly intended to get me into bed. And yet the last few days had been spent looking forward to exactly this possibility. I’d dug out the expensive scented candles I’d been saving for a special occasion, swapped my comfy unflattering undies for the kind of lingerie you have to hand-wash, and had done some serious preparation with various body scrubs and creams.

People always assume that if your husband has an affair and leaves you for a younger woman, he’s ‘not getting it at home’, which is as glaringly sexist as it’s so often untrue. David and I had a healthy sex life, whatever that is; it was the glue that kept us together. Even when we fought and didn’t like each other very much, we were attracted to each other. In a way, it would have been easier if we hadn’t been, as that would have made it simpler to understand. If he wasn’t looking for sex, then what was he looking for? It was less straightforward, more complicated than that.

But then things always are, aren’t they?

Ajay finding me attractive had made me feel good about myself again. My divorce had killed my libido, but now it stirred back into life. Which seemed to be at odds with how I should be feeling, according to all those magazines aimed at women of my age. Only the other day I’d flicked through a few at the supermarket while looking for ones on interiors, and there seemed to be an endless stream of articles about baking your own sourdough or taking a ceramics class. And nothing at all about sleeping with a man ten years younger than you – which seems a lot more interesting than getting your dough to rise, frankly.

But maybe it’s just me. It’d been so long since those feelings of excitement and anticipation, and I relished them. But then I heard about Ben’s wife and everything changed. Of course Ajay wasn’t to know, and he continued flirting and flattering, while I kept trying to behave as if everything was normal. Later, as I left him undisturbed and went to sleep in the spare bedroom with Harry, I thought about how this wasn’t as I’d imagined it would be. And then I thought about Ben – and how so much of life never is, is it?