‘Yes, you have,’ I nod.

‘I’m so sorry. I made a terrible mistake. I don’t know what I was thinking.’

‘You said you were in love with her,’ I remind him. ‘That you didn’t love me any more.’

As I say the words that broke my heart, I feel strangely disconnected. As if they’ve lost their power to hurt me somehow. But not for David. His face crumples.

‘You must hate me. I hate me.’

I look at him across the table. He’s always been so charming and self-assured, but now, even with the designer labels, he cuts a sorry-looking figure. I feel a spasm of sympathy for him. It surprises me.

‘You were a dick, but I don’t hate you.’ I shake my head slowly. ‘I wanted to, but I never did, not really.’ I shrug. ‘I just hated all the lies.’

‘I’m so sorry—’

‘Don’t.’ I cut him off. ‘You did me a favour.’

‘I did?’ He looks bewildered. ‘How?’

I look down at my hands, stretching out my naked fingers on the smooth wood of the table, feeling its age and solidness. ‘Because I thought I was happy – that we were happy – and when you said you were leaving, that you’d met someone else, I was so shocked. Devastated, really. I didn’t see it coming.’

I raise my eyes to see him studying me intently. I’ve got his full attention. It strikes me that I can’t remember the last time I had that.

‘But it made me aware that if I hadn’t seen that, what else had I been blind to? What else hadn’t I realized? And once I started to look, I saw all kinds of things . . .’

‘Like what?’ David frowns, that deep, familiar crevice appearing between his eyebrows, and reaches for his wine. And yet he seems so nervous, it’s like looking at someone else entirely.

‘Like things I wanted to change – that I’d buried and never dealt with – that weren’t working.’ My mind flicks from the past to the present. ‘I discovered new things, new friends, a new career, new opportunities . . . That I like living here, in the countryside, that I don’t miss London, that I love having a dog.’

I glance across at Harry. He’s lying curled up on his rug, one eye open, watching us suspiciously, keeping guard. Somehow seeing him there makes me draw strength.

‘That I’m more resilient, adaptable, braver . . . That I live in the moment more and I’ve learned how to have fun again; that I’m part of a community I love. That I like my life better now – I like myself better.’

Until now I’ve been so busy rebuilding my life that I haven’t realized how far I’ve come or how I’ve changed, but – faced with a physical reminder of my old life and its dynamic – all these feelings come rushing to the surface and tumbling out.

‘I was always so terrified of the worst-case scenario, but then the worst-case scenario happened and you know what?’ As I look at David, I feel a sudden sense of empowerment. ‘I didn’t curl up and die, though for a while there I wanted to.’