‘No …’ My sense of weariness grew, enveloping me in a kind of dark-grey surge, like a tidal wave full of dust and debris. How had this happened? We were having a nice afternoon. All I had done was make an off-the-cuff remark – now I’d spoiled everything.

‘I’m sorry, I …’

‘You have no idea how hurtful your assumptions about me are,’ he said. ‘If you think that’s what I’m capable of, then what are you with me for, what’s the point?’

A kind of panic came over me then, a feeling that this whole thing was ridiculous. Less than half an hour ago he had used the phrase ‘in years to come’ and closed his hand over mine and talked about baby pebbles. Was I really going to damage this relationship beyond repair over Jasmine? And another thought, swift on the heels of that – if I break up with Matthew over him texting Jasmine then where will he go to console himself? I could see him and Jasmine in The New Place already. I could hear his sigh, ‘I was really keen on Lisa but she was just so insecure, quite paranoid really …’ and I could see Jasmine nodding, sympathetically, eager to convince him, without overdoing it, that in comparison with me she was really, really reasonable.

How to explain to him that it was painful to me, his concern for her? It had never occurred to me that he might be sleeping with her until he had planted that dark worm of a thought into some raw little cavity in my skull when we were talking in the bathroom. It was hard for me that, as a nurse, she spoke his language – the acronyms they would use without explanation, somehow that was the most painful element of all. And then I thought, how ridiculous … oh God, Lisa, are you really saying he’s not allowed to have colleagues? You’re going to drive him away with all this. He’ll get fed up, any man would.

If the situation that Matthew and I found ourselves in had been reversed, there on that late February day beneath the cold winter sun, all Matthew would really have wanted to know was, how far did it go? Did you sleep with him? If he were satisfied that I had not, it would not have counted as an infidelity. He was being quite genuine in thinking that because he hadn’t slept with her, I was making a fuss about nothing. How could I explain to him that that wasn’t the point? I had tried, but he would always come back to nothing has happened and in the face of that incontrovertible – and true – fact, my pain seemed unreasonable.