I opted for the lightest of enquiries, standing there as he bent to unlace his trainers. ‘You took a while …’

He straightened up and looked at me. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

I kept my tone light, kept smiling, even though smiling when you don’t mean it hurts the muscles of your face. ‘Nothing, it’s just, you said you’d be half an hour …’

‘You timing my runs now? Is it a problem for you how long I run for?’

‘No, of course not, you can run all day if you want, it’s just you said you’d be half an hour so I didn’t go out because I thought we were going to John Lewis when you got back. If you’d said you’d be nearly four hours then I would have gone on my own.’

‘It isn’t nearly four hours.’

‘You left at nine twenty and it’s nearly one o’clock.’

‘It wasn’t nine twenty, it was nearly ten, and it’s twelve forty, if you’re going to be a pedant about it, hardly one o’clock. We all know your sense of time isn’t exactly reliable, is it? Ask any of your friends. You told me that once, remember? It was a standing joke that you’re not the best of timekeepers. Ask any of them.’

And so it began … as he threw his trainers at the shoe pile, where they bounced and lay on their sides.

‘Jesus, Lisa, you know I work really hard all week …’

‘I know you do.’

‘Really, really, do you know that? Because you don’t act like it. I work really hard all week and on a Saturday morning when I want to shake things down a bit sometimes what I need is to go for a really long run, because sometimes the stress of it all really gets me down, and I didn’t realise I had to explain myself or justify myself for wanting to do that …’

‘You don’t …’

‘Well clearly I do.’

‘I’m just saying, if you’d let me know, or just texted me how long you’d be, I would have gone out and got on with my day. I’m just asking to be treated with consideration, Matthew.’

‘Oh, I’m inconsiderate now, am I? Funny, I don’t remember you complaining about how inconsiderate I was when I cooked dinner and washed up last night. Anyway, I never said how long I’d be.’

‘You did, you said …’

‘Oh God, here we go again, your overactive imagination.’

‘You said I’ll be half an hour.’

‘I never said that. I wouldn’t have said that because I didn’t know how long I’d be when I left, did I? I hadn’t decided what route I was taking yet so I never said that.’

I never said that. It was one of Matthew’s favourite phrases.