He stalked into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. He downed it in one go, slammed it down on the kitchen counter, wiped at his mouth fiercely with the back of one hand and turned to me, shaking his head. ‘Jeez, you know, Lisa, sometimes I wonder if I’m missing something. What was it we did last Sunday?’

I turned, regretting I had said anything about his run, and deeply regretting I had not just gone out to the shops on my own. He crossed the kitchen and took hold of my upper arm.

‘No, go on, tell me, what was it we did?’

‘You know what we did …’ I looked at the floor, my tone weary.

‘Remind me. What was it?’

‘We went to see my parents, we went round in the morning.’

‘Yeah, right, and while you and your mum were in the garden, what were me and your dad doing?’

‘You were upstairs …’

‘Upstairs where, precisely?’

It was always best to give him the answer he wanted straight away. ‘You were in the bathroom, you were looking at the cistern with Dad. You got your phone out and showed him that video on YouTube. You explained to him how next time he needs to fix anything and he’s not sure, you can look up how to fix anything on YouTube. He came downstairs all impressed because he didn’t know about all the things you could find out that way. He said it was much better than Googling because you got such good videos on almost anything. He’s going to try it next time anything breaks.’ If I had not felt so tired, I would have added, but you didn’t make all those videos yourself, Matthew, you just showed my dad how to find them.

‘Yes, right, and what did we do then?’

‘We took them to the carvery. You’d found one that did sticky toffee pudding.’

‘Yeah, and why had I gone to the trouble of finding a pub that did sticky toffee pudding?’

I can’t stand this any more, I thought. I’m going insane. ‘Because last time we took them out, Mum was disappointed there was no sticky toffee pudding because it’s her favourite.’

‘Right.’ This was said with an air of finality, point proved. Matthew released my arm and let his head hang down, as if he was the beaten one, not me.

Conciliation was always best, if I wanted it to stop. I lifted my hands and rested them gently on his shoulders. ‘I know you do a lot for my parents, I know. You’re very considerate towards them and I really appreciate it.’

He made a huffing sound. ‘Do you?’

‘Yes, of course I do.’

He sighed again, shook his head.