Her face contorts with disappointment. ‘Oh fuck off then!’ she spits, and turns, one heel making an emphatic scraping noise on the pavement. A few steps away, she turns again, and although now she is beyond the pool of light, I can still see her harsh expression, the hollows in her cheeks, the disappointed look in her wide eyes. ‘You’re not the only one who is suffering, Andrew. It isn’t just about what you need,’ she says. ‘You could be making this easier, for both of us, and instead you’re making it worse.’

‘It’s never going to be easy,’ he says, without anger, ‘that’s the point, and I can’t pretend that having a takeaway and a chat is going to make it any better.’

‘I didn’t say easy, I said easier!’ she says over her shoulder as she turns into the night, the scrape-scrape of her heels heading off into the dark.

There is something about this exchange that makes me think they were involved with each other for a long time – something about the pettiness of it, the way in which a complex and presumably important argument boiled down so rapidly to the difference between an adjective and its own comparative. This relationship is far from over, in my opinion – the storming off mid-argument, the assumption, mutual from his weary sigh, that there is plenty more to be said. Maybe they haven’t split up after all. Maybe he has just gone a bit cold on her, tried pulling back a bit because of whatever else is bothering him. What you did? Either way, she is responding in precisely the wrong manner, clinging and calling; why doesn’t she just give him a bit of space? It’s not the way to make someone miss you, after all, going on like this. Get me, the relationship expert, all of a sudden.

Andrew stands for no more than a moment before reaching into his left jacket pocket for his keys. Although I have had the luxury of observing living human beings continuously for some time now, I am no nearer to solving the mystery of how men manage without handbags. He turns and walks up a short path to one of the houses, a neat brick box, the left-hand side of a semi in a row that was cheaply built, I’m guessing, one of those housing projects whose purchase price was low because the walls are made of cardboard and you can hear the man next door clearing his throat each morning. Oh, and the electricity meter will eat coins like a hungry toddler with a packet of Hula Hoops.