‘Exactly!’ she had said. ‘You’re bound to have changed. All that unrealistic rubbish about marriage and children and giving up our London life! I was never going to be that sort of person and I never pretended otherwise – but you wouldn’t have it. You had to nurture an unrealistic hope that I might suddenly turn into a cradle-rocking little Miss Muffet character. Surely now you’ve had all this time to brood about what a fun thing we had going between us, you must realise how crazy it would be to chuck it away for guaranteed boredom. Why do you always have to make such a big deal out of everything? Provided you don’t still hanker to settle down by an Aga to breed children and write books I’m prepared to give things another go. I can’t guarantee that it’ll last any more than you can, but before you started getting broody and idealistic we used to have a great time – and that’s good enough for me.’

She had been amazed when he said that it was no longer enough for him, and when he told her about the book he had written in prison she had looked at him in horror.

‘You’d have thought the last two years would have brought you to your senses,’ she said. ‘You’re such an impossible romantic. All right, maybe you might be able to get your thriller published – I can see that your prison sentence could make great publicity’ – Christopher winced – ‘but as for poetry,’ scoffed Nicola, ‘forget it! Where did that ever get anyone? Why can’t you stick to what you’re good at and let me do the same?’

‘How do you know I wouldn’t be a successful writer?’ he demanded, unnerved to feel his temper beginning to rise again. Nicola had shrugged.

‘I don’t know, but I can only say that if you choose to chuck away your flair for economics and throw up a highly profitable and exciting career – which you could easily get back – to satisfy a schoolboy daydream, then don’t expect me to hang about for you.’

‘Expecting you to hang about is the last thing I’m likely to do,’ he had said furiously. ‘Experience has shown me that the minute things go wrong for me, you’re off like a rocket with another man.’

‘And you’re becoming a pompous prig,’ she flashed. She’d gone on to tell him that he always wanted everything his own way and took himself far too seriously.