What is the definition of betrayal? I am both interested in the chase and interested in Ruth. They are two different things. Ruth is my life. At night, on the internet, I wander lonely as a cloud, talking to other girls. I’m just playing, messing around. Sometimes I do meet up with them, not often. Sometimes I do like them. I’ve still got eyes. I would be dead if I didn’t notice other women. There are a lot of attractive girls in the world: it’s a game of statistics. Right now, for instance, I’m talking to a cheeky one. Her name’s Lili, like the song. One thing doesn’t preclude the other. I have tried to explain this to Ruth in the past, though I haven’t bothered going into it for a while. She just pretends not to understand what I am saying. She knows full well what I mean, she just won’t admit it. Whenever we are in a disagreement Ruth listens quietly without asking any questions until I lose track of what I am saying. She always chooses the path of least resistance. Sometimes I wonder if I haven’t spent the best years of my life with her because she never let me get to the bottom of things. The things that I want, the things that I need to be happy, or closer to happy, or whatever a man like me is allowed to have. She knows me; she knows I feel restless. She knows I can’t help it. She keeps me talking, so she doesn’t have to listen. Her mind is made up: she wants things to stay the same way. She is happy with little, unambitious: our home, her work, our pithy existences. So long as she can keep me talking, we’ll never get to it. Nothing will change. It’s easy when someone tells you how to be. But what about me?

Ten years together: 2006–16. When I write the dates down, one next to the other, they read like the epitaph of a child.

When I wake up, I can’t remember it all, not straight away. But I recognize the fear, immediately. Her black shadow breathing, in the dark, next to me.

Something has happened overnight, I am sure of it. I can’t remember seeing shapes, not clearly but I felt their closeness, the horror of their proximity raising the hair on my dead forearms. I sunk back under, smothered in sleep, then rose to the surface again.