She breakfasted alone in the dining room on slightly stale baguette with a sachet of plum jam and bitter coffee, and was gone by eight. The day was pale grey, but before long it turned hazily bright. She found her way back onto the A26 and once more slid Lucinda Williams into the tape recorder. She settled back in the seat, held the steering wheel loosely between her hands. The road flowed past her.

There was a photograph that had been taken of her and Adrian when they had first got together. It was a summer photograph, and they had both been wearing baggy shorts and loose tee-shirts and were standing holding their bicycles, bulging panniers on the back and water bottles strapped to the frames, with a lane stretching behind them between an avenue of green trees. They were smiling widely; a lock of her long, unruly hair was blowing across her cheek. Their hips were just touching; their legs looked sturdy. She had always loved the picture but only now did she understand she had loved it because it had shown them setting off on their journey together.

That’s how she had always thought of their relationship: a journey. Sometimes it is steep and the weather foul; sometimes you freewheel down hill and the sun’s at your back and the land unfurls in front of you. Sometimes you feel free and your soul flies; sometimes you grind onwards effortfully, just keeping going through the sweat and the toil because that’s what you know you must do. But you’re always on it together. Pilgrims. She had never really thought you could choose to turn aside on your own, veer away down hidden paths.

Perhaps they had married too young and had children too early. Maybe it would have been better if she had had lots of relationships before falling head over heels in love with Adrian. Men sliding in and out of her bed. Secret assignations and experiments. Leaving and being left. Numerous half-loves and semi-tragedies to look back on – ah, I was a wild young woman once. But then, she had friends approaching their forties and childless, who were haunted by the fear of maybe having left it all too late. Absences, she thought, as the road ran towards her and streamed out behind her and the white sun rose hotly in the glowing sky; we all live with our different absences. The things we never did or never had or never knew; the experiences we turned away from; the doors that stayed shut; the loves we lost or left behind. The people we did not become. Absences can become like ghosts, haunting you.