She was remembering what Jem had asked her earlier, as they sat over their late lunch. Had it been bad for a long time? She’d opened her mouth to reply and then found she didn’t know what to say. Had it? Absurdly, until that moment, she hadn’t really posed the question except frantically over dinner with Karen. There had been an accepted narrative format to their break-up, one which all her friends eagerly subscribed to: she and Adrian had been getting along fine, ups and downs like in any marriage but that was only to be expected after all. And then desire had ambushed him and tipped him off course. In this version, the affair had caused a sudden and violent rupture. If it hadn’t been for Frankie, then they would still be together. Their break was exactly that – an accident, like a car crash which, one second earlier or later, would not have happened, would not have even been imagined.

But Jem’s mild question had set her on another path. Perhaps she and Adrian had been heading for this moment for a long time, without ever realizing it. Perhaps their separation was not like a car crash, with him driving recklessly and her passive and appalled in the passenger seat, and was more like a series of wrong turnings and misdirections that they had both taken, that they were both responsible for, each one insignificant in itself, yet taking them further and further astray. The adventure of marriage had become, imperceptibly, an impasse.

In which case, thought Irene, closing her eyes, it’s not just the last few months I was blind about, but the last several years. It’s all about repetition, accretion – the slow build-up of trivial patterns and undredged irritation, until everything silts up. Ideas flitted through her brain and she tried to hold on to them: that she shouldn’t be pitied, that she wasn’t just a victim, that this was her chance, her chance to begin afresh … But the journey had been long and now she felt sleep wash over her; her limbs relaxed. She turned her back to the open window, pulled a plump pillow under her head and let herself forget herself for a time. Let herself go.

Over the next three days, Irene often wished that her week in France could remain suspended in this waiting time: the hours filled equally with idleness and purpose, the guests expected and prepared for but not yet arrived; the wedding and the party still to come; everything on the hazy blue horizon. Even when she thought of her daughters, there was no longer the stinging lash of missing.