Adrian glowed from the cold air and the alcohol he’d already consumed; his cheeks were rosy and his lips red and he radiated energy. He apologized for being late – held up, people to see, you know how it is, yabber yabber – and lay back in the chair and raised the champagne glass to his lips but he hardly touched his chicken. He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days; his eyes gleamed; his hair had grown longer and fell over his collar. Irene saw that he’d lost weight since Christmas; his clothes were looser on him and his stubbly face was slightly gaunt. Irene thought he looked younger and wilder, more like the man she had fallen in love with all those years ago.

‘I feel as if this could be the start of new things,’ he said, pouring himself another glass, chasing his chicken around on the plate. ‘At last, after all the time I’ve spent hanging around, going to auditions, teaching bloody Andrew Lloyd-Webber songs to spoilt pubescent girls, this could be it, Irene.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. It’s fabulous.’ His hope was contagious, and she smiled across at him and raised her glass in a congratulatory toast. ‘Well done for keeping faith.’ She noticed that his hands were shaking.

‘No more failure,’ he said. ‘Bloody, fucking failure. It eats you alive.’

And then, abruptly, his face still contorted in a grin, he started to weep. He pushed away his plate of untouched food and fat tears ran down his face and dripped off his unshaven jaw. He put his head in his hands and let himself be wrenched by spasms of grief. Pieces of words broke out between his sobs, though Irene couldn’t make out what he was trying to say. For a few seconds, she sat across the table from him with her champagne glass in her hand and stared at him, then she crossed over to him and knelt by his chair.

‘Adrian?’

‘Oh Jesus.’

‘What is it?’ she asked, but it wasn’t a real question and she didn’t know if she wanted the answer. She laid her arms on his shaking shoulders and he turned towards her like a blind man. He pressed his heavy, wet face into her shoulder and she stroked his hair as if he was her child.

‘Oh Irene,’ he said into her neck. ‘I didn’t know, I didn’t know …’

‘It’s all right,’ she murmured, holding him against her. ‘Everything’s all right.’

She wiped his tears from his cheeks, and comforted him for leaving her.

‘Sorry,’ he said the next morning, drinking coffee in the kitchen, his face shaved and hair washed. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’

‘We have to talk though.’