Spring turned slowly into early summer, each day longer and brighter than the one before. Adrian went away to Prague for several weeks, filming; he phoned home occasionally but sent no letters, and when Irene suggested they all join him for a weekend, he put her off with vague excuses. He appeared in a tv commercial for an advanced razor blade which made men feel even more manly. He lost more weight and started using mouthwash. He bought himself a new suit. The phone rang for him in the middle of the day. His week was full of meetings, dinners, appointments, excuses. He crept into bed when Irene was asleep and, in the early hours of each morning, felt her slide out of it.

Early summer turned into full-blown, limp-leaved July. Irene wrote reports for her pupils. She bought sun cream, flip-flops and wide-brimmed hats for the girls and let them have ice-lollies after school and stay up late, fooled by the light into thinking it was still day. She went to end-of-term assemblies. She looked at lying holiday brochures that landed on their doormat – couples hand in hand by an azure sea where time stands still – and then chucked them in the bin.

She sniffed Adrian’s shirts before putting them in the wash, making out individual odours: sweat, deodorant, soap, smoke, something fragrant, something sharp. She dug into his trouser pockets and found a crumpled tissue with a smudge of pink on it. In his jacket she found a box of matches from a brasserie in Covent Garden. On his latest credit card statement – one that he’d borrowed money from her to pay off – were several restaurants that she had never heard of. In his wallet, tucked behind the book of stamps and the AA card, was a key.

She took out the key and hid it in her own purse.

‘Dear Jem,’ she wrote, ‘am I going mad?’

Delete.

They shared a cigarette in the dark, passing it between them and watching the tip brighten and fade.

‘I love you.’

‘I love you too.’

‘I love you so much I feel I could die of it.’

‘Come here, then. Come to me. Here.’

‘I don’t want to go away. Two weeks without touching you.’

‘I know.’

‘Think of me. Don’t let me out of your heart.’

‘Here. Come here.’

‘What am I going to do?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘Irene,’ he said after the eleventh day of their fortnight in a boxy white house in Devon, the sea a stone’s throw away and sand in all their clothes. The children were in bed at last and they sat in the narrow conservatory with the sound of the waves breaking into their words.

‘Yes.’

‘We have to talk.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve got something to tell you.’