‘Let me get sorted out here – you know how it is after a holiday. Mountains of washing, you wouldn’t believe.’ She laughed and heard the crack of it. ‘I’ll call.’

The phone rang and she snatched it up.

‘Yes?’

There was a silence at the other end, a faint breathing.

She said, ‘I know who you are. I know.’

The phone went dead.

She stood in the queue at the supermarket. I could talk to the check-out girl, she thought. Plonk down my shopping – cheese, Marmite, juice, soap powder, rice – and say: My husband’s having an affair with my best friend’s sister and what should I do?

Shampoo, loo rolls, free-range eggs: I don’t want to be all alone again.

Potatoes, crisps, bean sprouts, broccoli because that’s the only vegetable Aggie will eat: If I start crying, even a single tear, I’ll never stop.

Pasta, apples, milk, porridge: If I start hating him, I’ll never stop.

Eleven

Five days later, the school term began. Adrian and Irene dropped the children off and drove out of London, east, until they reached the flat and desolate east coast: shingle beaches, mud flats, huge grey skies and a sharp wind whistling across the sea, carrying rain. They had been walking here before, although the last time was when Sasha was a baby and Irene had carried her in a sling across her chest, her downy head just beneath Irene’s chin and the bunched weight of her swinging with her steps. That time had been in the late spring. They’d held hands, discussed plans, stopped in a pub for beer and sandwiches, driven home in the long, soft shadows of the May evening. Now it was September and the snap of autumn was in the air. They pulled on their walking boots, zipped up their waterproof jackets, set off briskly along the coastal path and for several minutes they didn’t speak. Yet it felt oddly companionable and sadly familiar, trudging along together, holding open gates, pulling back springy brambles, losing the path and then finding it again, noticing the same things – the heron flying overhead, the single boat on the horizon – even though they didn’t mention them to each other. And they didn’t squabble over the map; they were being carefully, relentlessly polite to each other, like distant acquaintances.

‘What are we going to do?’ said Adrian at last. He’d spent a good deal of the previous four days in bed and had red-rimmed eyes and a puffy face.

‘What do you mean, we?’ asked Irene, her voice cold.

‘Irene,’ he said, then stopped.

‘Go on.’

‘I never meant this to happen.’