‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I haven’t decided. I can’t think straight. I don’t know what I want any more. Just not this.’

For a moment it was as if all the heat and anger had ebbed away. They looked at each other wearily.

‘You should stay somewhere else for a few days,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell the girls you’re away on a job. They’re used to it – anyway, you’ve hardly been around much recently, have you?’

‘All right. I’ll ask Gary.’

‘Then you can decide what you want to do. And I can think about whether I want you back,’ she added. ‘We can meet and talk. Maybe arrange counselling. Take it step by step, very carefully. We must know what we’re doing, one way or another.’

‘Yes,’ he said submissively. ‘Yes, of course. That’s it.’

‘But don’t go running to her while you’re deciding.’ She winced at how her speech had descended into angry cliché; she was even calling Frankie ‘her’ as if her name would poison her. She had become a statistic: a betrayed wife, an ageing mother whose husband had gone off with a younger woman. For a second, she thought of playing the violin by the window; the feeling of horizons rolling back and a strange freedom beckoning. Was she just going to accept this as one of those things that happened in a marriage? A mundane betrayal, a tacky tragedy, a mid-life crisis that they would weather together. ‘If you do that I swear to God that’ll be it …’she said.

‘Of course I won’t. You don’t need to ask that.’

‘Promise?’

‘I promise. You have my word.’

He put a hand on her shoulder as he said this but she flinched angrily.

‘Don’t you dare touch me,’ she said.

Irene told the girls their father was going away for a few days; they barely looked up from their supper. When they were all in bed and he’d kissed them goodnight, goodbye for now, he packed a small bag.

‘Bye,’ he said, standing irresolute at the door.

‘Goodbye.’

‘Irene?’

‘Yes?’

‘You’re the most wonderful mother, you know.’

She misheard him. For a second, she thought he said ‘lover’ and elation filled her. She was a wonderful lover. Then she realized what it was he had said. A wonderful mother: it sounded like her epitaph.

Richard, Adrian’s agent, rang. He wanted to talk to Adrian urgently.

‘I’ll tell him to call you,’ said Irene.

‘Soon as possible, OK? Good news. Things are really on the move now.’

She rang up Gary, self-conscious because he probably knew everything by now.

‘Gary? It’s Irene.’

‘Hello. How are you?’ The baby was crying in the background.

‘Oh, you know, up and down. Strange times,’ she said in a clipped voice. ‘Can I speak to Adrian, please, I’ve got an urgent message for him.’

‘Adrian?’