‘She’s stringing you along, more like,’ Robyn cried, still reeling from the turn the conversation had taken. Love? Elopement? Edinburgh? He couldn’t mean it, could he? He couldn’t genuinely think this was a good idea, to move all the way up to Scotland with his twenty-two-year-old crush? Staying with some of her mates, it would be like regressing to student years: tie-dyed Indian throws hiding naff old furniture; awaiting your turn to use the shower in the morning; bitching about who had finished the milk. She shook her head, trying to assimilate the image, but found it impossible. ‘I think you’re making a big mistake here,’ she told him, voice shaking.

Her words simply rolled off him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said once more. ‘It’s all happened really quickly, I’ve been trying to find the right time to tell you, but . . .’

‘But guess what, there isn’t a right time to tell your wife that you’ve been sacked, you’re having an affair with a student and you’re leaving her and your children while you hop over the border to set up a love-nest. Strange, that. You would have thought it would be so easy, too.’ Her sarcasm gave way to rage suddenly, sheer boiling rage that John could do this, wreck everything on such a stupid, selfish whim, and that she was a mere afterthought. ‘And your brothers know all about it, I’m guessing,’ she added, remembering his lying alibis of recent days. Her cheeks burned with the humiliation. ‘Does everyone else know, then? Been having a good old laugh behind my back? God, John!’ Her voice rose to a shout. ‘Come on! Do you really think this is a good idea? I mean, seriously? Genuinely?’

He sat in silence for a moment and she felt a brief flare of hope that he was about to come to his senses at last, see reason and apologize. But then he rose to his feet. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘I can see you’re upset. But I know how I feel. And I’ve been given a chance at something amazing, with Naomi. I’d be mad to turn it down.’

Robyn’s mouth fell open, but nothing came out. She seemed to have run out of words, used up all her arguments.

‘So I’m just going to go, okay?’ he said, somewhat apprehensively. ‘And then we can talk in a week or so. Decide what we’re going to do about the kids, and everything.’