All the same, this was not the greatest time for a house-guest, when John had just lost his job and everything about the future seemed newly precarious. ‘Don’t tell Dad about it, yeah, he’s got enough on his plate and will only worry,’ he’d warned her – which was fair enough, but then he didn’t even want to talk about the redundancy with her, his wife, either, when she still had so many questions.

No, he wasn’t sure how many other members of staff had been laid off.

No, he didn’t know when the compensation package would be paid out.

No, the department hadn’t tried to help him find a replacement post – for crying out loud, Robyn, what’s with the Spanish Inquisition here? Give a bloke a break, won’t you?

Robyn couldn’t help feeling rejected. Couldn’t help harking back to their early days of romance and tenderness, when he’d seemed so delighted to be with her. When she was pregnant with Sam, for instance, you could not have found a more doting husband than John. He’d gone to every scan and midwives’ appointment, he’d cooked her wholesome dinners and rubbed her feet when she was tired in the evening; and then, when Sam was born and they’d brought him home from hospital, he’d actually had tears in his eyes as they held hands and peered at him sleeping in the Moses basket. ‘You gave me a son,’ he had said, his voice cracking. ‘Our son. You are the most amazing woman.’

Robyn had felt that they were such a team together – that was what she couldn’t help remembering now. That it had been the two of them standing side by side in this marriage, facing down every obstacle between them. John might not show his emotions all that much, preferring to hide his feelings in his bluff, gruff practical manner, but those feelings were there, and she alone was privy to that secret vulnerable side of him. And yet recently it was as if he was shutting her out of this particular problem. He wouldn’t talk to her about money, about how they were going to pay the mortgage and bills next month. The grim picture of a future where they depended on her meagre part-time salary kept sliding around her mind. Was it too late to get the deposit back on their summer holiday? Should they sell one of the cars? She could try to up her hours at the school next term, she supposed, or do what her mum had suggested and brave a look at returning to the university herself. Or would that be rubbing salt in John’s wound, effectively stealing his place as Breadwinner Numero Uno?