Afterwards we laughed. I felt restored to her, but only briefly. She’d become more aggressive, no doubt about that. In some obscure way she was punishing me, but I had no idea why.

Trouble was, there was no escape. Be careful what you wish for. Don’t get me wrong; we still had good times together, of course we did. They’d just become rarer. I’d been married; I’d been through this. With us, however, the whole thing speeded up. Do you remember how lockdown had this effect on us all, stripping away love, restoring love, cutting it short, igniting it, deepening it, challenging it? Making us violent? Or causing us to simply hunker down and sit it out in a sort of paralysis? Longterm prisoners say the same thing, that time is out of kilter—simultaneously both speeded up and slowed to a standstill.

The day of reckoning was stoppered up, like a dam, and we were all waiting for the end of lockdown when we would be released, for better or worse.

With the two of us, it happened sooner than that. In fact, the very next week.

We’d woken up to bad news. The virus was spreading and lockdown was being extended. Azra was plunged into gloom and paced up and down the bathroom with a thermometer stuck in her mouth. Every day she took her temperature and swallowed handfuls of supplements; she was becoming more and more paranoid. I was surprised she didn’t wear a mask in the flat. Recently I’d catch her looking at me warily, as if I might be a cause of infection. I presumed this was the reason for her bad temper.

She went into the living room and put on the kettle.

‘Shit!’

I joined her at the window. Our roof terrace was littered with beer cans. This had been happening more and more often nowadays. The flat above Azra’s was occupied by a quiet Korean family but the flat above that, the top flat, was rented by a group of students. They’d obviously had another of their lockdown parties. Our trays of tomato seedlings looked pitifully frail amidst the rubbish.

Azra clambered out and yelled up at their window, but it was Sunday morning and their curtains were closed. Then it started to rain.

All in all, we were both feeling wretched. I emailed Max and Lucy but I literally had nothing to say. Nothing had happened. By now I’d spoken to Max about his engagement and how thrilling it was. He’d told me about Valeria, who worked in his office and was a keen cyclist. But I was still brooding about Azra muscling in on his news—why had he told her first? More to the point, how dared she criticise me and my parenting? Where did that spring from? Jealousy?