The two of them were leaning towards each other across the table, both resting their chins on their hands. They were talking intently, lost in their own world. Greg was wearing an unfamiliar blue shirt.

They hadn’t seen me. I swung round and stumbled away. I told myself: Azra’s reading him the riot act. She’s telling him I’m miserable and he’s been stupid to leave me, that we’d had a great marriage and he’s thrown it all away. That it was a late-life crisis and he should pull himself together and come home. That she was a loyal friend and worried about me.

I told myself: she lied about going to France because she’d arranged this meeting and hid it from me in case it failed. She is my friend; she is on my side. She loves me.

I seemed to have got on the wrong bus and it took a long time to get home. I poured myself a vodka and sat down at the kitchen table. For the first time in thirty years I longed for a cigarette, but my hands were shaking too much to light one anyway. In the garden a squirrel scrabbled in the flowerbed, trying to find something it had buried, earth flying everywhere.

They hated each other! She’s such a fraud, so pretentious! Greg had said. He’s such a tosser, she’d said. Doggedly, over the months, they’d created a smokescreen. Or maybe they did find each other annoying; after all, friction is often the basis for sexual attraction: look at Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy. Greg and I’d had a generally amiable relationship, not a passionate one, not since the early days. Even then it was companionable rather than tempestuous. We’d liked each other; we were friends, woolly liberal friends. We had so much in common.

When had it begun, him and Azra? Months ago? Years ago? Lie after lie after lie. No wonder she’d been testy with me recently; she was feeling as guilty as hell.

I scraped back my chair, rushed to the lavatory and threw up.

‘How was France?’

‘Fine.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘A little town in Brittany.’

‘What’s it called?’

‘St Suplice-Deux-Eglises.’

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why did you go there?’

‘It has a big marché aux puces on Sundays.’

‘What’s a marché aux puces?’

‘A flea market.’

‘Successful?’

‘What?’

‘Your trip. Successful?’

‘So-so.’

‘What did you buy?’

‘This and that.’

‘What?’

‘Some bedspreads. A little chest. Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why are you so interested?’

‘I saw you with Greg.’

‘What?’

‘I saw you with Greg. On Saturday.’

She didn’t miss a beat. ‘Oh, that.’

‘Yes, that.’

‘I didn’t want you to know.’

‘So you lied.’

‘Yes.’

‘Pretending you were away.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why didn’t you want me to know?’

‘Because I needed to talk to him. To bring him to his senses. I didn’t want you to know because it might have raised your hopes, but it didn’t work. He’s never coming back.’

‘Because he’s got you.’

‘What?’

‘All those times you were going to France you were going to Dorset, weren’t you?’