‘Look, we can’t talk if you’re going to be like this. Why don’t you calm down—’

‘Calm down?’

‘—and we’ll talk about it later. I’ll ring you tomorrow.’

Greg didn’t ring, or reply to my emails. That’s the sort of coward he was. Azra, too. They had that in common.

It was early June, and beautiful weather. You could practically hear the plants growing, rustling and jostling and mocking me in my misery. I stabbed at dandelions and yanked them out, the little adulterers, flinging them into a pile on the lawn.

Do you know what I mourned, even more than my marriage? I mourned the loss of Azra, the way we’d laughed and bitched together. Most of all, the vision of independence she’d given me. She’d been my beacon as I strode into the future, and now it had gone. Her fearless, solitary life was a lie. All those years she’d been cheating on me, and now she’d not just destroyed our friendship but the possibility that I could carry on alone. It was all a sham.

Now she’d disappeared from my life. All I knew was that in two weeks she’d be moving into the cottage with my husband. At night I lay awake, picturing them in excruciating detail. Azra sitting on Greg’s lap, in the sagging armchair next to the fire, the two of them nursing mugs of tea. Morning, and sunlight streamed through the bedroom window; Azra stood there, naked, breathing great gulps of sea air. Greg stepped up behind her. He buried his face in her hair; he ran his tongue down her spine. He’d done that to me, long, long ago, in the early days.

Most painful to contemplate, actually, was the mundane stuff. Washing up, shopping at the local Spar. Walking round with their phones in the air, trying to get a signal. Greg and I had agreed we couldn’t retire to Mortimer’s Creek. It was wonderful for a holiday but after a month we’d go stir-crazy.

Not them, obviously.

Lucy was furious, on my behalf. ‘The lying sod,’ she spat down the phone. ‘I’m never going to speak to him again!’ Our daughter had always had a difficult relationship with her father. I suspect he’d wanted an intellectual, girly daughter and she was neither of these things. She was forthright and sporty—pretty aggressive, at times. I adored her, of course, and so did the crew at the TV studios, where she was one of the gang. She was strong and gutsy; in her spare time she was always up some glacier.

Max was less engaged. ‘You OK, Ma?’ That was it, really. He was trying to be sympathetic but didn’t know where to start. He was brilliant at IT; the world of emotions, however, was an uncharted sea and best avoided. A bit on the spectrum, bless him. I didn’t know the phrase when he was young, but when Greg and I heard it applied to our son it had come as something of a relief.