Of course I should have gone home. Now he knew that Azra was OK, Greg just looked distracted. I thought: how can I be mad with a man I hardly know?

He mopped his brow with his green spotted handkerchief. This, at least, was familiar. ‘I need a shower,’ he said. ‘Do you want to come in or something?’

It was not the most enthusiastic invitation, but I nodded and followed him into the house.

I shouldn’t have gone in. Of course I shouldn’t. Nothing I had to say could alter anything. Besides, I was in such a state that I’d forgotten why I’d come, even if I’d known in the first place.

Nor had I prepared myself for the shock of stepping into the living room. Everything was the same—the two armchairs, the rag rug, the wood-burner with its cracked glass. The desiccated spider plant on the windowsill—God knows where we’d got it; we’d both found it dreary, but it had proved to be more durable than our marriage.

Everything the same, yet not the same at all.

Greg gestured to the armchair. ‘Why don’t you make yourself—’

At home. He stopped. There was an awkward silence, then he went upstairs.

I heard the familiar creak of the floorboards and the bathroom door closing, then the sound of the bolt. We’d never used the bolt when we had a shower, or even closed the door.

I remembered those last, terrible days in Muswell Hill, when he’d moved into the spare room. How the two of us had lain low, alert to the sound of the other moving around the house, the rattle of cutlery as we each made our solitary breakfast. How I’d disappear and he’d creep out, then vice versa, like figures in a Swiss clock. Once, when we happened to be in the same room, Greg had put his arm around my shoulder, out of habit, and jerked back as if he’d been stung.

By the time Greg came downstairs I’d recovered. He stood in the doorway, so tall that his head was tilted sideways. This gave him a quizzical look. I had a flash from the past—Greg standing there smiling, wearing his Habitat apron. Supper in half an hour, OK? Ducking under the door-frame to give me a glass of wine.

Today he wore a new grey tracksuit. He’d never liked tracksuits. Perhaps Azra had bought it for him. But then I couldn’t picture her doing that, either. I knew nothing any more.

I shouldn’t be here, torturing myself.

‘I’m going to have some lunch,’ he said. ‘Do you want some?’

I followed him into the kitchen. He opened the fridge and squatted there, gazing at its contents.

‘There’s a bit of risotto from last night, but not enough,’ he said. ‘We could have some hummus and toast. Want some of that?’

His voice was chilly, but that was hardly surprising. I sat down at the table. The silence weighed between us as he moved around, slotting bread into the toaster, filling tumblers with water—new red tumblers, I noticed, rather nice. He put the tub of hummus on the table. No question of spooning it into a bowl, or adding anything to it. I could see a pot of basil and a dish of tomatoes on the windowsill but he wasn’t going to bother with that sort of thing. Fair enough. Anyway, I wasn’t hungry.