Azra rubbed her thumb along my forearm. ‘I shouldn’t have said all that. What happens if you two make it up? I’ll feel such a twat.’

But he was gone. It had taken a long time for it to sink in, that he was gone for good.

Two

I thought I’d get used to being alone. Spring had arrived, with its lambs gambolling and hope abounding, but if anything I felt worse. I’d find myself standing for hours looking into the garden but unable to move. The grass needed mowing but what was the point, with nobody to see it?

Things started to break down. The kitchen grew dimmer as one by one the halogen lightbulbs fused. It was only Greg who could prise the bloody things out. I’d never understood the display panel on the dryer and it started manically beeping and leaving the clothes sodden. I know I should have worked it out but when I found the instruction booklet it seemed to be in Japanese. The car needed oil but I couldn’t wrench out the dipstick and found myself standing in the street, weeping, as I gazed into the open yawn of its engine.

I wasn’t just helpless; I was gripped by a sort of panicky inertia. Maybe, even then, I was starting to go crazy. I’d resumed work and was tutoring half a dozen pupils, and seemed to cope with that, but the moment they’d gone I sank into torpor and could barely move. I’d find myself stilled in the hallway, hypnotised by the colours on the floor where the sunlight shone through the stained glass. Yet my heart was racing.

My friends were sympathetic and still asked me over for supper, but less often than they’d done in the early days. I seemed to be becoming one of those single women I myself had so cruelly let slip through the net. When I did get an invitation, however, and the countdown began, I found myself becoming pointlessly agitated. Despite my longing for company, I was becoming fearful and agoraphobic. And I hated the preparations: pulling off the baggy trousers I wore all day, putting on make-up, a dress. When Greg was around it had been a companionable thing, sometimes the best part of the evening. Want a glass of wine before we go? Now, as I twisted round laboriously to zip myself up, I was already dreading coming home alone, and the number of days before I could ask my hosts back to my house without sounding needy. There were only so many times that one could phone.

Alex and Bethany, Jim and Rachel, Tish and Benji … they were my friends, but looking back now, I’m ashamed of the envy I felt. Envy of the easy familiarity between them. I remember watching Tish and Benji, married for ever, playfully butting each other’s hips as they stood side by side, dishing up.

Sometimes they said, It’s only us, I’m afraid, and my heart would sink. Sometimes they said, You’ll love Brian; he’s just moved back to London after his divorce, and my heart would lift. Brian, however, would be bald and overweight, and after asking me, Do you ski? would swing round and talk to the woman on his right.