‘I know her fears, her fantasies, the nightmare that wakes her up night after night,’ I say, not sure whether I’m talking about Anna or myself.

‘But she’s not your problem,’ he says.

‘So what am I supposed to do? Just abandon her?’

Leon sighs heavily and I go to him, wrapping my arms around his neck and kissing his cheek.

‘Oh, sorry,’ says Anna, through a strangled cough.

Feeling self-conscious and not wishing to make her feel excluded, I pull away.

‘I need to go and run a few checks,’ says Leon, pushing his chair away from the dining table and standing up.

I watch as he walks down the hall and turns to give me a parting glare, silently warning me to do the right thing. But is that the right thing by Anna, or him?

‘Nick and I used to be like you two,’ she says wistfully. ‘He wouldn’t let me pass by without giving me a kiss or telling me how much he loved me. Our friends used to tell us to get a room. Now we can’t even be in the same house as each other.’

I pull a chair out from the dining table and invite her to sit. ‘Do you want to talk about what happened?’ I ask, sitting down on the still-warm seat that Leon’s just left.

Anna pulls out a tissue from her sleeve and blows her nose. ‘He didn’t come home last night, but it’s something he does occasionally, just to let off some steam, so I wasn’t particularly worried. But when he got in this afternoon, he was drunk.’

I shudder.

‘He’s not had a drink in over a year,’ she says. ‘Not since we lost Ben.’

‘Right,’ I say, knowing first-hand the difference alcohol can make to someone’s personality.

‘He’s . . . he’s never gone for me before,’ she says, biting down on her lip and staring through the patio doors to the garden. ‘But he was so drunk and so mad that he just couldn’t help himself.’

My stomach lurches. I knew a man like that once. At weekends, when he was away from work and the lure of the bars in the city, he was the man my mother married, and the father Jennifer and I loved with all our hearts. But on weekdays, when he was unable to resist the temptation of ‘just one more’, he’d become completely unrecognizable.