Ozzy, now back upstairs, asked: ‘Do you know where my old Thames Water jacket is? I thought it was in the wardrobe in the spare bedroom.’

‘That old blue one? That’s in the under-bed storage in the spare room. I was thinking of chucking it out. It’s not waterproof anymore, is it?’

‘It’s good enough.’ He thundered back up the stairs, and she could hear the sounds of activity.

‘Ozzy. Why do you need that old coat now?

There was a few seconds’ silence. ‘I said I’d lend it to a friend.’

Angela was quite baffled by that. What kind of friend would need an old coat?

‘Ozzy?’ There was no reply this time, so she returned to making the tea. There was more activity up and down the stairs, a couple of cardboard boxes carried out. Something else moved from the garage she couldn’t quite see. A flash of orange. The old tent? That was all she could think of. The Volvo boot went again. She stood on tiptoe to peer out of the kitchen window. Ozzy was moving more stuff out of the garage. In one hand he had his guitar case, and in the other the old leather briefcase that he’d used in his first job when they got married, half their lives ago. He stowed them in the back of the Volvo, and slammed the boot down again.

Now she had moved from baffled to alarmed. If he had to go back to work what did he need to take the guitar for? In all the years she had known him, he had never had to rush back in to work. That was for the maintenance people, dealing with floods and so on, But he was a new-projects manager. Half of it was desk work. In piddle management, as he liked to say. New sewers, overflow pipes. Lots of concrete. In all his long years as a water engineer, his projects had been carefully planned, the schedules laid out over many months. There was none of this seat of the pants stuff that she was seeing now. She poured boiling water from the kettle onto a teabag in the teapot, and gave it a quick stir before putting the lid back on. While it brewed, she headed out to the front door and opened it.

‘Ozzy? What’s going on?’

‘A bit of an emergency,’ he said, staring down at the phone in his hand. ‘I’ve got to go now.’ He gave her a perfunctory smile. He’d always had a lovely smile. Back in the day, when they’d met in Goa, India, she’d been quite taken by the lean, tanned man who had nice teeth, brown eyes and lovely long blond hair tied back in a ponytail. He still had the nice eyes and good teeth, but only some grey fuzz for hair.