Lily and Betty were the only friends who knew I was coming for this visit. I’d needed their moral support – ‘Don’t you dare let him make this a you problem’ – and worldly wisdom – ‘Closure is overrated, anyway!’ – and I tried to hang on to every piece of advice – ‘Remember, babes, this is your chance to clear the air as well as his’ – and every offer of help – ‘I haven’t slapped an ex-boyfriend in … I don’t even know how long’ – and then I pulled in a belly breath.

‘No, Rowan. I don’t think I wanted it at all. I think I was happy and I think I thought you were, too, even in the early weeks of it all. But no, I didn’t want to see you out with other girls. I didn’t want to know you were lying about where you were and who you were with and …’ He parted his lips as though to interrupt me but I held an index finger up to pause him. ‘You can’t ask questions you’re not ready for the answers to.’ He recognised the phrase and closed his mouth slowly. ‘No, when I agreed to get married and spend the rest of our lives together, it didn’t cross my mind once that you wouldn’t be enough for me. Or that I wouldn’t – you know, that I wouldn’t be – for you.’

He looked winded, so I let him have quiet in the seconds after. There was a box at the far end of the living room with a Tesco’s Bag for Life next to it and I suspected they were my worldly belongings; my adult life and then some. I hadn’t wanted to sleep with other people. But I’d arrived at a point where it was okay that he – we – had. He needed something he wasn’t getting and maybe he didn’t go the right way about it but … I sighed. But it was okay. I opened my mouth to say that, though, and Rowan beat me to the punch.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You are?’

He nodded, sniffed. ‘I don’t know why I suggested it.’

‘Because maybe things weren’t as okay as you think they were?’

‘But they were fine,’ he protested. Like an angry child, he dropped his fists against his knees and repeated himself. ‘Everything was fine.’

I crossed the room and sat next to him. Unprompted, he grabbed my hand and I squeezed his.

‘Rowan, don’t you want more than fine?’ He looked up at me and pulled his forehead together, as though I’d given him a tricky spelling to sound out. I kissed the side of his forehead, then, like Molly, Cora, Lily had kissed mine so many times. ‘If you’re going to be with someone for the rest of your life, don’t you want something a bit better than fine?’

‘Our parents have done fine on—’