Edward Millborg stood motionless. He wasn’t smiling any more. I wanted to keep talking, I wanted to hurl things right in his face, but I didn’t know what to say.

‘You think you’ve got it easy, with all your money and this good location,’ I shouted. ‘But you don’t understand the first thing about shoes, you stupid man. You poor, stupid, horrible man!’

The cold February wind hit me as I stepped out onto the street. The ice in the gaps between the paving stones was black with the dirt of the long winter. Only a few people were out on the pavement. They walked bent forward, their faces hidden in thick scarves. On the other side of the street Margarete Lichtlein was pulling her handcart along behind her and talking into the rain that was starting to fall.

In the shop Robert was sitting behind the cash desk filing papers. He had a separate folder for each procedure, labelled in different colours: outgoings, receipts, orders, complaints. Robert loved his coloured folders.

‘How did it go?’ he asked. ‘Did you do it?’

His face was full of childlike anticipation, and I could have punched it. I was furious with this man whose small, clean hands didn’t know how to touch anything other than folders and lay still and useless on the blanket every night.

‘I . . . I think,’ I started; but then I lost control. ‘Yes, I did it! And I’m going to do more. A woman should have much more still to do in her life, don’t you agree?’

In a few quick moves I snatched up the folders from the cash desk and ran out of the door. The wind was even stronger now, whipping the rain down the road. I didn’t throw the folders in the air, or fling them as hard as I could across the pavement. I just let them fall. I watched the colours of Robert’s handwriting blur in the dirty grey of the puddles. I saw him through the rain streaming down the shop window, and I saw the horror in his face.

That night in bed we lay beside each other and I heard him weeping in the dark. Presumably he had both hands over his face and was sobbing into his palms. Before this, I had often wanted to hold him, weeping, in my arms. I’d imagined that tears would establish a wordless understanding between us. But now all I felt was disgust. Here in my bed lay not a man but a little child, and it was making a mess of our freshly washed pillowcases.

The day it happened, we were alone in the shop at around noon. The sun was shining through the front window in flickering shafts of light, settling on display models coated in a fine layer of dust. Apart from the fountain pen in Robert’s hand scratching across the pages of a new folder, it was quiet. I was perched on a fitting stool, sticking price labels on sandals. The shop smelled of leather. I’d never been so conscious of the smell. Everything was steeped in it. Even the silence smelled of leather. Robert was writing. His gestures were calm and absolutely even; they were steeped in boredom and monotony, along with everything else. I leaped up from my stool.