And say what? Tell her to back off, find her own man? Why would that have any effect?

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe. Not yet. She told me the other day that she was seeing someone, but she didn’t want to tell us yet because he’s still married. He’s in the process of getting a divorce, apparently, but she didn’t think we’d approve.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘She wouldn’t say.’

‘Or we could talk to Sean,’ Rowan said.

‘No. Not that. I’ve tried already, anyway.’

‘Maybe he’ll come to his senses. Give him a little bit of time.’

I shook my head. ‘It’s too late for that. I’ll go mad if I don’t do something; I just don’t want to make the wrong call.’ I looked pointedly at Rowan. ‘Not again.’

She gave me a little nod of understanding; she knew who I was referring to.

‘But that was different,’ she said softly. ‘With Henry.’

‘Was it?’

Henry, Rowan’s first husband. My mind drifted back to a time when the shoe had been on the other foot, the part I had played in the end of her first marriage. Would I have wanted to know, too, if I had been in her shoes?

The question brought me up short. I was in her shoes. It was my turn now.

I stirred my coffee slowly.

Ten years ago – almost to the day – Rowan and I had sat drinking coffee in the sitting room of my small end-of-terrace house in north London. The Sunday roast finished, dishes washed, Sean and Henry dispatched to the park with Lucy wobbling along on the new bike she’d received for her sixth birthday, shiny pink streamers trailing from the handgrips. Talking about school catchment areas and nurseries, Rowan announcing that she had come off the pill and was taking folic acid instead. And I had hesitated, and changed my mind, changed it again, put down my coffee and come out with seven words that would end up changing the course of her life.

I think Henry might be playing around.

I had heard it on very good authority that he was cheating on Rowan and had grappled with that knowledge for weeks as I tried to decide whether to tell her. Trying to work out what to do for the best, to do what was right – however hard that might be. Rowan, oblivious, talking about trying for their first child. What was I supposed to do with the information that I had? Stay quiet while everyone talked about it behind her back? Let her find out for herself? Watch her being taken for a ride by the man she’d married? Sean had counselled caution, but in the end I went against his advice and told Rowan what I’d heard. Told her, in good faith, the stories that were doing the rounds about Henry.