‘No! We weren’t pretending when we were friends as children or when we started going out with one another. We weren’t pretending when we were at university or travelling, or when we got married or when we had Daniel or when he was alive. We weren’t pretending then! We loved one another. We made one another strong.’ My voice was rising, the words coming from my heart.

‘No,’ Joe said, and his refusal to acknowledge what we both knew to be true made me angry.

‘We were good for one another!’ I cried.

‘It wasn’t real! We were going through the motions…’

I took a step towards him. ‘Joe, how can you say that?’

He moved away from me, banged the bottle down on the table and turned his hands upwards. ‘Because if we’d been even halfway strong, we’d have got through losing Daniel, but we didn’t! Not even close! We fell apart like a… like a fucking deck of cards.’

‘But we were in shock then, we were grieving. We should have had counselling or something but…’ you wouldn’t consider it and I couldn’t see the point. ‘I’ve talked to Fitz and she says we probably both had PTSD.’

He snorted.

‘Don’t!’ I cried. ‘Don’t mock us! We’d been through the worst thing ever and nobody helped us and we didn’t have the emotional tools to cope and—’

‘Excuses! That’s all those are! Platitudes! Lies you’ve told yourself to convince yourself. You were strong, Edie, but I wasn’t. You were the one who went into the shaft after Daniel! You were the one who tried to save him! You were the one who kept your shit together even with your broken hip and your smashed-up leg! You were the one who didn’t totally, completely, fall apart!’ At this last comment he turned to hide his face from me and I was shocked as I realised how ashamed he had felt; how small I’d made him feel. Regret rose inside me; a lump of remorse like acid in my throat. I’d humiliated Joe as a way of assuaging my own pain. I’d destroyed him to shore up my own fragile sense of self. How cruel I’d been. How unkind.

‘Joe… You didn’t… You couldn’t help it. It didn’t mean you were weak.’

‘That’s not what you said at the time.’

‘I didn’t know what I was saying.’

‘I think you did, Edie. I think that was when you were at your most honest.’

‘Our son had died!’ I cried again. ‘I was trying to hurt you, to offload some of my hurt! It was awful and wrong and I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help myself!’