‘I don’t remember anything,’ she said. ‘That’s what I’m telling you. I had a drink, waiting for you in the kitchen. I was talking with Kelly who’d been in selling in the back room. I don’t know what happened then. I vaguely remember wakening in the room and some guy on top of me, his tongue down my throat. I pushed him off and told him I was already with someone. We got up and came out of the room and that’s where I met you.’

‘You expect me to believe that.’

Karen straightened. ‘I don’t care whether you believe it or not,’ she said. ‘It’s the truth.’

‘Being drunk doesn’t change your personality,’ Tony said, annoyed at himself, even as he spoke, for his priggishness, yet unable to back down. ‘It just brings out the worst elements of what’s already there.’

‘I wasn’t drunk,’ Karen said. ‘Or if I was, they must have had really strong wine. I’ve the headache from hell today.’

‘Is that looking for sympathy?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know what happened,’ she said. ‘I’m really, really sorry. But I didn’t do it on purpose.’

‘I hate it when I accidentally fall into bed with someone,’ Tony replied, pettily. He finished pressing his trousers and pulled them on, buttoning them up in front of her. She watched him, exasperated, and finally stood.

‘I thought you’d trust me,’ she said. ‘I didn’t cheat on you. I don’t know what happened last night, but it wasn’t me who did that. Anyone who knows me well enough would know that to be true.’

‘Maybe that person isn’t me, then,’ Tony said.

‘I’m beginning to think that,’ Karen said.

He watched her walk out the door, desperately searching for something to say that would both stop her leaving and express just how deeply he was hurt. In the end, he could only manage, ‘That’s fine. Walk away.’

But she was already gone.

He endured the Open Day morning, despite the foulness of his mood. He stood with three of his colleagues while one group of parents after another processed past, regarding them as one might animals in a zoo, some smiling or nodding in acknowledgement, some averting their gaze so as not to make eye contact. Or so it seemed to him. There was a hiatus between twelve and one to allow staff and those pupils who had volunteered to come along and help an opportunity to get some lunch.

Tony followed the rest of his department to the canteen, where sandwiches and tea had been provided. The teachers sat together at two tables near the top of the room, nearest the food, and watched the line of students file past to get some lunch.

‘Would you send a bairn out dressed like tha’on?’ one of the technology teachers commented.