‘You like her?’ she asked, as they made their way to the lift. This was the first time she had properly asked Leo about Michael’s girlfriend. She hadn’t thought it appropriate to question the boys and they hadn’t volunteered much, although Rex – who liked a good gossip – had dropped the odd hint that he found it uncomfortable being around Anezka and his father in those months before he’d gone to Australia, because she was very physical and cuddled and kissed Michael openly.

‘Yeah, she’s OK. But she’s closer to my generation than his, Mum. It’s kind of weird.’

Romy pressed the lift button, avoiding the censure in her son’s eyes. Neither of them could understand why she had left their father after a lifetime together. Soon after they had told the boys about the split, Rex had said, ‘I don’t get what the problem is, Mum. You and Dad never seem to argue.’

‘That’s because we never talk,’ she’d replied.

He’d thought about this. ‘You used to.’

‘Not recently,’ she said, holding back further comment.

He’d frowned. ‘Has something happened, Mum?’

‘No, nothing,’ she’d insisted, ashamed of her lie.

Rex had nodded slowly, seeming to believe her. ‘I remember you and Dad laughing together a lot when I was a kid … but, yeah, maybe not so much recently, I guess.’

Romy had realized that laughing with Michael seemed a distant memory now. Not since the letter, certainly – which she refused to mention to her sons – but before that too. Nor could she explain the intricacies of a long marriage, the grey area where dissatisfaction and resentment run alongside friendship and passion in the early days, but the steady contentment many of her friends had grown to feel with their spouse as they became older would now never take hold in Romy and Michael’s relationship.

‘I’ll see how it goes with Anezka,’ she said now. ‘If I feel I’m in the way …’

But her son grabbed her hand. ‘Mum, I’m telling you, I can’t do this on my own. I don’t think Anezka will be great in a situation like this. She might require as much support as Dad.’ He stared at her. ‘I need you … Please, please don’t go.’

As the doors of the lift opened on the intensive-care floor, Romy experienced an unpleasant thud of premonition and a sick feeling in her stomach, as if a large hand were reaching out to clamp her and drag her unceremoniously away from her promising new life.

13