As we watched the house tied with balloons soar through the sky, I stole a glance at Anna. She was my Ellie. The one true love of my life. Was I her Carl? If I was ever without her, I didn’t know what I’d do. I would be the one sitting in the chair, crying over our photo albums.

‘Adam?’ Anna asked as Carl abandoned his quest to visit the place he and Ellie had dreamed off, instead building a new life for himself.

‘Yeah.’ I pulled her close to me.

‘Do you still believe that if you love someone you should set them free?’

My stomach twisted. What was she asking? Why was she asking?

‘I think…’ I considered my words carefully before I replied. ‘I think… yeah.’ In the swarm of profound words and phrases in my mind, I could only say yeah. No wonder we ate in front of the TV every night.

We went to bed and I watched her sleep because, sad as it was, I still did that.

If you love someone, set them free.

The thought of being without her formed a hard ball in my chest.

Did she want to leave?

I didn’t know how to fix this. I didn’t know how to fix us.

You can’t, the night-time said softly in my ear.

I turned away from it. I turned away from her.

The moon fell steeply through the window onto our wedding photo, which had once made me happy to look at but now made me sad and despairing. Frustrated and angry.

It made me all of those things, and more.

You know what to do, Adam, whispered the darkness once more.

And I did know.

But could I really do it?

Chapter Eighteen

Anna

The alarm shrilled seven o’ clock. It felt like the middle of the night. Adam stumbled over to the window and yanked open the curtains but the dark winter sky outside did nothing to improve my mood. I had a raging headache from too many glasses of Malbec. The bitter taste of garlic lingering in my mouth.

‘I’ll go and make some tea.’ Adam whistled as he pulled on his slippers. His morning cheerfulness infuriated me.

‘Yeah, like tea’s going to help,’ I snapped.

‘Hangover? I told you not to have that last glass.’

It was precisely his telling me this that had led me to defiantly finish the bottle. Half the time I behaved like a rebellious teenager rather than a wife but I couldn’t seem to help it.

‘Yes, well, if you had bought milk like you promised, we wouldn’t have opened a bottle at all.’ I couldn’t seem to let anything go.

‘My fucking fault! I should have known. Everything is.’

‘Not everything.’

Most things.