“Okay,” she said. “Why don’t you make a reservation?”

She hadn’t not told him, she thought after he had hung up. It just wasn’t the sort of thing she would tell him over the telephone. She would tell him when he came home tonight. Or, at worst, she would tell him when they were at the restaurant.

Except that she didn’t tell him when he came home for the simple reason that he didn’t come home. He had been about to leave when a manager on one of the projects he was working on had called him with a minor detail in a text he needed to review, which led to a further minor detail, which led to yet another minor detail, adding up in the end to an extra two hours at the office, with the result that he met her not at home but at the restaurant, tired, tense, and in need of a little indulgence. She did not tell him over the vitello tonnato, which he had ordered for her in advance, knowing that it was her favorite entrée, because his face was beginning to relax and she wanted to see it more so; she did not tell him over the evening’s special of wood pigeon with house-made wild-boar sausage and fresh porcini mushrooms (for him) and the spaghetti alla puttanesca (for her), because she did not want to spoil his enjoyment of the pigeon; she did not tell him over the tiramisu, which he liked her to order so that he could steal half, and the zuppa inglese, which he added for himself on an impulse, because he was too deeply involved in explaining to her an elaborate practical joke involving telephones and Scotch tape that he and his cubicle mate had played on their archenemies in the next cubicle; she did not tell him over the coffee (for both of them) and grappa (for him), because by that stage she could not bear to. She would tell him, she thought, the next night.

Except that the next night was Tuesday night which was his squash night with his friend Cheng, who was breaking up with his girlfriend and wanted to go to the pub afterwards, where he uncharacteristically drank so very much too much that Matthew ended up escorting him home to Wandsworth in a taxi (a taxi fare to Wand-sworth!). And on Wednesday, they had opera tickets (opera tickets!) with a college friend of Matthew’s and his wife, and on Thursday Emma had her book group, who were discussing a new biography of Marie Antoinette and remarked that Emma seemed unusually quiet on the subject, which she attributed to stress at work and a headache; and, before she knew it, it was the rain-soaked, thunderous evening before the day when she and Matthew were to go fridge shopping, and she had not yet once mentioned to him that at the beginning of the week, she had spent an outrageous sum of money on a pair of completely ridiculous shoes.