Before going inside he checked his car. Not a mark on it and the tyres were fine. Shit, he was starting to get really paranoid. He needed to snap out of it. What he really wanted was a drink, but it was only eleven o’clock. He licked his lips, felt thirsty. He saw the picture again: Chris taking out his keys, smiling cruelly, etching a deep line in the paintwork from bonnet to boot. He would be able to have a drink at twelve. With lunch. That would be okay: socially acceptable. He licked his lips again.

‘Are you up?’ he called as he went inside.

‘I’m in the bath.’

He went in and said hello. She looked tired, dark bags under her eyes, lines spreading out from the corners. Had they been there before? These signs of ageing only sprang to attention once in a while, like the horrible moments when he noticed that his hairline had retreated a little more, that the lines at the side of his mouth didn’t disappear when he stopped smiling.

‘What are you staring at?’ she asked.

‘Nothing.’

The lines actually made her look more attractive, he thought. When they had first got together she had been a girl. Now she was a woman. He had watched that transformation, had shared in it – had helped it happen, even. No-one else could say that. No-one else knew Kirsty like he did. They were a partnership, a team. All the moments of ecstasy and misery were moments they shared. One day they would be old, and he would be able to look at every line on Kirsty’s face and see a story there, a moment from their life together. More than anything in the world, he wanted that. He wanted them to be together always.

‘You were staring at me,’ she said. ‘What is it? What’s wrong with me?’

He knelt beside the bath and submerged his hands beneath the warm, soapy water, stroking her belly.

‘I was thinking how beautiful you are.’

‘Yeah, right.’

There was a knock at the door.

‘Oh no.’

‘Don’t answer it.’

‘Why?’

‘It might be them,’ she said. ‘Lucy and Chris. Complaining about the noise we’re making.’

He blinked at her, surprised. What had happened to the optimistic Kirsty: the one who was trying to cast the Newtons from her mind? He said, ‘We’re not making any noise.’

‘So? That won’t stop them.’