‘This stuff with Fairfax. With this body she reckons you saw. When she told me there were a sparkle about her. Some life. It were nice to see. She can be such a one with her nerves. She won’t cross water, did you know that? Won’t walk over a stream and can only go over one on the bus with her eyes closed and her hand gripping mine down to the bone. She jumps at every noise. Fairfax, God rest him – he wanted to interview her loads over the years but was frightened to ask in case she got herself in a tizzy about it. That’s what she does. She’s a bag of nerves. But she were different last night, did you not notice? Talking about things that normally would have turned her stomach. I thought it would take her out of herself. But we didn’t even get through a day of it and she’s on her backside in the street.’

He pulled his cap from his pocket. Twisted it like he was killing an eel. Ran a hand back over his head and managed to raise his head enough to look me in the eye.

‘That’ll be the end of it, yes?’

My breath came out in a rush. There may have been laughter in it. I was disgusted with him. How could he make a decision like that? Just tell me that he’d made up his mind and his wife could no longer come out to play. It felt like I’d been pressed into the pages of a book written a hundred years before. I glared at him, silently repeating my vows to myself – I would never be told what to do. I would never be controlled. I would never be shackled by somebody who did not love my independence as much as they loved the idea of us being together. It was the way I felt a lot back then. For all my cleverness I never really opened my mind or my ears to anything other than the bits of a sentence that stood out. I just heard John being some patriarch; some brute of a husband who found his wife weak. Looking back I wish I’d said something more comforting. He’d had a shock. He knew his wife better than I did. And by God he loved her. I was upset for myself – upset that he’d said that we were done.

‘That’s her decision to make,’ I snapped. ‘She was enjoying herself. She’s really very clever and I don’t know people like she does. I can’t do this on my own.’

‘You shouldn’t be doing it at all. Fairfax had an accident and there was no bloody body.’ He didn’t raise his voice but I could see he was getting cross.