I’m not going to lie: I miss the thrill I used to get when she’d come home from one of her extracurricular adventures. We never discussed the specifics of what she did when she was away – we didn’t need to. She’d return with a certain look in her eye: a lightness, like a brand new leaf under the sun. As if whatever fever had consumed her had abated, at least for now. She’d be gentler in bed, and more kind out of it. I miss that Millie.

My phone vibrates on the table, jerking me from my reverie. I glance at the screen, and then flip the phone facedown and cover it with the café menu.

Harper must have called me a dozen times in the past few days. It’s my own stupid fault: I don’t know what I was thinking, letting myself get sucked into – well, I’m not exactly sure what it was. Let’s call it a middle-aged man’s foolish ego trip and leave it at that.

Nothing untoward happened: just a few shopping trips to freshen up my wardrobe, and a bit of encouragement to go back to the gym. And yes, maybe a kiss or two that weren’t quite as platonic as I told myself at the time. I’m not naive: I know where things might have headed if it’d gone on much longer. It doesn’t matter how you slice it: the fact I changed the password on my phone and started deleting Harper’s texts tells its own story.

I can’t believe I was such a bloody idiot. In my defence, I felt sorry for the girl, carrying the weight of keeping the whole KyperLife show on the road while her husband was busy dipping his wick next door, but obviously that’s no excuse. I’m soaked in shame. If I hadn’t spotted Harper draped all over Felix Porter in the street last week, who knows how things would’ve ended.

‘It’s not what you think,’ Harper said, when she phoned me the next day. She’d seen me going into Pizza Express with Millie and the kids: she’d known she’d been rumbled.

‘You don’t owe me an explanation,’ I said.

‘But I want to explain—’

‘Honestly, Harper, it’s fine. My pride may be a little dented,’ I added honestly, ‘but there’s no harm done. What you get up to with Felix Porter is entirely your own affair, although I’m not sure I’d want to tangle with his wife if I were you. She’s a bit of a national treasure. I don’t think it’d do you or your brand any good if it all came out.’

‘But it isn’t,’ she insisted. ‘An affair, I mean—’