I can’t tell if she’s making a crack about our son or not. Even after loving this woman for four decades, I still don’t often know what’s really going on inside her beautiful head.

My lovely wife would be quick to acknowledge she isn’t easy to live with. She has rules for the children, rules for me: breakfast and dinner together, always. No shorts when we go out to dinner, even in Greece, even in August. Three peremptory strikes against each family member’s friends, no questions asked.

Honesty, no matter what.

Yes, that dress makes you look fat.

No, I don’t think you deserve to be on the school team.

The kids rebel on occasion. Sometimes I even join them. But Millie holds firm.

She’s giving us structure. She’s making us safe.

She’s teaching us discipline. She’s teaching us the power of family.

She has her issues, certainly. I’m the first to admit her habit of breaking into other people’s houses is less than ideal. But she never takes anything they’ll miss. No one ever knows she’s been there. For some reason it soothes her soul – maybe because it reminds her not all families are as dysfunctional as the one in which she grew up. If it keeps her sane, what’s the harm?

The truth is I don’t care what she does, within reason: I’d never leave her. Not just because I love her, or because I love my children, although both those things are true.

I won’t leave because I can’t.

Millie is my obsession.

My dance with the dark.

I’ve loved her since we were infants in our prams. I never thought of her as a girl – she was just Millie, wild and fearless, tougher and braver than any of the boys. I took on all-comers to defend her right to run with us, frequently returning home with bruised knuckles and a bloody nose. I assumed we’d grow up and get married one day, because why wouldn’t we? I loved her far more than she loved me, but there’s always a lover and a lovee in any relationship. We complemented each other perfectly. Of course we’d get married.

The first time I proposed to her, the summer we turned eighteen, she laughed in my face.

In retrospect I can see I was suffering from some sort of romantic white knight syndrome. Millie made it clear she considered herself neither vulnerable nor in need of saving. As if to prove her point, I responded to my rejection with maturity and calm: I gave up my place at university and ran off to join the army.

I didn’t see her again for three years, not till the summer my mother died and I was given compassionate leave to return home for the funeral.