‘You weren’t much older when you married Mam.’

‘Different times, Tommo. Anyway, Cora and myself, we might have our arguments, but we’ve always agreed on the big things.’

They both knew this wasn’t true. For as long as Tom could remember, his parents had squabbled. Mostly the arguments had been about money, but they’d also disagreed about selling the house. Still, he reckoned many people would consider them a happy couple. What that meant, he couldn’t say. Did they share all their problems? Tell each other everything? While he regretted not being more open with Nina, he wasn’t convinced it would have made a difference. He wondered if she’d always been biding her time, waiting for someone like Julian Heaney, someone with showy ambition and a wealthy family, to glance her way.

‘Like I say,’ continued his dad, ‘your mam’s going to need some space, but, all things considered, she hasn’t taken the news too badly.’ He picked up another plate and, for a few seconds, stared at the pattern. ‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘How are you bearing up? You’ve given us the bare bones, and I can see why you wouldn’t want to dwell on it, but are you … are you all right?’

Tom looked at his dad, at his unruly fuzz of grey hair and fraying shirt collar. He couldn’t give an honest answer. It was too personal a tale.

In truth, he felt like he was unravelling. The woman he still loved had humiliated him, and it hurt more than he’d thought possible. After he’d settled the bills and taken his remaining belongings from the cottage, he’d stood inches from the surging traffic and contemplated stepping into it. The following day he’d got wasted on neat Jameson and gone home with a dark-haired marketing student whose name he couldn’t quite recall (hard times, he was discovering, brought out his clichéd side). He couldn’t say any of this to his father.

Neither could he say that he’d tried having negative thoughts about Nina: how she got annoyed when he spent too long talking to people she didn’t know; how she could be resentful of Tess’s success; how squeamish she was about anybody who wasn’t clean and well-kempt. These would sound like petty grievances, the cobbled-together complaints of a bitter man. The thought of Heaney touching her made him feel … oh, he didn’t know how to describe it. A blackness came over him, a sorrow he found hard to shake off.

Tom couldn’t admit to being in a constant state of irritation. Slow walkers angered him, as did dithering customers. He was annoyed by cheery people and whiny people, children and old folks. He wanted to shout at every last one of them.