Will never got to see me at work. He never got to see me at my best. Those moments where I felt like the world was mine for the taking. The confidence of being armed, dangerous and able to take down anyone who got in my way. The immediate post-mission adrenaline high of feeling invincible.

He just got the aftermath. The crash. The exhaustion, the aching body, the not having the energy to speak and just wanting to hold or be held.

‘I understand that your work is hard. My work is hard too. But when I’m home I’m fully here. That’s all I want from you. Your full attention. I’ve never felt more distant to you and it’s because we don’t spend any proper time together. Things need to change. We can’t carry on like this.’

He was saying we were in trouble.

And I hadn’t even noticed.

I remembered a Russian couple we had once known. We’d come home from a sparkling dinner party at their palatial Notting Hill mansion and Will had commented on how they weren’t even playing on the same side. To be fair he’d been right. They weren’t – to the point where she was conspiring with the Platform to have him killed. But I had felt smug. Will and I were together. A team. Us against the world. Our marriage was strong. We were a winning combination.

But it didn’t feel like that now. If felt more like we were on opposing sides. Battling each other, not alongside each other.

I loved him. Of course I did. He was the one, the only one, who’d been able to make me give up the stumble-home single life. He was the one who’d shown me that being in a couple didn’t have to mean the death of fun. It could be more fun. It had been a long time since we had one of those nights where we’d get drunk over dinner, then charge into an irritatingly cool club and dance about with the carefree abandon of people who were getting laid no matter how much of a tit they made of themselves on the dance floor. Will was right. We needed to reclaim some time for us.

It was just that right now, it was near impossible to be thinking of anything outside work.

This was not the time to have a marriage breakdown.

But if I cared enough surely I would drop everything?

I imagined announcing to Hattie and my team: ‘Sorry, guys, I just need to take a little couple-time, disappear off on a mini-break. Good luck and all.’

‘Other people would be considering another baby about now,’ said Will.

‘I . . .’

‘I can tell by the look on your face you clearly haven’t.’

‘I . . . no . . . Well . . . Of course I’ve thought about it. Just not quite yet.’

It hadn’t even occurred to me.