‘Oh! I just heard the car.’ I wanted to ask, who were you talking to, but I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t turn into him. ‘You’re so late.’ I trailed after him into the kitchen.

He looked at me in weary bafflement. ‘But you used to be late all the time. Three a.m., one time you came back, in London. Remember?’

‘It’s different. I’m on my own here.’ We were hovering close to the edge, so I turned away, tidying some dishes around the sink.

‘You can go out too,’ he said, taking off his coat. ‘I’m not stopping you.’

I threw a mug into the sink. It didn’t break and when Nick glanced over, I picked it back out again, shaking, as if my hand had slipped. I’d wished it would break. That was why people threw things in arguments. It wasn’t rage. It was the need to show the other person that, however things looked from the outside, something was broken and jagged. ‘I can’t, can I? You have the car, the station’s miles away.’

‘There’s cabs,’ he said mildly, switching on the TV. I hated him at that moment. Saying there’s cabs was like saying, there’s a key, when you’re locked up inside a cell and it’s hanging on the wall outside. It was too expensive to get a cab, they often wouldn’t come out to us, or couldn’t find us, and anyway, where would I go? I had no friends round here. I was still too ashamed to face any work people, and too worried my other friends would see right through me – Suzi with her cottage and rural idyll and giving up work. I couldn’t admit I had been wrong about all of it.

I decided to try again. I had to make the effort, heal the gaping wound between us, the one I had opened. ‘Did you see we have a new neighbour?’ I asked, my voice forced into cheeriness.

‘Oh. Yeah.’ He was looking in the fridge now, though I’d spent hours making a lasagne. He asked me to cook, left me recipes, and then he stood and shovelled down cheese singles. ‘Strange someone wanted to live here.’

‘Apart from us, you mean?’ It came out tartly, and he gave me that weary look again. There was a pause, and I reset to pleasant breezy wife. ‘It’s a lady on her own. She seemed nice. Bit posh.’

He shut the fridge. ‘Is dinner almost ready? I’ll go in the music room if not, I want to lay down some tracks.’