She shook her head, as if breaking our connection. ‘I shouldn’t complain, really. I always wanted to have time to paint. But this place. I’m so worried about the winter. Do you think it will be awful?’

‘It’ll be fine,’ I lied, thinking of the snow that often piled up in the narrow lanes round here. If Suzi was going to get away, she had even less time than she thought. Maybe it was up to me to help matters along a bit.

Suzi

Suzi

It was restful, walking with Nora, my belly jutting out beneath my inadequate coat. She wore her old Barbour jacket, and sensible walking boots, and seemed to have no expectation we would talk as we set off over the frozen field, squelching in mud. I had the stupid dog with me, of course. I usually let him off the lead once we were away from the road. Sometimes he disappeared for ages, or even got lost in the bushes, and I would have to crawl about trying to find him and his pathetic wuffing. I worried what this meant for the baby, if I couldn’t even get my dog to behave.

Every tree was bare, and my breath streamed out in front of me. I was glad of Nora’s silence because my head was a mess. The visit to the doctor, the tension with Nick, your continued absence from my life. What was I going to do? I needed to make a plan, a way to find you, because I couldn’t go on like this. But I was so afraid, of getting caught, of overturning my life, of what Nick would say if he knew. And always, at the bottom of everything, was a coating of guilt and shame. I had done this. I had brought this all on myself.

Our affair took me by surprise. Even after Damian, that awful drunkenness, the smell of piss soaking into my good handbag, I didn’t think I was the kind of person who’d do such a thing. Damian had been an accidental collision, like scraping your car into a gatepost. But you – no matter how much I excused it to myself, no matter how guilty I felt, it was deliberate. I knew exactly what I was doing, and still I walked into it open-eyed, like someone strolling through a doorway.

You told me afterwards that you weren’t even going to have a drink that night. You were tired, bored with the medical conference and the tiny cups of coffee and the plates with the clip alongside for your glass. Seeing me in the hotel bar it was a spilt-second decision, the kind you make between breaths. The kind that changes your life without you even knowing.