On the last night we decided to treat ourselves. We’d leave him asleep in the caravan for an hour while we went to the park club for a drink.

Gin and tonic for Kathryn. I had a Mackeson. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d been out on our own like this. Kathryn’s flowered sundress showed the curve between her breasts, which glowed a little pink; her cheeks were brown from the sun, her lips full with lipstick, her hand rested on my knee. I kissed her there and then, sitting on our squat velvet-covered barstools, the smell of old beer all around us.

The jukebox was playing the oldies, The Miracles, Roy Orbison, things we heard before we were married.

I don’t remember speaking at all, I just remember the kisses she gave me, which were full and open and in front of everybody. We sat there together for over an hour, and I kept buying the drinks; the Mackeson’s dense brown liquid was both savoury and sweet as I glugged it back, and she didn’t say anything to stop me.

As we walked to the caravan we must have been a little drunk, because Kathryn took off her sandals and wandered barefoot in the grass. I watched her as she meandered between the caravans, swinging her sandals by their straps.

‘It’s so cool, Howard,’ she called. ‘You can feel the wet between your toes. You should try it.’

Looking round to check no one was watching, I unstrapped my sandals and joined my wife on the grass. She took my hand as we walked together back to our caravan. Kathryn joined in with some Diana Ross song that was drifting across the site.

‘Why did you marry me, Kathryn?’ I asked.

She stopped singing.

‘What sort of a question is that?’

I looked into her face. Her skin had taken so much sun that her teeth seemed to glow white in the darkness. At that moment, she looked like a new, exotic Kathryn. I waited for her answer.

Eventually she squeezed my forearm. ‘Because I wanted to,’ she whispered. Then she added, ‘And you asked me.’

‘I asked you?’ I searched her face, but she was staring in the direction of our caravan, and her mouth had fallen into an open ‘O’. She dropped her sandals on the grass and pointed frantically towards our plot.

‘The bloody door’s open,’ she shouted. It was the first time I’d heard her swear.

We ran to the caravan. There was nothing in his bed, and he wasn’t in ours. Kathryn leant out of the door, her knuckles white on the frame, and called into the night.

‘Robert! Robert! Where are you?’

I had to stop her because lights were going on in the other caravans.

‘I’ll never forgive myself, Howard, never,’ she said, but I knew she meant that she would never forgive me.

Then I noticed that the sign on the bathroom door read ‘engaged’. ‘Kathryn,’ I called, ‘he’s in here.’