‘Who does this help, this endless repetition?’ I ask the therapist.

‘Close your eyes,’ she says. ‘Tell me something good.’

I think of the first time I kissed Simone. How my stomach cramped and the room simmered and my heart beat so heavily it felt like my body was oscillating. And what was it I said? ‘So that’s what lips are for?’ And how she laughed. But it felt revelatory.

And though I haven’t spoken aloud the therapist says, ‘Tell me how the two of you met.’

‘We met through work. Separate companies, but our offices were in the same building. We ran into each other from time to time at lunch. She’d tie her hair up with these beautiful ribbons. I thought it was cute. I’d watch from my office window for a woman with ribbon in her hair.’

I have had my eyes shut for what feels like minutes. When I open them I find that I am no longer driving, but being driven. The car barrelling forward, snaking round the bends of the mountain path of its own accord.

‘Did you blame her for his death?’

‘A part of me did. A part of me hated her. But I could see that she blamed herself more than I ever could, more than I had any right to. It was a hot day. She was exhausted. She closed her eyes for a second.’

‘Did you argue about it?’

‘About culpability? No. We actively avoided discussing it. It simply became “the accident”. But her feelings were clear. To her it was indefensible.’

‘But that wasn’t entirely the case, was it?’ the therapist asks.

I grip the steering wheel until my knuckles turn white. In the dark of my mind I feel brief bursts of light. I remember shaking her awake on the beach towel. I remember the ambulance arriving and pronouncing him dead. I remember the police taking statements at the hospital.

But more than anything I remember waiting desperately for her to ask me where I’d been. Why I’d wandered off and left them both there. Because I could see that she was tired. It haunted me. In the darkness of our bedroom I would lie next to her and try to build the courage to admit that I’d wandered off because I needed a break. She’d been away all week at that stupid conference, and I wanted desperately to spend the day at home. To be rid of him. To be alone with myself. But the longer I remained silent the greater the injustice became, the more apparent my selfishness.

‘When Simone told me she was pregnant I remember thinking: this is it. It was time to rise to the occasion. To become the man she deserved. But I stayed the same and she grew. Throughout the pregnancy she’d chart her progress in the bathroom mirror. I’d brush my teeth and she’d say, “Today he’s the size of a sesame seed.” Then a blueberry, and a few weeks later a grape. She bought him clothes and furnished his room. She stocked talc powder and baby wipes in preparation. “He’s the size of an aubergine,” she’d say, and hand me cases of nappy rash ointment.’