By asking him about his book, she was embarking upon one of her most familiar offensives. He had recognised it immediately. She was exercising her right, now that she had at long last finished her own work, to nag him about his; and if he refused to be nagged, if he was grumpy about it, then she would exercise her right to intervene in that very grumpiness, to try and shame him out of it, the way he had tried to shame her out of her own procrastination. Seeing this, he had refused to answer, and they had turned back and retraced their steps in silence, each dwelling on the hurt they had sustained, a terrible pressure growing between them. As soon as they reached the flat, she had gone straight to the bathroom for a handful of tissues and blown her nose. Then, still clutching the tissues as if they were a crumpled flower, she had appeared in the living room doorway and said, ‘Why can’t you just be happy for me?’

Why not indeed? Hadn’t he been begging her for months, for years, to finish the book? It was natural for her to expect him to be glad when it finally happened. But her book – the need for her to finish her book – had been a mainstay of almost their whole relationship, a project that they were in some sense engaged to execute together. Wasn’t it also natural for him to feel bereft?

Too late, he’d said, ‘Why don’t we go out for dinner? To celebrate?’

‘I can’t,’ she’d said, with furious satisfaction.

‘Why not?’ he’d asked, stupidly, then knew. What else would she be doing? ‘You’re going to see Caro. Of course you are.’

And then he felt sorry – foolish, even – for not making more of a fuss, because he knew that Caro was going to do exactly that, especially if she learned that David had failed to rise to the occasion. He pictured the two women, without him, lifting giddy glasses of champagne, toasting his absence as much as Claire’s success.

‘Cancel,’ he’d said, ‘cancel and come with me.’

But he knew it was pointless, and this sense of pointlessness made its way into his voice, enfeebling what should have been a heartfelt request, so that Claire was perhaps justified in looking at him as scornfully as she did, and saying, he thought quite nastily, ‘Why would I want to do that?’

She’d left, early, in her clumpy boots and a shirt he’d never seen before, the same colour as the notebook’s cover. He’d almost commented on the match, then caught himself, then caught himself again – what did it matter? She’d never hidden the notebook’s existence from him. She knew he’d seen it in her hands. But by then it had been too late: the latch had fallen behind her, the flat had begun to hum with emptiness, and he’d gone to the bed and stripped it as if he had caught her with someone else.