‘No!’ Jack said, standing up and moving towards her. ‘No, you’ve got it wrong.’

Angie held up her hands to warn him from coming any closer. ‘You need to leave.’

He nodded, his face weary with resignation, knowing that there was no point in arguing with Angie when she had made her mind up. ‘I’ll go to Sam’s,’ he said. Sam was his brother and he owned a flat in east London. ‘What will you tell the kids?’

‘I’ll work something out. I want you gone by the end of the day.’

She turned and left, forcing herself to summon a smile and making her way downstairs to check on the children, who were still watching TV, oblivious to the fact that their parents’ marriage had been unravelling a few metres above their heads. An hour later Jack was gone.

She didn’t tell a soul what had happened, not her mother, not her closest friends. She had never been one to air dirty laundry in public but the truth was that she was humiliated. The thought of people knowing that her husband had gone off to some poky flat to flirt with a cheap bimbo instead of coming home to his family mortified her. As the days passed, she kept it to herself, acting as though everything was perfectly fine while inside, she was breaking apart.

But, as angry as she was with Jack for making a fool of her, she still couldn’t let him go. Yet again, she began to rationalise his behaviour and blame herself for overreacting.

After four days, the children were constantly asking where he was, and while it was easy enough to fool the younger two, Indie and Benji weren’t stupid.

‘What’s going on, Mum?’ Indie asked.

‘Nothing for you to worry about,’ she replied, putting an arm around her daughter.

‘Are you and Dad getting divorced?’

‘No, no, nothing like that, please don’t think that. He’s just helping Uncle Sam with something.’

‘Has Dad done something wrong?’ Benji asked.

‘No, Benji, Dad’s done nothing wrong.’

Angie couldn’t bear it any longer. That night she called Jack and told him to come home. He turned up on the doorstep so quickly she almost suspected him of being outside the whole time. She opened the door and let him back into the house.

‘I’m not sure what our future holds yet but we owe it to the children to try to work through this,’ she said firmly, in a tone that brooked no argument. ‘If it happens again, I’m leaving you.’ He nodded his agreement, not even trying to mitigate his behaviour.

After that he did everything he could to make things right, knowing that this time he had almost lost her for good. For her part, she acted normally in front of the children and other people, putting on an almost Oscar winning performance of the happy wife. But behind closed doors she wasn’t ready to forgive him and she was unable to muster any warmth towards him, often giving him the cold shoulder. He didn’t complain once.