She didn’t have any proof. She hadn’t walked in on her partner shagging someone on her kitchen table. Yet in her mind she had already convicted him. It was like a moment of revelation. She sat there, staring at the case notes, as the words blurred in front of her eyes, and considered the prospect that her entire marriage had been a lie.

And that’s how Alan had found her, when he appeared at her back door asking to borrow some milk. ‘Sorry to trouble you, Angie, I’m doing the invoicing and I’m gasping for a cuppa.’

‘No problem,’ she said, forcing a smile and beckoning him inside as she went to the fridge to grab a bottle. At the time, all she could think about was how quickly she could get rid of him.

‘How are you?’

They were three simple words, a question that she answered every day without a second thought. Yet suddenly they were loaded with meaning and something gave way inside her until, before she knew it, she was crying. And then she was sobbing – partly for that poor woman whose bridesmaid-shagging fiancé had ruined her life but mostly for herself.

She couldn’t remember the last time she had cried but once she started, she couldn’t stop. Years of anxiety, frustration, anguish and guilt poured out of her until she was shaking with the violence of her tears. Poor Alan hadn’t known what on earth to do with her. Really, he’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Perhaps if he’d popped by another day, another time, things might have turned out completely different.

He walked carefully up to her, like she was a wild, unpredictable horse, and prised the milk bottle from her tightly clenched hand, placing it gently on the kitchen surface. Then he put the kettle on, made her a cup of tea and waited until she had calmed down.

‘Oh, Alan, I’m so sorry,’ she said when she was finally able to speak again, frantically wiping away her tears in embarrassment.

‘You’ve nothing to be sorry about. Do you want to talk about it?’

‘No, honestly, I’m fine.’

‘Are you sure? A problem shared is a problem halved, you know.’

She looked at him then, really looked at him. He was such a nice man. Jack was funny, charming, charismatic, but was he a nice man? She wasn’t sure anymore.

‘I think I’m going mad, Alan,’ she told him.

‘Tell me,’ he urged.

And so she did. She told him everything – about Jack, her suspicions, the pink thong. And then about how she felt like a failure, how her children loved their father more than her and she hated it but didn’t know how to make it better. And, finally, how she hated herself. As she talked, he sat beside her and listened, and when she was finished, he put his arm around her and held her close to him for a long time. She leaned into him and a feeling crept over her, one that she hadn’t felt in years. She realised what it was. She felt safe.