I’d thought he was going to deny it. He shifted on the bed.

‘It would hardly have been surprising – we’d been together for fifteen-odd years, of course he was going to fancy other people. I said as much to him.’

I remembered that Karl had let out this long breath that he appeared to have been holding for quite some time. Fifteen-odd years, perhaps. His shoulders slumped with the relief.

‘What did he say?’ she asks, she’s leaning forward on the edge of her seat.

‘He said, “Yes, I do.” And I was grateful for his honesty. I smiled. “That’s OK,” I said. And he leant forward and clutched both my hands in his. “My God! You’re amazing, I really love you, you know that.” And I did know that. It was what he said next that really took me by surprise. “Connie, I know you’ve always held a torch for Jonathan Hapgood.”’

I’m still stunned when I think of the nerve he had; at the time it seemed so left-field. It was a subject we’d always tiptoed around, never broached. But now Karl was telling me that he had always known there was some small part of me that he would never possess. And I suppose he was right. In the garden of our marriage, was there a body buried? I mean, we’d sown a lawn over it, grown flowers, put up a slide and hung washing on the line, but was there a body down there? In the garden of most marriages, aren’t there bodies? Isn’t that what fertilizes the soil – the past? I remembered how Karl had once found an email exchange between Johnny and myself; it wasn’t explicit, but there was a tone to it which had been intimate – old lovers who, yes, still held torches and swung them about every now and then in cyberspace. But that was all.

‘Had you talked about Jonathan Hapgood?’ she asks.

‘Barely. Wait for it, because then he said, “I think you should get in touch with him. Why don’t you meet up with him and see whether those feelings are still there?”’

Dr. Robinson crosses those strong legs of hers and leans forward, frowning, her chin cupped in her hand.

‘I was astonished. “Hang on, Karl,” I said, “this is dangerous. What exactly are you saying? Are we talking about having an open relationship?” He shrugged. “I suppose we are,” he said. We stared at each other. There we were, perched on the bed sipping coffee, talking about having sex with other people like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.’