‘Oh yeah,’ he said, suddenly remembering; the rat didn’t know he was cornered. ‘She needed a hand getting the boiler working . . . the ignition had gone . . .’ Blah blah blah bullshit (macho bullshit; it was me who worked boilers).

‘And then you slipped and accidentally your cock fell in her mouth?’

He turned with a twitch. ‘What?’

‘Your phone rang me, you fucking prick.’

We were eye to eye now. He’d been caught out and he knew it. I shook my head slowly and watched it all fall away: my hauteur, his pretence, my respect, his dignity, my control, our deal, our striving for truth and honesty, our intimacy, our family. I felt it all tumbling away from me. I welled up, my voice cracked. ‘How could you?’

For a second or two he fumbled about looking for words that weren’t there and then, oh, how quickly he turned things around. ‘I didn’t think you’d mind,’ he said breezily. ‘This was the agreement, wasn’t it? Why should you mind? I don’t ask you what you get up to . . . you’re fucking that Hapgood guy . . .’

Why should I mind?

‘I thought we weren’t going to talk about it,’ he said. ‘What happens outside the home stays outside the home.’

‘But it’s not outside the home, is it?’ I shouted. ‘She’s my best fucking friend!’

‘I knew it! I knew it!’ he sounded strangely jubilant. ‘Face it, Connie. You were never going to hack it, whoever I chose.’

‘I was. I was! Just not her!’

‘Sssshhh . . . !’ he whispered sharply, patronizingly, glancing at the door, as if I was being hysterical, as if my behaviour was unhinged. ‘Keep your voice down!’

‘Oh now you care about the fucking children . . .’ I was crying now, I couldn’t help myself. Tears of outrage streamed down my face.

‘I don’t understand why you’re so upset,’ he said, faux bafflement on his face, hands raised in innocence.

‘She’s my friend’ was all I could muster. My God, he was going to deny me my own feelings, my rightful pain. I couldn’t keep it together at all; I was twisted and wretched, sobbing and snotting.

Then, cautiously, like he was approaching a rabid dog, he came towards me and sat down on the bed next to me, reaching out a hand to comfort me, or to smother me, for it felt as if he was pressing a pillow over my face.

* * *

I gasp for air. Mental Sita is standing beside me. She has a crush on me. Recently she’s been leaving love tokens about the place, sanitary wear scrawled with messages pushed under my door. You have nice bits of hair. You have nice nose. You have nice bra strap – sophisticated literary erotica. Still, it’s good to know I haven’t lost the old magic.