‘I see the way they leap apart when they hear footsteps upstairs, like thieves caught in the act. So they do feel guilt. They do feel what they are doing is wrong. Aha! They do have shame.

‘I move back to the window to watch them tidy up; I observe the way she leans over to blow out the candles, my candles; the way he creeps up and down the stairs checking on the kids. I see her go over to her coat to get out her cigarettes and I move quickly then; she’s coming outside. I spin the scissors in my fingers like I’m ready for the shoot-out and slip back into the bushes behind the bench as she unlocks the back door. She stands there to light up, like she has done a hundred times before. She’s humming. She’s happy. She probably never gives the monster in the psychiatric unit a thought. She steps out on to the gravel and wanders towards me, looking up into the night where the lights from a plane flicker in the foggy orange London sky. She stops a couple of feet in front of me and sits on the bench, back to me, and smokes with the nonchalance of a film star. She is true class, even alone. She is so close I can smell her; I can see the curls of hair at the back of her neck. I miss her, I want to reach out and touch her. Or ram the scissors into the softness of that skin.

‘I do neither. She goes back inside and I know she is going to sleep in my bed.

‘I wait for hours. I wait until the house is dark, all lights turned off, all doors locked, all boilers stopped, all embers dying. Even the distant traffic has ceased; London is at last asleep. Then I open the shed door and find the back door key in the jar and let myself into my own house. I’m not thinking anything. I just want to be in my own home and pretend for a moment that nothing has changed.