I can tell he wants to go and I feel strangely low. That’s the other thing that happens after you and your partner split up – it’s hard to remember quite where you are in your relationship, which rules you are living by. Then I remember that I have no rules any more. Only it doesn’t feel quite as liberating as it did earlier.

‘When am I coming home?’ I ask him weakly. I really do flit. He stops arranging the pile and pointedly scrunches up the paper bag with unnecessary force. (Although technically, I’m the one who should be scrunching up paper with unspoken anger, not him, but there you go.)

‘Home?’ he says. ‘There is no home.’

He’s prone to melodrama. He can’t just have a headache or wind; he has to have a brain tumour or stomach cancer. I take a step towards him and he moves away from me, his hands held out as if I am going to attack. I am not a violent person. I see how much of a stranger I am to him; he can’t even look at me. The sadness tugs at me; I wonder where all our love went. It must be somewhere – in the bits-and-bobs drawer to the right of the sink, perhaps. One day someone is going to open that drawer and say, Oh! Look what I’ve found! A whole load of love!

As he gets to the door he turns around. He looks about a hundred and two, a weary old coelacanth. ‘Get a fucking grip, Connie,’ he says.

I stand there after he’s gone and feel his anger whirling around me, but it doesn’t get through me. I try to let it permeate me, touch me, but no. Nothing gets through me. I am quite numb.

I wander over to the pile of books and magazines he’s brought. I flick through them and sit down. I separate the books from the magazines. I recognize the cover of one of the exercise books. It is Annie’s diary. On the cover it says Annie Mortensen, aged 9 and a halve. Private. Keep Out. She’d be furious if she knew he’d brought me her diary.