‘I mean, I didn’t expect him to be skipping about with jollity after fifteen years. But he had never struck me as unhappy.’

She waits. ‘And how did you respond?’

I pause. I think hard, remembering how we had sat side by side in bed, driver and passenger in the marital vehicle. ‘I had to admire him for his honesty. But once those words are spoken, once those doubts are voiced, there is no going back. That is the beginning of the end of something . . .’

‘But it could also be the beginning of something . . .’

I wait for her to expand on this.

She adjusts her hair. ‘You think honesty stands no chance?’

‘Honesty brings chaos.’

‘But relationships change, they are evolving things.’

‘Did you settle for Si Hubby?’

‘Did you settle for Karl?’ Oh, she’s rising to my bait.

‘I think a relationship stands more of a chance if you at least once had passionate feelings for each other. But our generation, who met our partners round about thirty . . . a lot of us have settled. Unlike our parents, we’d already known passion, and therefore we also knew when it wasn’t there. And if you’ve never felt it with this person, I think you’re pretty doomed. Did you and Si Hubby ever have passion?’

‘So you are an advocate of faking it? Carrying on when you know you’re not happy?’

I laugh. I look about the room as if surely my circumstances speak for themselves. She stares at me. In that moment, her eyes are rather beautiful, so alive and blue and full of empathy. But I’m wary; I’ve seen the steel in her, I know she can hurl daggers out of them.

‘I’m just warning you,’ I say quietly. ‘Be prepared. Dib dob.’

‘We’re talking about you and Karl,’ she says. ‘Why do you think he was unhappy?’

I sigh. ‘Why’s anyone unhappy after all those years? Familiarity had bred contempt. He didn’t feel loved any more, emotionally, physically. He needed to be desired. He irritated me. I nagged. Apparently I had emasculated him . . . funny there’s no word for de-feminization . . . Our very language is misogynistic.’

‘Sounds like you took all the blame?’

I smile. ‘I didn’t have all the facts.’

‘Do you think we ever have all the facts?’

I laugh. That’s the first really good question she has asked me. I wouldn’t mind sharing my leaf with her. I look out. We sit in silence for a good minute – marvellous for her if she’s paid by the hour.

‘I think he’s selling the house,’ I tell her. I’m feeling low again. ‘Will you talk to him? Ask him just to wait a while.’

‘To wait for what?’