He took his spectacles off, and cleaned them with his handkerchief, breathing gently onto the lenses as he had done since boyhood. He exhaled again, and slowed his breathing down.

Then he widened his smile and closed his eyes.

2

What she wanted was not what he wanted, but he’d tried to want it and believed for a time that he did.

So what?

Yes, we will live together and share a bed. Yes, our lives will be full, and we will be like everyone else opening a bottle of very reasonably priced Bordeaux that’s surprisingly good, sitting on the sofa we’ll soon be paying for month by month because Amy got an interest-free deal that was too good to miss – she went for the more expensive fabric because the children are older, and the dog is well trained. We’ll sit on that sofa, he’d thought – you’ll even be in my arms, Amy, sometimes – and we’ll look at the picture on the wall bought shortly after your sister’s boyfriend had a stroke and needed a new hobby. It was a startlingly awkward picture, because he painted by numbers, copying photographs like a child as people encouraged him to keep using his left arm. It is a good picture, because the little cottage looks like a little cottage, and the sky is an interesting blue – and we know who painted it. Are there better reasons for buying pictures, and putting them on the wall? Probably not.

In fact, Amy would sit on the sofa more than Michael. He would sit in the armchair, where the reading light allowed him to see the words on the page.

‘Michael,’ she would have said – had they married, some day in the future. ‘You know that job you had before I met you – working for the council? You didn’t resign, did you?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Technically you did,’ she would say. ‘But something you said—’

‘What are you asking me?’

He’d put down his book. He’d remove the glasses from his face and hold them still – if people really spoke to one another like that. ‘What are you asking me, Amy?’ The question would sound absurd, because it would have to be accompanied by a turning of the head, and a pause before her inevitable reply.

‘I want the truth.’

‘The truth?’ he’d say.

‘Tell me.’

‘I resigned, love. That’s the truth.’