What on earth does Veronica have to be busy about? he wonders. Other than shopping and preparing dinner parties she doesn’t actually do anything.

‘I have some questions for you, actually. I only hope you have the answers.’

The calm of a moment ago leaves in an instant and he suddenly feels himself seized by a panic that not even booze or pills can take away. He reaches for the familiar solidity of the table next to him. The room seems pixelated and hazy like the Rubik’s cubes he used to play with as a young teen to pass the time while he hung his head out of his bedroom window in the hope that his mother would not smell the smoke from illicit Marlboro Lights.

‘So a gentleman phoned just now asking for a Mr Fanshawe-Drew. I explained that Fanshawe-Drew was my name, not yours, and the gentleman seemed surprised. He was calling about unpaid credit card debts. It appears you have taken out a credit card using another name.’

‘Not another name, darling. Your name. Just as you have credit cards in my name.’

‘Men do not refer to themselves by their wives’ names unless they are trying to hide something,’ Veronica replies, stiffly. ‘I wondered how many other names you have been using so I went into the filing cabinet in your study.’

‘That’s private! You don’t have the key!’

‘It is possible to unlock almost anything with a nail file and a bobby pin. What is going on, Christopher?’ Her face is beseeching now.

‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ he says, desperately playing for time.

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Aren’t you now?’ She turns her back and plucks a piece of paper from the kitchen counter. ‘How do you explain this?’

He takes the paper from her and buzzes his pockets for his reading glasses though he can see well enough already to know that she has found his change of name certificate.

‘That was forever ago,’ he says, and it was, actually, or as forever ago as matters. There is a before and after in Cullen’s life that Veronica doesn’t know about, must never know about, particularly now, when they are both on the cusp of parenthood.

‘I feel I don’t know you any more. I always assumed Cullen was your father’s name and after the divorce your mother reverted to Salter. Now there’s this Christopher Mulholland person. So, who are you? Who am I having a baby with exactly?’