‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated, until he got up and walked to the door, as if he couldn’t stand to hear her apology one more time.

‘You don’t have to keep saying it, and it doesn’t mean much,’ he said. ‘No words can atone for decades of deceit, Bess. You must know that?’

‘I just don’t know what else to say,’ she admitted.

‘Then don’t say anything,’ he said bluntly, before leaving her alone.

As she let Chutney out into the back garden, Bess spied the birthday card Mario had sent her, discarded on the floor by the bin. Gathering it into her hands, she took it inside and wiped the residue of dirt from the beautiful picture. Leaning against the sink, she read the words aloud: ‘To my smashing wife on her birthday.’

Oh! Tears fogged her vision. It was more than she could bear, to see the words written to her in the days before she had pulled the plug on their life raft and sunk them both. She looked up at the sound of him in the hallway. He stared at the card in her hands.

‘You don’t have to keep that,’ he said.

‘I want to keep it!’ she shot back at him.

Wringing his hands, he drew in a sharp breath. ‘I’m . . . I’m going, Bess.’

‘Going where?’ Her voice faltered as she noticed the sleeping bag in a heap on the hall floor, his keys, his black folder with all his important numbers and notes, and his toiletry bag lying on top. He would shortly gather up and throw on to the passenger seat of his van all these things he needed to live without her . . . Scarcely able to breathe, her knees wobbled beneath her. She shrank against the sink to stop herself from falling, desperately not wanting him to go and yet knowing she had no right to ask him to stay.

‘I could ask Nat if I could go and stay with her for a bit, but if you’d rather I found somewhere else . . . ?’

‘No, no, of course, go to Nat’s – not that I want you to go anywhere,’ she managed, knowing that Natalie would keep an eye on her dad. The temptation was to run at him and throw her arms around his legs, anchor him to this place, this moment and to her, but she knew it would be futile and could not stand the thought of his rejection. The memory of him pulling his hand away from hers as they sat on the sofa was fresh in her mind.

‘It’s for the best, Bess.’ He looked down as Chutney sniffed around his feet. Mario bent and nuzzled the dog, his buddy, nose to nose while stroking his ears.