‘But you said it’s iconic,’ he insists. ‘It’s the piece used in the famous adverts, you told me.’ My God, he’s started referring to a garment as a ‘piece’. Does that mean he’s actually been listening to me? ‘And if this shop has one,’ he adds, ‘and it’s the only one you’ve been offered, then surely it’s important to go and get it?’

‘Honestly, it doesn’t matter. We can do without it. If I’d been desperate I’d have asked Nick, but I decided it was far too big a trip—’

‘Just give me the address,’ he cuts in.

‘No!’

‘Why not?’ He frowns at me, clearly exasperated.

‘Because …’ I exhale. ‘Look, I know what you’re doing here.’

‘I’m not trying to do anything,’ he protests. ‘I mean, I’m just trying to help.’

I look at him, holding back from what I really want to say, and what we both know; that he is trying to make it up to me. He wants – well, I don’t know what he wants exactly. Perhaps he just wants to make things right between us. We’re still Spencer and Izzy’s parents, after all; still a team, of sorts. But maybe it’s more than that, and he really thinks we could mend our marriage, and somehow get over everything that’s happened since he went to that conference, over a year ago now.

Could we do that? I might have forgiven him a few months ago. I might have accepted that he’d made a mistake, that he’d lost control of his mind, and his trousers, and that maybe I’d been at fault too; it’s never solely down to one person, after all. But I’m a different person now. Or maybe, like with the lawn mowing, the scrabbling about in the loft for a sleeping bag and now the proposed poncho mission, he just wants to help.

Perhaps he’s not quite so despicable after all.

‘I want to do it,’ he says firmly. ‘I want to go to Grange-over-Sands and fetch your poncho.’

I can’t help smiling. ‘I bet that’s a sentence you never thought you’d say.’

He laughs dryly and shrugs.

‘You’re just trying to be nice,’ I add. ‘You want to please me like … like a dog, running to fetch a stick …’

‘That’s charming,’ he exclaims.

‘You know what I mean,’ I say, reddening now. For the first time since we broke up, I almost feel bad about being mean to him.

‘Are you getting me back,’ he says with a slight smile, ‘for calling you an amphibian?’

‘What?’