The restaurant turns out to be a wonderful seafood place, which I’d normally love. However, as it stands, I am horribly aware of going through the motions, as if it’s a normal birthday and everything’s fine; that we are happy and still very much in love. I pretend to enjoy the astronomically priced crustaceans as we fiddle away with all the little tools – the pliers and tweezers and all that pale flesh. I see Andy’s face blanch when he glimpses the bill.

Later – after the babysitter’s gone, obviously – he’s all over me, kissing and touching and madly complimentary about my body, my face, the beautiful embroidered silky slip I’m wearing (my birthday present from Penny). It’s hard to believe that, until all this stuff happened, he seemed to regard having sex with me as on a par with the community litter pick-up (which we, being Good Citizens, always take part in). Actually, I used to wonder if he preferred the litter pick-up to doing it with me. He always seemed pleased when Mr Singh, the organiser, handed out the grabber sticks, to the point where I wondered if we should try to incorporate one in our sex life.

But not any more, obviously. We actually do it tonight, for the first time since the Estelle revelations; there’s no hint of sciatica/lumbago or any mutterings that he has an early start in the morning. Whilst I feel a little weird and disconnected, it’s at least reassuring that we can still make it happen, and that it doesn’t feel completely abhorrent, which perhaps hints that there may be a future for us after all.

I still love him, I suppose. It’s infuriating, really, how you can’t turn off your feelings for someone just because they’ve been to bed with someone else. It’s all still there, bubbling away beneath the surface layer of fury and hurt: my admiration for his commitment at work, and the way he is as a father – as caring and kind as I’d known he would be. I wish I could just hate him, but it’s not as simple as that. He’s still the man I fell in love with all those years ago, the one I’ve grown with, and the only person I had ever wanted to have children with. Plus, I suppose I still find him attractive, despite everything. He made a mistake and – God, how grown-up do I sound? – he’s contrite, and I think we can get over it. While I’ve been tempted to check his phone numerous times, I’ve managed not to so far.

I mean, I have to be able to trust him again, don’t I? Or what’s the point?

Chapter Eight

Three weeks later: Wednesday, March 20