After a full week of rain it has finally stopped. I have a day off work today. Dental appointment, plus I fancied a few hours to myself.

Our house is empty and blissfully quiet, and as I glance out of the kitchen window, I notice how beautiful the garden looks. Our crocuses are blooming, purple and white with orangey centres, and the border at the bottom is filled with daffodils. I love our garden. It’s a little wild and untamed but things seem to pop up just where you’d want them to be. Izzy has her own little plot, where she’s tending winter pansies in every imaginable colour. After I’ve picked her up from school we potter about in the late afternoon sunshine, not talking much, just happy working side by side.

My low-level worrying hasn’t gone away, and I still wake up in the night from time to time, my heart hammering in panic. However, that had been happening way before I found out about Estelle, and with a start, I realise I am beginning to feel almost normal again. At least, I can safely assume I am no longer on the brink of falling apart.

I used to be of the opinion that, if someone had an affair, that was the marriage over, end of story. And now I’m not sure that’s the case. For one thing, it’s scary, the idea of being on my own at fifty-three. I don’t mean not having someone to drag the wheelie bins out, or to build flatpack. I don’t even mean financially (however tricky, I’m sure we would figure things out somehow). It’s more the idea of suddenly being single – alone – for the first time since I was twenty-seven years old. A tiny part of me thinks that might be thrilling, and that it might have the effect of actually making me twenty-seven again – vibrant, full of life and ambition, smooth of face and pert of arse, with adventures to be had. So, yes, that part seems alluring. But mostly, when I think of starting over as a single woman, I feel deeply sad and frankly terrified. I know it’s the life stage when we’re supposed to ‘give fewer fucks’; to feel emboldened and no longer care what anyone thinks. But is it really? If that’s meant to be the natural way of things, then there must have been some kind of malfunction because that hasn’t happened to me at all.

That evening, after Andy has gone to bed, I sit outside on the back step, trying to hold on to the calmness I felt earlier when I was out in the garden with Izzy. In a small notebook I write a list titled ‘reasons to split’:

Because I feel I should.

Not sure I can ever trust him again.

To punish him.

That’s all I can dredge up.