She’s wearing very clippy-cloppy heels and I have on sturdy, sensible boots—bought when I was imagining being in the advanced stages of pregnancy at this time of the year. I sprint across the road, dodging between the traffic, and have caught up with her in no time at all. Pip said she was young, but she doesn’t look young. She’s so confident and self-assured that I’m sure she’s much older than me if not in actual years then surely in mental age. He has, however, left me for someone whose bottom is bigger than mine and I’m not sure whether that makes me feel better or worse.

She swings into Bite Me!—the sandwich bar that is Jake’s favoured haunt, and joins the lunchtime queue. And I follow, slipping in behind her. We shuffle forward and I watch as she scans the menu board on the wall. I’m so close to her, taking in her hair, her eyes, the shape of her nose, her suit, her heels, the size of her comely bottom, her expensive watch, and yet she has no idea. She has no idea that I’m picking her apart, bit by bit. No idea that I’m watching her. No idea that she is bound to me. That she is part of my life.

‘I’ll have brie and cranberry with salad on granary,’ she says. She looks like a brie and cranberry type of woman. Her voice is cool and confident. And I notice that she doesn’t say please. Perhaps she’s used to other people saying please to her.

‘Yes, darling?’

I blink myself back into the real world when I realise the woman in the white hairnet behind the counter is talking to me.

‘What would you like?’

‘Er…’

I haven’t had time to study the menu. I can’t see it properly from here.

‘Er…’ I have to hurry.

‘We’ve got some nice poached salmon today.’

‘Ham,’ I say. ‘I’ll have ham.’

‘Tomato? Pickle? Salad?’

‘Yes.’

‘All of them?’

‘Tomato.’ It’s great to be so decisive. ‘And salad. Please.’

My lover’s lover is already collecting her sandwich, paying her money, smiling a broad, insincere smile. Turning away.

‘I’m in a rush,’ I say to the sandwich woman.

She gives me a look that says I should have made my bloody mind up quicker then, but she says nothing and cracks on with assembling the portion-controlled amount of ham with a few slender slivers of tomato.