I considered her. She had no expensive tastes, knew nothing about wine, never wanted to be taken to the opera and had fallen in love with me. I had no money and no morale. It was a marriage made in heaven.

We agreed that we were good for each other whilst sitting in her Mini eating a Chinese take-away. It was a cloudy night so we couldn’t look at the stars and besides, she had to be up for work at half past seven. I don’t think we even slept together that night. It was the next night, freezing cold in November and I’d lit the fire. I’d arranged a few flowers because I like to do that anyway but when it came to getting out the tablecloth and finding the good glasses I couldn’t be bothered. ‘We’re not like that,’ I told myself. ‘What we have is simple and ordinary. That’s why I like it. It’s worth lies in its neatness. No more sprawling life for me. This is container gardening.’

Over the months that followed my mind healed and I no longer moped and groaned over lost love and impossible choices. I had survived shipwreck and I liked my new island with hot and cold running water and regular visits from the milkman. I became an apostle of ordinariness. I lectured my friends on the virtues of the humdrum, praised the gentle bands of my existence and felt that for the first time I had come to know what everyone told me I would know; that passion is for holidays, not homecoming.

My friends were more circumspect than me. They regarded Jacqueline with a wary approval, regarding me as one might a mental patient who has been behaving for a few months. A few months? More like a year. I was rigorous, hard working and … and … what was that word beginning with B?

‘You’re bored,’ my friend said.

I protested with all the fervour of a teetotaller caught glancing at the bottle. I was content. I had settled down.

‘Still having sex?’

‘Not much. It doesn’t matter you know. We do now and then. When we both feel like it. We work hard. We don’t have a lot of time.’

‘Do you look at her and want her? Do you look at her and notice her?’

I lost my temper. Why was my happily settled, happily happy Heidi house coming under fire from a friend who had put up with all my broken hearts without a word of reproach? I struggled in my mind with all kinds of defences. Should I be hurt? Surprised? Should I laugh it off? I wanted to say something cruel to expiate my anger and to justify myself. But it’s difficult with old friends; difficult because it’s so easy. You know one another as well as lovers do and you have had less to pretend about. I poured myself a drink and shrugged.

‘Nothing’s perfect.’

The worm in the bud. So what? Most buds do have worms. You spray, you fuss, you hope the hole won’t be too big and you pray for sunshine. Just let the flower bloom and no-one will notice the ragged edges. I thought that about me and Jacqueline. I was desperate to tend us. I wanted the relationship to work for not very noble reasons; after all it was my last ditch. No more racing for me. She loved me too, yes she did, in her uncomplicated undemanding way. She never bothered me when I said, ‘Don’t bother me,’ and she didn’t cry when I shouted at her. In fact she shouted back. She treated me like a big cat in the Zoo. She was very proud of me.