She turned up her face, smiles and pleasure, handed me the bag and wrapped herself in the coat. She started walking towards her car, telling me about her day, there was a wallaby that had needed counselling, did I know that the Zoo used them in animal experiments? The Zoo decapitated them alive. It was in the interests of science.

‘But not in the interests of wallabies?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘And why should they suffer? You wouldn’t chop my head off, would you?’

I looked at her appalled. She was joking but it didn’t feel like a joke.

‘Let’s go and get some coffee and a bit of cake.’ I took her arm and we walked away from the carpark towards a homely tea-shoppe that normally served the outflow of the Zoo. It was pleasant when the visitors weren’t there and they weren’t there on that day. The animals must pray for rain.

‘You don’t usually pick me up from work,’ she said.

‘No.’

‘Is there something to celebrate?’

‘No.’

Condensation ran down the windows. Nothing was clear any more.

‘Is it about Louise?’

I nodded, twisting the cake fork between my fingers, pushing my knees against the underside of the dolls’ house table. Nothing was in proportion. My voice seemed too loud, Jacqueline too small, the woman serving doughnuts with mechanical efficiency parked her bosom on the glass counter and threatened to shatter it with mammary power. How she would skittle the chocolate eclairs and with a single plop drown her unwary customers in mock cream. My mother always said I’d come to a sticky end.

‘Are you seeing her?’ Jacqueline’s timid voice.

Irritation from gut to gullet. I wanted to snarl like the dog I am.

‘Of course I’m seeing her. I see her face on every hoarding, on the coins in my pocket. I see her when I look at you. I see her when I don’t look at you.’

I didn’t say any of that, I mumbled something about yes as usual but things had changed. THINGS HAD CHANGED, what an arsehole comment, I had changed things. Things don’t change, they’re not like the seasons moving on a diurnal round. People change things. There are victims of change but not victims of things. Why do I collude in this mis-use of language? I can’t make it easier for Jacqueline however I put it. I can make it a bit easier for me and I suppose that’s what I’m doing.

She said, ‘I thought you’d changed.’

‘I have, that’s the problem, isn’t it?’

‘I thought you’d already changed. You told me you wouldn’t do this again. You told me you wanted a different life. It’s easy to hurt me.’

What she says is true. I did think I could leave with the morning paper and come home for the 6 o’clock news. I hadn’t lied to Jacqueline but it seemed I had been lying to myself.

‘I’m not running around again, Jacqueline.’

‘What are you doing then?’