‘I’m doin’ a Hen Night next week,’ said Gail. ‘Strip tease.’

‘I thought this was Country and Western?’

‘It is. He’s gonna wear a bandanna.’

‘What about the banana? Doesn’t look much from here.’

‘It’s not the size they’re after, it’s the laugh.’

I looked at the stage. Howlin’ Dog House Don was holding his microphone stand at arm’s length and crooning, ‘Is it really you oo oo?’

‘Better get ready,’ said Gail. ‘When he’s finished this one they’ll be queueing at the bar faster than an outing of nuns at the true cross.’

She had mixed a washing-up bowl full of Dolly Parton on Ice, this month’s special. I began to line up the glasses and the tiny plastic bosoms that were replacing our cocktail umbrellas.

‘Come out for a meal after work,’ said Gail. ‘No strings. I’m finishing at midnight, I’ll finish you too if you fancy it.’

That was how I ended up in front of a Spaghetti Carbonara at Magic Pete’s.

Gail was drunk. She was so drunk that when her false eyelash fell into her soup she told the waiter it was a centipede.

‘I got something to tell you kiddo,’ she said leaning down at me the way a zoo keeper drops a fish at a penguin. ‘Want it?’

There was nothing else to have. Magic Pete’s was an all-night drinking club, low on amenity, high on booze. It was Gail’s revelation or find 50p for the juke box. I didn’t have 50p.

‘You made a mistake.’

In cartoon land this is where a saw comes up through the floor and teeths a neat hole round Bugs Bunny’s chair. What does she mean ‘I made a mistake’?

‘If you mean about us Gail, I couldn’t …’

She interrupted me. ‘I mean about you and Louise.’

She could hardly get the words out. She had her mouth propped on her fists and her elbows propped on the table. She kept trying to reach for my hand and falling sideways into the ice-bucket.

‘You shouldn’t have run out on her.’

Run out on her? That doesn’t sound like the heroics I’d had in mind. Hadn’t I sacrificed myself for her? Offered my life for her life?

‘She wasn’t a child.’

Yes she was. My child. My baby. The tender thing I wanted to protect.

‘You didn’t give her a chance to say what she wanted. You left.’

I had to leave. She would have died for my sake. Wasn’t it better for me to live a half life for her sake?

‘What’s the matter?’ slurred Gail. ‘Cat got your tongue?’

Not the cat, the worm of doubt. Who do I think I am? Sir Launcelot? Louise is a Pre-Raphaelite beauty but that doesn’t make me a mediaeval knight. Nevertheless I desperately wanted to be right.

We staggered out of Magic Pete’s towards Gail’s car. I wasn’t drunk but supporting Gail was a staggering sort of business. She was like a left-over jelly at a children’s party. She decided she was coming home with me even if I had to sleep in the armchair. Mile by mile she reviewed my mistakes. I began to wish that I’d done as I first intended and kept back some of my story. There was no stopping her now. She was a three-ton truck on a slope.