‘You weren’t.’

He gave a cold, hollow laugh, so unlike his warm, rich regular one. ‘Yes, Lily. I was. I love you with everything I have, and there’s absolutely no way that I would ever, could ever, walk away from you. I know I didn’t go through what you did, and I can’t even pretend to understand that pain, but I’m here now and so are you. And yet you’re still throwing it all away.’

‘Jack, please try to understand.’

‘I’ll never understand, Lily. Never.’ He snatched up his keys from the bowl and walked out of the house without another word. Moments later, I heard the rumble of his pickup engine starting and the tyres crunch through the gravel as he left.

Clive padded over to me, confused by the fact that Jack hadn’t taken him with him. ‘It’s OK, boy. He’ll be back later. I’ll take you out now, how’s that?’

Ordinarily Clive would be bouncing about, dancing on his paws at the prospect of going out but, sensing something was wrong, he was currently walking between me and back to the open doors of the house, clearly looking for Jack.

I went upstairs to close the windows and change into some shorts. Through the open door, I heard the soft, unhappy whine of Clive. I did my best to push all the emotions to the back of my mind and changed my clothes but suddenly the reality of the situation overwhelmed me and, the next thing I knew, I was sitting crumpled against the bed, sobbing like I hadn’t done for years.

Ending our relationship was the right thing, the only thing, to do, but if it was, why did I feel so awful? A warm, furry body rushed in and pressed itself against me and I wrapped my arms around the solidness of the dog and buried my head in his golden fur until all the tears had been spent. I sat up and stroked his now damp coat. Eventually, I pushed myself up and headed downstairs to take him out. Hopefully the fresh air would do us both some good and help me convince myself that I hadn’t just made a huge, horrible mistake.

Two hours of tramping around did not bring the hoped for respite from the anguish and emptiness that resided within me. When we returned to the house, Jack’s truck was still gone, and I wondered where he was but then told myself I had no right to. Jack had come to the house as a lodger and that had worked well until I had allowed emotion to cloud the situation. I’d never intended to spend as much time as I had with Jack, even when we were just friends. He’d been talking about finding his own place a little while before we got together. I realised that both of us had been finding excuses for him not to, but now there was nothing to stop him. Still, that was bound to take a little time and I hoped that, given that space, Jack would forgive me and that we could at least part as friends. Clive scampered into the house and went zooming off to check it out as he always did. Coming back, he had another sniff around and then went to his water bowl and began lapping away. Hanging up the lead, I bent and undid my trainers and pushed them off before heading upstairs to shower and change. As I passed Jack’s room, I noticed the door was ajar, but I was sure it had been closed earlier.