‘No!’ I said, the word choking in my throat. ‘No, of course not. No, no, no. I love you. Only you. Always you.’

He stood up, not looking at me now. As if he had had enough of looking at me to last him for a while.

‘I love you,’ I said, the tears streaming now, as I spoke our secret married language. ‘I love you, kiddo! Say it, Christian. I love you, kiddo.’

He sighed.

‘I need a shower, Tara,’ he said. ‘I’m really filthy.’

‘Say it, say it, say it.’

I grabbed his arm but he gently took my hand away.

Then he went off to the shower, taking his time, as if there was a lot of dirt to wash off, and then he collected a spare duvet from a cupboard in our bedroom and slowly carried it back to the sofa. And then I understood that he was not going to sleep with me, and we were not going to try to mend what had been smashed, and he was not going to speak to me in our secret married language.

Not tonight.

And perhaps never again.

CHRISTIAN

The night crawled.

I tossed and turned on the sofa, tormented by all the toxic feelings of the one who has been betrayed. Hurt, humiliation and resentment. Funnily enough, resentment above all.

Because I had my own chances to stray. There were plenty of times that I could have been somewhere else with someone else.

We spend our youth looking for love and sex and then we spend our married lives trying to avoid it.

Did Tara think I didn’t have my own chances?

And I suddenly I wanted her to know – do you think I didn’t have my opportunities? There was a woman at the school gates. I thought she was one of the younger mothers but she turned out to be one of the older au pairs. We got chatting – she was friendlier than the average mother at the school gates, less burdened by family chores, less wary of random male contact.

We had a cup of coffee. It turned out she was Spanish, although she was as fair as a Scandinavian from central casting. Friendly, smart. And a knockout, in an understated sort of way. Funky but sweet. The kind of woman I always liked before I gave myself to Tara who was – strangely enough – never my type at all. Tara was not funky or sweet. Tara was always the head-turner, the kind of woman – still a girl, really, when we first met – who was noticed the second she walked into any room. And Tara was always the wild one. I should have known, shouldn’t I? I should have guessed how it would all end. And we had got talking, the funky-but-sweet Spanish woman and I, and we talked easily, and we got on, and by the second coffee I knew we were both aware of the great unspoken truth of human relationships.