Richard’s buoyant this evening. He comes rushing home to drop news at my feet, a dog bringing a stick to its master, tail wagging, eyes imploring, desperate to be stroked. He starts before he even takes off his coat.

‘Guess what? She’s seeing someone.’

No need to say her name. She haunts us like Banquo.

I pull a languid face, acting cynical. I try to make him laugh, when he talks about her. There’s no point in discussing her any other way. Richard knows full well what I think. He should toughen up, not let her manipulate him, the way she does.

‘Whoopity-doo. Some desperate single parent she met at nursery? I can just see him. Paunchy, balding, his wife died and he’s all sad and lonely. Don’t tell me: his little Ermentrude and Gracie are best friends?’

Richard smiles, shakes his head. ‘Someone she met at the hospital. And it sounds serious. He’s taking her to Venice next weekend. Gracie too.’

I start, putting my hand to my stomach, feeling suddenly sick. He doesn’t see. He’s too busy unbuttoning his coat, hanging it in the hall, heading through to the kitchen to fix us both gin and tonic.

‘What’s for dinner?’

He lifts the lid of the pan on the stove and smells the Bolognese sauce, sticks a spoon into it and turns to me as he tastes. I am leaning against the doorway. My face says too much.

‘You alright?’

‘What’s his name?’

‘She did say…’ He frowns, trying to remember. ‘Why?’

I can’t answer. He moves round the cupboards, pulling out glasses, adding ice, pouring gin. The new bottle of tonic cascades in a fizzing plume over his hands when he opens it and he swears, dashes to the sink, looks down, cross, at the spray across his trousers.

When he’s mopped them with a tea towel, he comes over, hands me a drink. I gulp it.

‘Mark? Mike?’ Already he’s heading past me towards the sitting room and the lure of the television news. Over his shoulder, he adds: ‘Good luck to him, I say. I hope they’re very happy. Now maybe she’ll leave us alone.’ He considers. ‘Just as long as Gracie likes him.’ Then, his tone slightly wounded as he settles on the settee: ‘Anyway, thought you’d be pleased.’

I don’t know how I get through dinner. I can barely eat, but he doesn’t seem to notice, he’s too focused on the crisis in the Middle East or Sudan or wherever the hell it is. I don’t care.

All I can think is: it’s him. It must be. And she has no idea.

Later, I run a long bath and take the radio into the bathroom with me. I turn it up loud and lie flat and low in the landscape of bursting bubbles, my hair floating in tendrils round my head, the oval mask of my face just protruding above the water.

My breathing is shallow and quick. I try to press myself down into the smooth, hard plastic of the bath, to hide myself away. I’m afraid to close my eyes. I’m afraid of the darkness that waits for me there, that draws me always back to Venice and the dreadful days there I’ve struggled so hard to forget.