She thinks she can use this against me, their shared anguish about Gracie. A new weapon. She knows so little about me.

She’s a fool, and from the start she got me all wrong. I was never the enemy. Not in the way she thought. And especially not now. For once, we’re actually on the same side. She could use me.

If I had the strength, I’d be there in the hospital at Richard’s side, making myself unpopular with the doctors and nurses by demanding everything on earth for Gracie, anything to give her the best possible chance. Like me or hate me, I don’t give a damn. I’m beyond caring.

But I can’t. I can barely lift my head from the pillow. Every nerve in my neck, in my shoulders is pinched and throbbing. My brain is a big, black ache.

So I lie here, sick with misery, thinking about Gracie and about her and remembering how it once was.

I wanted Richard as soon as I saw him. It was just one of those things.

We were at a gallery launch and he was the most awkward person there, wearing an old-fashioned suit, standing with his back to the smart crowd and staring for too long at each picture as if he were counting to a hundred before moving on. Knowing him now, perhaps he was.

There was an old-fashioned kindness about him. But he was also unhappy. I smell that on people. Misery is musty like mould.

He looked dazed when I appeared at his side and stood closer to him than necessary.

‘Let me guess now.’ I looked at the pencil drawing of a fox’s head in front of us. ‘Either you have a thing about foxes. Or you’ve found yourself trapped in the wrong party and don’t know how to escape.’

He smiled, rueful. ‘Is it that obvious?’

‘Yes, my friend.’

His suit was a sober navy but his socks were sky-blue. I liked that. He struck me as a man who needed rescuing from his life, at least for an evening.

‘Are you here with anyone?’

He shook his head. I drank off my glass of Prosecco, then took his from his hand and drank that too.

‘Follow me.’

He wasn’t the first strange man I’d taken home. People react to hurt in all sorts of ways. I’d reacted by hurling myself back into the world and pretending to be tougher than I was. But even then, at the beginning, I think I sensed, deep down, that he was different. Something about Richard’s quiet sadness made me want to take him in my arms and hold him close and never let go.

I told myself that it didn’t matter if I took him home because it clearly wouldn’t go anywhere. He had ‘married’ written all over him. Worse than that, he wasn’t even duplicitous enough to take off his wedding ring. And besides, I was far too damaged to fall in love again. It was the last thing I needed. A real, caring relationship? Never again.

He was uneasy in my flat. I fed him drinks and pretended to be drunker than I was and watched him out of the corner of my eye. He couldn’t sit still. He kept a distance from me, which in that flat wasn’t easy, and scrutinised every picture, every photograph, every ornament, batting back my questions as if engaging me in conversation was itself an act of infidelity. I couldn’t help but like him.

Richard. Married for three years but they’d been together for ten. He shrugged when he talked about it and I noted the heaviness in his voice. He had nearly backed out, when they were engaged, but it was too late. He couldn’t do that to her. The invitations had been sent and the hotel was booked and everything.

‘It’s never too late.’

He turned, gave me a sharp look. ‘Jen’s lovely. I’d never hurt her.’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘So where’s the lovely Jen tonight?’

He blushed, looked down into his whisky glass. ‘She’s not well.’

I sat back and waited. ‘What sort of not well?’

He opened his mouth to speak, then looked cross. ‘Are you always like this?’

‘Always,’ I shot back at once. ‘Are you?’

He took a seat wearily in a chair on the far side of the room. I was playing a part, acting the femme fatale who took married men home for no-strings sex and forgot them in the morning. It was an act, of course. When I think back to that time, I taste loneliness. He wasn’t the only one going round smelling like mould.

And he hadn’t come for sex, anyway. He’d come for companionship. Which is a much more dangerous act of infidelity.

‘So what sort of not well?’ I said again. ‘Depressed?’

‘No, nothing like that.’ He answered too quickly. That was yes, then. ‘She’s pregnant. She’s… I mean, we’re expecting our first child.’

He said it as if he still didn’t quite believe it.

‘Ah.’ Complicated. ‘So now you’re thinking: holy shit, it really is too late.’

He drank off his whisky, put his glass down with a bang.

‘Look, I never said that. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be here.’

‘Of course you shouldn’t.’ I leaned forward, poured him another whisky. ‘But you are, aren’t you?’

He was the sort of man who made love, rather than had sex. Afterwards, he tried to cuddle and I had to fend him off and protect myself from all that tenderness, all that potential to get hurt.

‘You haven’t done this before, have you?’

‘Had sex?’ He smiled.

‘Cheated on the lovely Jen.’

His face clouded. He looked past me to the clock. Still only ten past nine. He could still make it home and pretend nothing had happened. He could rub this out and start again.

‘Out you go.’

He looked surprised. He didn’t know me yet. I liked to stay a step ahead.

At the door, I did my best to act nonchalant.

‘Well, Mr Richard. You know where I live. Same time next week?’

It wasn’t a good idea to see him again. I tried to pretend it was all a joke but we weren’t the type for games, neither of us. Not really.

I found myself staying in the following Tuesday night, against my better judgement, and bought a fresh bottle of whisky. Just in case. I had a long shower and, when the bell rang, I went to the door in my underwear and a silky dressing gown.

He stared. Nervous. Clutching a bunch of flowers and a shop-bought cheesecake.

‘I didn’t think you’d come.’

He swallowed. ‘Neither did I.’

But I think we were both lying. We both knew.