OF COURSE, SEEING ME sitting there with a bloody nose put Carol in a difficult position. The truth is a strange thing, in case you’ve never been forced to contemplate its twists and turns. It doesn’t matter how bad something is. If you don’t admit what’s going on, if you don’t say it aloud, it can be forgotten. It can be managed. It can be ignored. I remember the first time I heard someone joke about ‘the elephant in the room’. They meant something that everyone tried to ignore, but who could ignore an elephant? You can take it from me that after a while you hang your clothes on the trunk like he was part of the furniture. You can get used to anything, and as long as you don’t actually die, all pain goes. All pain goes. Think of that the next time you think you can’t stand it. Think of me. If you don’t ask about Bobby Penrith, it’s always an accident. Even if you know, you just don’t force the words out into the open.

You’ll appreciate that Carol could hardly wake me up, throw her arms around me and announce that her affair with Denis Tanter was at an end. It was the thing we never mentioned any more, after all. The fact that she rested her head on my pillow was meant to be something I didn’t question.

Perhaps because I could feel a tooth wobble when I woke, I just wasn’t in a good mood. It must have been twenty years since I last found myself wiggling a loose tooth with my tongue, and it didn’t improve my temper. She’d brought it into our kitchen. The old rules were useless until Denis Tanter was out of our lives.

Like it or not, certain things had to be said, no matter how much I hated to do it. I washed myself carefully, looking at the bruises in the long bathroom mirror. I was not a sight to inspire confidence. Even though I felt angry, I looked afraid. Worst of all was the fact that she didn’t come back all through the afternoon.

I started thinking she had confronted Denis and tempers had flared. My imagination went a little peculiar for a while. I rang her work because I had to ring someone and ask where she was, though I hated doing it. Every time, I could see their little sly grin on the other end. I was the husband who couldn’t find his wife. Have you ever noticed you can hear someone smile on a phone? If you say the same words twice, but smile the second time, you can hear the difference. When you’re asking where your wife is, you don’t want to hear that change. It starts the brain working fast enough to hurt.

Carol had taken the afternoon off, and there was something in the girl’s tone that enjoyed the fact that I didn’t know. I had to work to keep my voice level and steady as I put the phone back in its cradle, gripping it hard enough to make my hand shake. As I put it down, it rang, making me jump.

I could hear Carol breathing, fast and shallow.

‘I told Denis Tanter to leave us alone,’ she said, without even a hello. ‘He’s gone.’

‘What about you, though?’ I replied, shoving the phone against my ear as if I could press her closer on the other end of the line.

‘I need a few days away, Davey. Work is all over me and I just need a break, a chance to take a breath.’

‘Where will you go?’ I asked, knowing she wouldn’t tell me. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that Denis bloody Tanter had lost her and I was filled with a savage joy. I could hear the weariness in her voice. If she had been going to him, she would have had that brittle excitement that marked the beginning of all her affairs. To leave ‘us’ alone, she’d said. There were times when I did love her, no matter what else I felt. I pressed the phone so hard against the side of my head that it began to hurt.

‘I just need a few days away from here,’ she said. I waited for something more. I wondered if she had packed a bag. Perhaps if I’d taken the time to look through the bathroom cabinet I might have known the phone call was coming.

‘Don’t go far,’ I said gently. Sometimes I talked to her like you would to a nervous horse, but she didn’t seem to mind. I wanted to say that I loved her, to express the sudden warm feeling in my chest when I heard her voice. For once, I couldn’t say the words, easy as they are. She never did, and though I told myself it was there in every word and glance she threw me, it still mattered. I’d swallowed so much pride over the years that it washed back into my mouth and burned me. Perhaps I was full at last, and that was why it brimmed over every time I was made to taste a little more defeat, a little more shame. For a moment I hoped she wouldn’t come back. In a second of phone silence I saw my life going on without the pain and drama. Eventually, she would become a distant memory for someone I used to be. A problem for someone else. All pain goes, remember, even the memories you thought would kill you. Perhaps I would just get in my car and drive away before she came back and pretend to be a normal person for the rest of my life. I might even be happy and live some sort of eerie existence where I didn’t have a blood test every month in case she brought home some plague that would strip the flesh off me. It would be a strange sort of life without fear and without hate and without my obsession with her.

I put the phone down without really listening to her say goodbye.

It took about ten minutes of sitting on my own to realize I needed to get out as well. I didn’t want to be the one who stayed and waited for her to come back. I didn’t want to be on my own, and I certainly didn’t want to be there if Denis sent Michael round a second time. That was the thought that really got me moving. She had taken the only suitcase, but there was an old duffel bag in the cupboard over the immersion heater, so I stuffed a few things in that, adding a bar of soap and a half-full can of deodorant. I didn’t have the money to bother with a passport. I was thinking of taking a train west, perhaps to spend a few days in Cornwall. I found my good boots and shrugged myself into the coat, moving quickly and controlling a swelling sense of panic.

I opened the door just as I became aware of a moving shadow behind the glass. I’d been thinking about her, and as the lock clicked I realized someone was standing there, looking in. They’d watched me pat pockets for keys and open the duffel over and over to shove some last item into the depths.

They seem to move at a different speed, these people. If someone tries to push his way into a house in a film, the door is likely to slam in their face. Denis just walked in as if it was his own house, though his expression showed what he thought of the place. His shoulder knocked into me and then Michael came in behind, pressing his left hand against my chest and holding me against the wall without the slightest difficulty. I might have struggled if they’d given me a little warning, but it was just too quick and too casual.

As Denis disappeared into the lounge, Michael shook his head almost apologetically. I came to life then in a rush of fear adrenalin, yanking at his fingers to break his grip. The little scrap of garden and freedom was so near I couldn’t bear to have the door close and be stuck inside with them. Michael pulled me back from the open doorway and shut it with his other arm, nodding to himself as he heard the click. The hall was darker with him blocking the light.

‘Where is she?’ Denis demanded, coming back from the kitchen. I didn’t reply. For a moment, the strangeness of having him in my house was just too much. I’d seen him last at a New Year’s Eve party with balloons and a Scotsman. I remembered his face, but to have him just stand there and talk like we knew each other was surreal.

‘I’ll call the police,’ I said.

Denis raised his eyebrows in something approaching surprise.

‘Michael said you don’t scare easy,’ he said. ‘I can’t see it, myself.’ I glanced sideways at Michael, but his face was blank. No chat from him, or demands to be given whisky. In the great man’s presence he was solid business, a professional.