‘Not quite the starving writer in the freezing garret,’ I said. ‘What hardships is she going to draw on in her writing? Dickens worked in a shoe-blacking factory, didn’t he?’

Clare ignored this. ‘I’m happy to support creative endeavour in this small way,’ she said, directing her words at Dad. ‘It’s so hard to keep afloat unless you’re really successful. We have friends who used to be actors, but they couldn’t afford to keep going after a couple of years. They were just racking up debts and never actually earning anything.’

At the mention of Kit and Melia, nerves flared across the surface of me.

‘I get the feeling they’re both really talented, as well,’ Clare added. ‘It’s a real shame.’

‘Would I have seen them in anything?’ Dad asked.

I found my voice. ‘No, they weren’t on TV. She was in a couple of plays. One even had a short run in the West End, I think.’

‘She works with me,’ Clare told him. ‘She’s excellent, when she turns up.’

I picked up the carafe of rosé by its neck and began refilling our glasses. ‘She doesn’t turn up?’

‘Well.’ Clare pulled a face. ‘She’s not the worst I’ve come across, but she has more than the average number of sick days. We used to troop in with a broken leg, didn’t we? But that gen is just a lot more precious. Anyway, Tony, they’ve just got married and because of all these debts they can’t even afford to go on a honeymoon.’

This led, as I’d expected, to a comparison between the Maldives getaways of today’s romantics and the out-of-season B&Bs in Margate of Dad’s prime. Clare and I had a great photograph of him and Mum in the sixties at the haunted snail ride in the Dreamland amusement park. If we split up, I would need to make sure I took that picture.

If we split up. I reached for my water glass and felt the icy liquid wash through my gullet.

‘You should have lent these actors your house for their honeymoon,’ Dad suggested.

‘They’d be far too proud to accept,’ Clare said. ‘Anyway, I’m not sure I trust them. We’d get back and find they’d sold the contents. Or the house itself! Property fraud is a massive problem, you know.’

‘Oh, come on, they’re not thieves.’ I thought of the picture Kit had sent me that morning of a river police launch sitting alongside the river bus like an escort:

Water rats had a brush with the fuzz this morning. Just a drill, but almost gave me a heart attack!

Time for a bit of clean living? You’d save money.

Drop in the ocean, mate.

This last came with a water wave emoji, followed by a money bags emoji. Finally, before he signed off, he sent a crying face. It was impressive, when you thought about it, that he hadn’t borrowed to fund a honeymoon. For the first time, he and Melia had deprived themselves of something they actually had a right to expect. (I was lucky Clare hadn’t extended her champagne largesse to the offer of a holiday share.)

‘You sure you want someone like that working for you?’ Dad was saying to Clare, laughing.

‘She just said she’s excellent,’ I snapped, to his surprise. ‘She is,’ Clare agreed. ‘She’s one of the most persuasive people I’ve ever met. She’s obviously persuaded you, Jamie – look how you’re defending her.’

‘Because she’s our friend,’ I said. ‘We just took part in her wedding.’

As Clare stared at me, a memory surfaced from that dinner at the Ropers’ flat, back when it all started, when Melia said I’d be a good actor: I can always tell when he’s lying, Clare said.

There was a sudden itch on my neck and, scratching, I felt the hard lump of an insect bite. I excused myself to go inside and fetch something for it.

*

A day or two later, about half an hour into our daily walk through the pine woods, Clare startled me by announcing, abruptly, ‘I know, Jamie.’

Under my sweat, I froze.

‘I thought I could wait till after the holiday to deal with it, but I can’t. That’s what I was thinking about when we argued on the drive down to Winchester.’

‘Deal with what?’ My words were lost in a cowardly gulp.

Her face had flushed deeply and I felt mine do the same. ‘I know you asked me to butt out, but I just wanted to touch base to make sure the advice I was giving you was along the same lines as hers.’

It took me a few seconds to realize she was talking about the career coach. I could have hooted with relief. ‘Oh, you mean Vicky.’

‘Yes, of course Vicky.’ Her voice rose in accusation. ‘I know you haven’t been back since the first session.’

‘Not yet.’ Though clearly in a hole, I at least had a foothold in it and was not about to be cracked on the head with a spade and buried alive.

‘When were you going to? I booked those sessions months ago. It’s September now!’ With a sharp crackling underfoot, she drew to a halt. ‘And why pretend you were doing them, when you weren’t? I don’t understand. What were you doing instead?’

Hoping she might make a better suggestion than I could, I played for time.

‘Let me guess: drinking with Kit? You were, weren’t you? Trust him to cover for you. For fuck’s sake, Jamie, you’re going to be fifty in less than two years and every month you let it slide, it’s going to be harder getting back into the workplace.’

‘I’m already in the workplace,’ I said, stonily. ‘I’m on my feet nine hours a day. And the reason I pretended is because I’m well aware that you care way more about it than I do. Why do you care so much? If it’s not about finances, then what? You’re ashamed to have a partner doing a menial job, is that it?’

Clare’s brow knitted, her gaze as aggrieved as I’d ever seen it. ‘I think that’s a bit reductive.’

‘Reductive? Expand it then? Tell me how I can be more than I am. Please, I’d love to know!’

There was a tremor in her hands as she gripped them together, presumably to stop herself from slapping me. ‘After everything I’ve done to try and help you, you have no right to make out that I’m the one at fault.’ She strode off ahead, sick of the sight of me, and I didn’t blame her.

Trudging on alone, I disgraced myself further by brooding not on her, but on Melia. I was missing her with a ferocity I hadn’t anticipated. The wedding had been no delusion and the thought of her in renewed intimacy with Kit made my chest ache. I was, I supposed, grieving: whatever she’d said at the register office, I didn’t believe for a moment that we would resume our affair. No, I had to make a virtue of our parting and concentrate on shaping up in Clare’s estimation.

I got back to the house first and told Dad Clare had decided to drop into the neighbouring village, where the boulangerie sold stacks of the fresh galettes we all loved. She arrived an hour later bearing exactly this treat and I wondered if she’d read my mind.

(If so, what else had she seen while she was at it?)

‘Sorry about earlier,’ I said, helping with preparations in the cool stone-flagged kitchen. ‘I was out of order.’

She busied herself making tea. ‘You should have at least told me you didn’t want to do the course. I could have transferred it to one of the team at work. Melia, maybe.’ As the tea brewed, she gave me a long, impaling look. ‘What’s going on with you, Jamie?’