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suddenly announced, ‘Oh dear, this has been very useful, but I’m afraid our time is up!’

      So it’s OK for you to interrupt then, Christina!

      I put my coat on in a daze, and we left Christina’s office. In the street, the cold air hit me in the face like a slap from a wet kipper and brought me back to my senses.

      ‘You don’t love me anymore?’ I snarled. ‘What has all this been for, if you don’t love me anymore? Why have you put me through this?’

‘Don’t make a scene, Ellen, not in the street!’ said Simon briskly. ‘Come on,’ he added, steering me into the bar next to Christina’s office, ‘let’s go for a drink.’

      ‘Is that really all you’re worried about? A scene in the street? Anyway, we need to get back for the kids,’ I objected.

      ‘They can hang on for another half-hour. We need to talk.’

      ‘We’ve just been talking. You’ve made everything very clear. What’s there left to talk about?’

      ‘OK, I need to talk to you.’

      It was a very nice bar. It had cosy booths and ambient lighting, and under any other circumstances I’d have been thinking how totally Instagrammable it was. Simon got me a glass of wine and sat down beside me.

      ‘We can’t go on like this,’ he said. ‘You’re tearing yourself into pieces. I can’t do this anymore.’

      ‘You can’t do this? So even though the person who is supposed to always be there for me, who is supposed to never hurt me, even though this person has basically ripped my heart out and left me in pieces, I need to get over it, because you’ve had enough of me hurting? You’ve cheated on me, compared me to lasagne and then told me you don’t love me, and what? Am I supposed to be happy about that? Yippee! My husband and the father of my children doesn’t love me anymore! Hurrah, my life is fucking complete, at last!’

      ‘Please keep your voice down,’ he hissed. ‘I didn’t say I didn’t love you.’

      ‘You did.’

      ‘No, I said I wasn’t sure. And that I wasn’t sure if you loved me. Of course I love you, I’m just not sure if I still love you like that. I mean, I don’t even know if you want to be married to me anymore,’ he said sadly.

      ‘Of course I do,’ I protested. ‘I wouldn’t be going through all this if I didn’t, would I? Don’t you want our marriage anymore?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I want. I know I’m unhappy, and I have been for a long time, long before all this. I know I can’t say sorry any more than I have, but it doesn’t make any difference. I know I can’t keep trying to change the past, I can only change the future, but as things are, you won’t let me, because you can’t move on from the past. So, I think we need some time apart.’

      ‘What, like you going away for the weekend or something? Another jolly?’

      ‘No, some proper time apart. Geoff at work is moving to New York for three months and doesn’t want to leave his flat empty all that time. I’ve said I’ll move in and look after it. Gives us both some space, some time to think, some time for us to consider what we really want. I’m going to move in there tonight. I had one final hope that this evening with Christina might have helped you start healing, but it didn’t, so something has to change.’

      ‘You’re leaving me?’ I whispered. ‘After all that, after everything you put me through, you’re leaving me? And you’re doing it using all those old clichés of “I love you but I’m not in love with you” and “I just need some space”? Could you not even have come up with an original line? Christ, all that’s missing is “My wife doesn’t understand me.”’

      ‘Well, I do need some space, OK, and some time. And you don’t understand what it’s like for me. I can’t stay with you if I’m always going to be the bad guy, living with your constant anger. It’s destroying us both.’

      ‘And there we go. Well done, you’ve hit the hat-trick of how to leave your wife. So you’re just walking away, moving into Geoff’s nice little bachelor pad and living the life of Riley, leaving me to pick up all the pieces – again? Because you’re not happy that I’m a tiny bit pissed off about how you’ve behaved and you, what? Want to find yourself?’

‘Ellen, please, it’s not like that.’

      I drained my wine. ‘It’s exactly like that.’

      ‘I just want to find out who I am again, that’s all. Apart from a father and a husband!’

      ‘I’ll tell you what you want. You’ve had a taste of freedom and fun, and you want a bit more of it, because suddenly the wife and kids feel a bit millstoney round your neck. Especially as the ball and chain won’t shut up like a good girl and turn a blind eye and let you have your cake and eat it. So you’re going for the easy option and giving up. You get the single life, and I get to keep being a drudge and bring up your children. Well, fine. It’s fine. If that’s what you want, go ahead, no one’s going to stop you. If you thought I was going to sit here and beg you to stay, you were wrong. Have a nice life, Simon. Actually, I don’t mean that. I hope your knob falls off. Goodbye.’

      ‘I’m not leaving you, I just need –’

      ‘Do kindly go fuck yourself. Or whoever else it is that you “need”.’

      ‘Ellen, please –’

      I walked out of the bar with my head held high, and made it as far as the little play park round the corner before I collapsed on a bench, sobbing. Thank God it was evening and there were no tots bouncing merrily on the seesaw to be alarmed by the mad woman wailing all on her own. All the hours I’ve spent sitting on benches like these, watching Peter and Jane play (and fight), freezing my arse off, wishing it was time to go home, and never once did I think I’d end up sitting on one crying because Simon had left me. I thought we’d grow old together. I’d never considered a future that didn’t involve him.

I dried my eyes on an extremely dubious tissue I found in my coat pocket (at least back when the children were small there would have been several half-eaten jelly babies stuck to it that I could have consoled myself with), and resolved that that was it. I wasn’t relying on anyone else for anything, ever again. Well, apart from getting the number of a bloody good divorce lawyer from Perfect Lucy Atkinson’s Perfect Mummy.

      It was a shame, I thought pathetically to myself, that I could never go back to that very nice bar and take photos for Instagram, as it would now be forever known as The Bar Where Simon Left Me. If he was going to leave me, he could at least have done it in a dive, and not spoiled somewhere nice for me. Selfish bastard.

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