And I am also learning that there’s a kind of man who believes he can have everything. He thinks he deserves both a wife and a girlfriend, and that everything will be fine and civilised, that he can become ‘really deep, strong friends’ with his wife, once she’s been exhausted by the struggle and dropped off, just so long as she doesn’t ask whether he’s still having the affair that finished off the marriage.

Well, yes, he is. Sort of. ‘I spend most of my time alone,’ he says. ‘I’m like you. I like being alone. I walk from room to room thinking about things. I miss you terribly, but at the same time I think it’s good for me to be alone.’

‘But you’re not alone, are you. You’re with her, and you’re still trying to make me think you’re not with her.’

‘Yes, okay, I do sleep with her, but eighty per cent of my time I’m alone. Being alone is the larger truth.’

In this flat, alone, I can at last see myself as a grown-up. I’ve moved a cane chair into the bedroom so I can survey my view. I sit there in the early evenings and contemplate it. At certain hours it looks almost Italian. One day I’ll be light-hearted again. I swear I will. I will work my way there.