‘And what does that involve?’

‘Communication. Intensity. I don’t know.’

My heart sinks. The advantages of turning forty for me include: not having to change nappies, not having to go to places where people dance, and not having to be intense with the person I live with.

‘Please try it my way,’ says David pitifully. So I do. I look into his eyes, I kiss him the way he wants to be kissed, we take a long time over everything and, at the end (no orgasm for me, incidentally), I lie on his chest while he strokes my hair. I get through it, just about, but I don’t see the point of it.

The following morning, David spends most of breakfast humming, smiling, and trying to relate to his children, who seem as perplexed as I am, Tom especially.

‘What have you got today, Tom?’

‘School.’

‘Yes, but what at school?’

Tom looks at me anxiously, as if I can somehow intercede, prevent his father from asking perfectly harmless conversational questions. I stare back at him and try to convey unfeasibly complicated messages with my eyes: ‘It’s not my fault, I don’t know what’s going on, just tell him your timetable and eat your cereal, he’s undergone a complete character transformation…’ That sort of look, the sort that would require several eyes, and eyebrows with the agility of a teenage Eastern European acrobat.

‘I dunno,’ says Tom. ‘Maths, I expect. English. Ummmmm…’ He glances at David to see whether he has provided sufficient detail, but David is still smiling at him expectantly. ‘Games, maybe.’

‘Anything you need any help with? I mean, your old man’s not Brain of Britain, but he’s not bad at English. Writing and all that.’ And he chuckles, we know not why.

Tom no longer looks anxious; the anxiety has been replaced by something akin to terror. I almost find myself feeling sorry for David—it’s sad, after all, that what certainly appears to be a genuine attempt to convey warmth and concern should be met with such naked mistrust—but ten years of ill-temper are not easily forgotten, and David has been grumpy for as long as Tom has been alive.

‘Yeah,’ says Tom, clearly unconvinced. ‘I’m all right at writing, thanks. You can help me with games, if you want.’

It’s Tom’s little joke, and it’s not a bad one—I laugh, anyway—but these are different times.

‘Sure,’ says David. ‘Do you want to, I don’t know, kick a ball around after school?’

‘Yeah, right,’ says Tom.

‘Good,’ says David.

David knows what ‘yeah, right’ means; he has heard the expression several times a day for the last couple of years, and it has never before prompted the word ‘good’. The words ‘sarcastic little bastard’, ‘ungrateful little sod’ or simply ‘shut up’ yes; ‘good’, no. So why would he choose to ignore the tone and meaning that he knows Tom wishes to convey and plough on regardless? I am beginning to suspect that there is a sinister medical explanation for David’s behaviour.

‘I’ll go out and buy a new pair of trainers today,’ he adds, for good measure. Tom and I look at each other, and then attempt to prepare for the day ahead as if it were like any other.

Stephen leaves a message for me at work. I ignore it.

When I get back from work there are two children and an adult playing Cluedo on the kitchen table and a dozen messages on the answerphone. The phone rings again as I’m taking my coat off, but David makes no attempt to pick it up, and everyone listens to Nigel, David’s editor at the paper, attempting to attract the attention of the Angriest Man in Holloway.

‘I know you’re there, David. Pick the fucking phone up.’

The children giggle. David shakes the dice.

‘Why aren’t you answering?’

‘Daddy’s given up work,’ says Molly proudly.

‘I haven’t given up work. I’ve just given up that work.’

Nigel is still chuntering away in the background. ‘Pick up… Pick up, you bastard.’

‘You’ve given up the column? Why?’

‘Because I’m not angry any more.’

‘You’re not angry any more?’

‘No.’

‘About anything?’

‘No. It’s all gone.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know. But it’s gone. You can tell, can’t you?’

‘Yes. I can tell.’

‘So I can’t write a column about being angry any more.’

I sigh, heavily.

‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

I thought I would be pleased, too. If, a few weeks ago, someone had offered to grant me one wish, I think I would probably have chosen to wish for exactly this, because I would not have been able to think of anything else, not even money, that could have improved the quality of my life—our lives—so dramatically. Oh, I’d have mumbled something about cures for cancer or world peace, of course, but secretly I’d have been hoping that the genie wouldn’t let me do the good person thing. Secretly I’d have wanted the genie to say, ‘No, you’re a doctor, you do enough for the world already, what with the boils and everything. Choose something for yourself.’ And I would have said, after a great deal of thought, ‘I would like David not to be angry any more. I would like him to recognize that his life is OK, that his children are wonderful, that he has a loyal and loving and—sod it—a not unattractive or unintelligent wife, and enough money for babysitters and meals out and the mortgage… I would like all his bile gone, every inch, or ounce, or millilitre of it.’ (I imagine David’s bile to be in that difficult state between liquid and solid, like almost-set concrete.) And the genie would have rubbed his stomach, and hey presto! David is a happy person.

And hey presto! David is a happy person, or at least, a calm person, here, now, in the real world, and all I do is sigh. The thing is, of course, I don’t really want the hey presto! part. I am a rationalist, and I don’t believe in genies, or sudden personality changes. I wanted David’s anger to vanish only after years and years in therapy.

‘I am pleased,’ I say, unconvincingly. ‘I just wish you’d had the courage to tell Nigel.’

‘Nigel’s an angry man,’ David says sadly. ‘He wouldn’t understand.’ This last observation at least is incontrovertible, given that Nigel has just ended his attempt to attract David’s attention with a volley of abuse. He even used the C-word, although we all pretended we hadn’t heard it.

‘Why don’t you play Cluedo with us, Mummy?’

And I do, until tea time. And after tea, we play Junior Scrabble. We are the ideal nuclear family. We eat together, we play improving board games instead of watching television, we smile a lot. I fear that at any moment I may kill somebody.

5

At lunchtime the next day, Becca and I walk up the road to get a sandwich, and I tell her about GoodNews, and the theatre, and the street kid, and even about the lovemaking. (‘Ugh!’ she says. ‘Your own husband? How disgusting!’) And then, suddenly, she grabs my arm.

‘Katie! My God!’

‘What?’

‘Shit!’

‘What? You’re frightening me.’

‘David’s sick.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Change of personality. And did you say something about a headache?’

My stomach lurches. This is text-book stuff. This is the sinister medical explanation for his behaviour. David almost certainly has a brain tumour. How could I have been so oblivious? I run back to work and phone him.

‘David. I don’t want you to panic, but please listen carefully and do exactly what I say. You probably have a brain tumour. You have to go to hospital and have a CAT scan, urgently. We can get you the referral here, but…’

‘Katie…’

‘Please listen. We can get you the referral here, but…’

‘Katie, there’s nothing wrong with me.’

‘Well, let’s hope not. But these are classic symptoms.’

‘Are you saying this because I’ve started to be nice to you?’