They smile beatifically and return to their piece of paper. I have been dismissed. I do not wish to be dismissed.

‘I’m not looking for forgiveness. I want to talk about it. I want to explain. I want you and I to go out and attempt to communicate. As husband and wife.’

‘Oh. Right. Sorry. That would be nice, yes. And you’re sure you don’t want GoodNews to come with us? He’s very good at that kind of stuff.’

‘I’m going through a really intuitive time at the moment, I have to say,’ says GoodNews. ‘And I know what you’re saying about husband and wife and that whole intimacy thing, but you’d be amazed at the stuff I can pick up that’s kind of zapping about between you.’ And he makes a zigzaggy gesture, the exact meaning of which is lost on me, but which I presume is intended to indicate wonky marital communication.

‘Thanks, but it’s fine,’ I tell him. ‘We’ll call you if we have trouble.’

He smiles patiently. ‘That’s not going to work, is it? I’m babysitting, remember? I can’t just leave them here on their own.’

‘We’ll ask for a doggy-bag and come home immediately.’

He points a hey-you’re-sharp finger at me. I have hit on the solution, and we are allowed out.

‘So.’

‘So.’

It’s such a familiar routine. Two spicy poppadoms for him, one plain one for me, mango chutney and those onion pieces on a side plate placed between us for easy dunking… We’ve been doing this for fifteen years, ever since we could afford it, although before you get the impression that the variety and spontaneity have gone from our lives, I should point out that we’ve only been coming to this particular restaurant for a decade. Our previous favourite got taken over, and they changed the menu slightly, so we moved to find a closer approximation of what we were used to.

We need things like the Curry Queen, though. Not just David and I, but all of us. What does a marriage look like? Ours looks like this, a side plate smeared with mango chutney. That’s how we can tell it apart from all the others. That mango chutney is the white smudge on the cheek of your black cat, or the registration number of a new car, or the name-tag in a child’s school sweatshirt; without it we’d be lost. Without that side plate and its orange smear, I might one day come back from the toilet and sit down at a completely different marriage. (And who’s to say that this completely different marriage would be any better or worse than the one I already have? I am suddenly struck by the absurdity of my decision—not the one handed to me by the vicar in the surgery, which still seems as good or as bad as any, but the one I made all those years ago.)

‘You wanted to talk,’ David says.

‘Don’t you?’

‘Well, yes. I suppose so. If you do.’

‘I do, yes.’

‘Right.’ Silence. ‘Off you go, then.’

‘I’m going to stop sleeping at Janet’s.’

‘Oh. OK, then.’ He sips his lager, apparently unsure whether this news has any relevance to his life.

‘Are you moving back home? Or have you found somewhere else?’

‘No, no, I’m moving back home.’ I suddenly feel a little sorry for him: it was not, after all, an unreasonable question. Most relationships in crisis probably provide some sort of clue to their eventual success or failure: the couples concerned start sleeping together again, for example, or attacking each other with kitchen knives, and from those symptoms one can make some kind of prognosis. We haven’t had anything like that, however. I moved out without really explaining why, and then a nice lady vicar who doesn’t know anything about me told me to move back in because I bullied her. No wonder David felt that his enquiry had several possible answers. He must have felt as though he were asking me who I thought would win the Grand National.

‘Oh, right. Well, fine. Good. Good. I’m pleased.’

‘Are you?’

‘Yes, of course.’

I want to ask him why, and then argue with whatever he says, but I’m not going to. I’ve stopped all that. I have made my mind up—or rather, I have had it made up for me—and I have no wish to disassemble it.

‘Is there anything I can do to make it easier for you?’

‘Do you mean that?’

‘Yes. I think so.’

‘What am I allowed to ask for?’

‘Anything you want. And if I don’t think it’s reasonable, we’ll talk about it.’

‘Is there any possibility that GoodNews could find somewhere else to live?’

‘That really bothers you?’

‘Yes. Of course.’

‘Fine. I’ll tell him he has to go.’

‘Simple as that?’

‘Simple as that. I’m not sure that it’s going to make much difference, though. I mean, he’ll still be round all the time. We work together. We’re colleagues. Our office is in the house.’

‘OK.’ I think about this, and decide that David is right: it won’t make much difference. I don’t want GoodNews living in the house because I don’t like GoodNews, but that problem will not be solved by him going to sleep somewhere else at nights. I have wasted one of my three wishes.

‘What do you do exactly?’

‘Sorry?’

‘You say you and GoodNews work together. What do you do?’

A woman on the next table looks at me, and then looks away, and then looks at David. She is clearly trying to work out what my relationship with this man is. I have just told him I will move in with him, but now—somewhat late in the day, she must be thinking—I want to find out what he does.

‘Ha! Good question!’ When normal people give this answer to that question, they are usually making a joke. You know: ‘Good question! Bugger all, really! Blowed if I know!’, etc. But David means: ‘Phew! How would I explain it, in all its knotty complexity!’

‘Thank you.’

The woman on the next table catches my eye. ‘Don’t move in!’ she’s trying to say. ‘He doesn’t even recognize sarcasm!’ I try to answer her back, using similar methods: ‘It’s OK! We’ve been married for donkey’s years! But we’ve sort of lost touch recently! Spiritual conversion!’ I’m not sure she picks it all up, though. It’s a lot of information to convey without words.

‘We’re more at a strategic stage. We haven’t got any actual projects on the go, but we’re thinking.’

‘Right. What are you thinking about?’

‘We’re thinking about how we can persuade people to give away everything they earn over and above the national average wage. We’re just doing the sums at the moment.’

‘How are they working out?’

‘Well, you know. It’s tough. It’s not as straightforward as it sounds.’

I’m not making this up. This is actually what he says, in real life, in the Curry Queen.

‘Oh, and we’re sort of writing a book.’

‘A book.’

‘Yes. “How to be Good”, we’re going to call it. It’s about how we should all live our lives. You know, suggestions. Like taking in the homeless, and giving away your money, and what to do about things like property ownership and, I don’t know, the Third World and so on.’

‘So this book’s aimed at high-ranking employees of the IMF?’

‘No, no, it’s for people like you and me. Because we get confused, don’t we?’

‘We do.’

‘So it’s a good idea, don’t you think?’

‘It’s a fantastic idea.’

‘You’re not being sarcastic?’

‘No. A book telling us what to think about everything? I’d buy it.’

‘I’ll give you a copy.’

‘Thank you.’

The woman on the next table doesn’t want to catch my eye any more. We’re no longer pals. She thinks I’m as daft as David is, but I don’t care. I want this book badly, and I shall believe every word, and act on every suggestion, no matter how impractical. ‘How to be Good’ will become the prescription the nice lady denied me. All I need to do is quell the doubt and scepticism that makes me human.

When we get home, GoodNews is asleep in an armchair, a notebook open on his chest. While David is putting the kettle on, I pick the notebook up carefully and sneak a look. ‘VEGETARIAN OR MEAT?????’ it says in large red letters. ‘ALLOWED ORGANIC???? Probly.’ No doubt the book will tell us how to feed a family of four on organic meat when we have given away most of our income. I put the book back gently where I found it, but GoodNews wakes anyway.