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‘At least one of us is getting some affection somewhere. At least one of us has the thrill of being loved.’

‘I won’t deny it.’

‘No point anyway. It doesn’t matter to me.’

‘But that’s the point, isn’t it, Peter? Nothing much about me matters to you. You don’t care about me.’

That hurt, but then the truth always did.

He sighed out a low, audible breath. ‘I do care about you, Delia, which is why I want you to chase your own happiness. I just don’t love you as a husband should, and the truth is, I never have. I warned you before we were married, before we even became engaged, that I wasn’t the right person for you. But let’s be honest now, just for once. You have never loved me either, not really.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Delia, you’ve loved some image you have of me, what I give you. I’m like some sort of badge of honour.’

She shook her head. ‘How dare you.’

‘It’s not an accusation I’ll share with anyone else, and I’m not trying to hurt you. This is between us alone, because I can’t go on like this any longer. I suspect you have always loved Gordon. You wanted to be with him when we met, and you should have stayed with him. Instead, you let your mother persuade you that I, the commissioned pilot with no awkward family to navigate, a lovely big house you could move straight into, a job with a future and regular salary, a decent family name, who went to the right schools and who looked just right in his military uniform, was the right choice.’

She wiped away a tear and looked at him. ‘You are being so mean.’

‘I am being honest for the first time in our relationship, Delia,’ he said. ‘How is Gordon, anyway?’

‘Gordon’s a widower. I don’t think he’d like his wife’s memory being⁠—’

‘That doesn’t seem to have stopped you.’ Rather than shock, it crinkled a smile at the edge of her mouth, which he was pleased to see and pressed on. ‘And I don’t mean that unkindly. He was too young to stay single. And let’s face it, he hasn’t been. Just not publicly partnered up. I won’t be your cuckold husband any longer, though. Work it out with him.’

‘Peter, what are you suggesting here? We can’t just split up.’

‘Why not? This is nineteen fifty-four, not eighteen fifty-four! I’ll let you use any excuse you like. Accuse me of adultery, or better still, desertion. The courts look much kindlier on divorce than years ago. It won’t be hard.’

She looked shocked. ‘What about Mummy and Daddy?’

‘What about them?’ He sighed, exasperated now. ‘You’ve lived the life your mother wanted for you, and it’s been so very ordinary, hasn’t it? Come on, be honest now, Delia. But does Gordon make you feel special?’

She nodded.

‘That’s because he genuinely, properly loves you,’ he said, piling enthusiasm into his words, making sure she grasped his meaning. ‘He loves everything that makes you you.’

‘And you don’t?’

He wasn’t ready for that, but answered her nonetheless. ‘Well, Delia, I don’t even know where you or I meet. We are like two railway tracks that never intersect. We have no common ground in our marriage, other than perhaps we like to take tea at three o’clock in the afternoon.’ That was perhaps unfair, but his point was made and she didn’t object to his words. He pressed on. ‘I don’t seem to enjoy any of the things that bring you pleasure, and you barely understand what makes me tick. Delia, these are our lives. We only get one each. And we’re wasting them on each other. Frankly, it’s my own life I’m concerned with now and I’ve spent enough of it in a loveless, childless marriage of conveni⁠—’

‘Oh, you brute!’ she cried.

He realised what he’d said. ‘I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.’

‘You blame me,’ she said, frantically wiping her eyes again. ‘You⁠—’

‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘I don’t. Stop, Delia. It’s not your fault we never had a child. The doctor told us that repeatedly – sometimes it just doesn’t happen.’

She wept in his arms for a while. It was an old wound, and a big part of why their marriage hadn’t worked.

‘I’m not blaming you for us not having children,’ Peter said again, once the tears had slowed. ‘I mentioned us being childless only because it means splitting up is so much easier. There’s no one else to hurt – we don’t even have a dog or cat to worry about. They say it takes two hands to clap… well, it takes two to make a marriage and two to break it. Ours is broken, Delia, but it was never really whole though, was it? Gordon was always there, lamenting that you chose me instead of him. And I was too disinterested, too remote, too bloody mouthless, I suppose, to stand up and put a stop to the wedding.’

‘We should have tried again – to have a baby, I mean.’

‘Yes, maybe we should have tried harder.’