I tried calling up a girl who at that time I sometimes used to see on the sly, but she, almost whispering into her mobile, told me she was with her boyfriend. What did I expect on a Friday? I felt at a loose end, but then I thought I’d rent a good thriller, get out a frozen pizza and a big bottle of cold beer and, one way or another, that Friday evening would pass.

I chose Black Rain, even though I’d already seen it twice. I saw it a third time and still liked it. I ate the pizza and drank all the beer. On top of that I had a whisky and smoked several cigarettes. I flipped between television channels, discovering that the local stations had taken to showing hard porn again. This made me realize that it was one in the morning, so I went to bed.

I don’t know when I got to sleep and I don’t know when Sara came in, because I didn’t hear her.

When I woke next morning she was already up. I took my sleepy face into the kitchen and she, without a word, poured me a cup of American coffee. Both of us have always liked American coffee, really weak.

I took two sips and was just about to ask her what time she had got back the night before when she told me she wanted a separation.

She said it just like that: “Guido, I want a separation.”

After a long, deafening silence I was forced to ask the most banal of questions.

Why?

She told me why. She was perfectly calm and implacable. Maybe I thought she hadn’t noticed how my life had been in the last… let’s say two years. She, on the other hand, had noticed and she hadn’t liked it. What had humiliated her most was not my infidelity – and the word struck me in the face like spittle – but the fact that I had shown real disrespect by treating her like a fool. She didn’t know if I had always been like this or had become so. She didn’t know which alternative she preferred and perhaps she didn’t even care.