‘I only meant that you saw our marriage differently from me.’

‘I did you an injustice,’ he said, clinging to the one thing that was clear to him. ‘And I’m trying to put it right.’

‘But you can’t put the past right. You can’t make it something it wasn’t. It’s dead and gone.’

His combative streak would have made him fight that view, but there was something melancholy about ‘dead and gone’ that silenced him. He’d never been able to cope with her subtler wits. Handling facts was easier for him, and somehow it had always been tempting to use them to evade an argument. After a while Kelly had given up trying to make him talk things through, and he’d been relieved.

Kelly gave a little sigh. ‘Oh, well,’ she said. ‘No point in arguing now.’

‘Perhaps I want to argue,’ he said illogically.

Her lips twitched. ‘Nonsense, Jake, you never wanted to argue. You just wanted me to keep quiet and agree with you. Failing agreement, keep quiet anyway.’

‘You make me sound like a monster,’ he said, appalled. ‘A bully.’

‘No,’ she said with a touch of wistfulness. ‘You weren’t either. Just a man who always thought he was right. Much like all the others, really. No worse, anyway.’

This faint praise did nothing to appease him.

‘Have you been thinking like this all the time?’ he demanded.

‘Not all of it, no. But it wasn’t much of a marriage at the end, was it?’ She began gathering cups and headed for the kitchen. ‘No, stay there.’ She stopped him rising. ‘There isn’t much.’

She wanted to get away from him. The conversation had taken a turn that she was finding hard to cope with. She should never have started talking about love with Jake. It aroused memories best forgotten.

But do I really want to forget? she asked herself wistfully. Would I wipe out the last eight years? I know they took a great deal away from me, but they gave me so much.