She would have to act quickly, before she lost her nerve.

She would bring up how he undermined her in public.’ the way he introduced her to his friends by saying, ‘And this is the Klingon.’ How he had bought her twenty-five pounds’ worth of lottery tickets for her last birthday.

But then she thought about how quickly his bombast deflated, and how sad he had looked when she had asked him to sleep somewhere else. She stood near the bedroom door for a few moments, thinking through the consequences, then climbed back into bed, withdrawing from the potential battle.

She was startled awake at 3.1 5 a.m. by Brian screaming and fighting the duvet. His bedside light snapped on. When her eyes focused on her surroundings, she saw Brian stamping his foot on the carpet and holding his right calf.

‘Cramp?’ she said.

‘Not cramp! Your fucking high heels! You’ve kicked a hole in my bloody leg!’

‘You should have stayed in Brian Junior’s room and not come sneaking back into mine.’

Brian said, ‘Your room? It used to be ours.’

Brian was not good with pain or blood and here he was in the early hours of the morning, with both. He began to wail. When Eva had orientated herself.’ she could see that there actually was a hole in his leg.

‘A lot of blood… wash the wound clean,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to bathe it with distilled water and iodine.’

Eva could not leave the bed. Instead, she reached over and plucked the bottle of Chanel No. 5 off her bedside table. She pointed the nozzle at Brian’s wound and pressed, keeping her finger on the spray mechanism. Brian squealed, hopped across the beige carpet and out of the door.

She had done the right thing, Eva thought, as she drifted back off to sleep. Everybody knows that Chanel No. 5 is a good antiseptic in an emergency.