I went to surprise my husband at the hospital with his lunch. His colleague looked at me with tears in his eyes and said: “He hasn’t told you anything, has he?”

Eight months of it. Under his own name, on a payroll, with a locker and a number.

Because after the third month, suspension stops being paid.

I did not know that. I had no reason to know it and I have since found out that almost nobody does.

The money is the part nobody asks about, so I will put it down.

Our outgoings are four thousand one hundred a month. That is the mortgage, the car, her swimming, the lot.

A night shift at Brackley Cross, on the rate he was on, is about two thousand two hundred a month after tax.

He made up the difference out of an account I have never had a card for, which turned out to be his father’s money from 2017, and which he had been keeping for a deposit for her one day.

It is gone. All of it. That is