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?”

I only get to be sad about it, and I only get to be sad about it because of the part I did.

That second and a half is the most shameful thing in this account and it is also the truest, and I have since been told by a woman on Wednesdays that almost everybody has it and almost nobody says it.

PART 3

My husband had not worked at that hospital since the March.Eleven months.

The badge he clipped to his pocket every single morning, in front of me, at the kitchen door, had not opened a door in that building since the spring.

He had been getting up, showering, putting on a clean shirt, and leaving at ten past seven for eleven months.

So where was he going?

A distribution warehouse out at Brackley Cross, twenty-six minutes away.

Eleven at night until six in the morning.