So when I stood in that ballroom and handed the question back to him — how was your day, Julian — I was not being cruel, though I understand it may have sounded cruel.

I was showing him that I had learned his language.

That the ritual he had used to reassure me, night after night, while he betrayed me, I now understood for exactly what it had always been.

He had asked me how my day was on the very evening I discovered his affair, and I had smiled and said busy, and hidden everything, and begun to build the case that had now arrived. How was your day, Julian. It was the sound of the performance ending.

It was me telling him, in the four words he had made meaningless, that the meaningless was over, and the true things were about to be said out loud.