A table of eleven who wanted to be there is a better table than a table of fifteen where four are performing and one is paying.

I sat beside Derek, who had, over the year, grown into the version of himself I had briefly glimpsed on the night everything broke.

He was not a different man.

He was the same man with the volume turned up on the part of him that had always known right from wrong and had simply, for too long, found it easier not to listen.

He put his hand on my knee under the table, not as a signal that I needed managing, just as a thing a husband does, and I let it sit there.