Before I went upstairs that night I made a condition, and I made it standing in a hallway at about half past eleven, with a sleeping child in my arms, in a voice that I am told was not entirely steady.

I said: “I’m not taking charity.

I’ll run this house.

I’ll cook, I’ll clean, I’ll do the shopping, I’ll do the laundry, I’ll do whatever needs doing.

If you won’t agree to that we leave in the morning.”

Arthur looked at me for a long moment.

And he said, “All right.”

He has told me since that this was the second hardest thing he did in the whole of it, and I did not understand that for over a year.