He had just, in a single reflexive lunge, done it in public, on camera, in front of everyone, and there was no unseeing it now.

I have thought about the role that those thirty relatives played in all of this, because it is uncomfortable and it is important.

For five years, Julian’s family had known, in the way that families always know, that something was wrong in his marriage.

They had seen the way he spoke to me.

They had noticed that I was never thanked, never rested, never quite treated as a person.

They had heard, perhaps, a raised voice through a wall, or seen a flinch, or caught the particular deadness in the eyes of a woman who has stopped expecting kindness.