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Oh, Ant. I shut my eyes. Spare me. Spare me Love. He didn't even know the word he was grappling for. ‘Something more cerebral,’ I gabbled quickly, deflecting him. ‘A higher plateau, a meeting of minds?’

‘Yes,’ he looked at me, surprised. ‘Yes, that was it.’

No, Ant. No, it wasn't.

‘I… couldn't stop thinking about her. I knew it was wrong, dreadful. She was so young, so impressionable, but everywhere I went, every lecture I went to, every faculty meeting, I'd look out of the windows, hoping to see her, hoping she'd pass by…’

I felt prickly with sweat. Damp under the arms.

‘Why didn't you break up with me?’ I whispered, struggling to maintain some control. ‘Tell me you'd met someone else?’

He hung his head. ‘I meant to tell you. To be honest with you. Not to break up with you. After all, I knew it was hopeless. She was a student, for God's sake.’

‘So you kept your options open. You couldn't have her, so – hey, let's just stick it out with good old Evie.’

‘No! No, Evie, I loved you. We were so good together, are good together. I was just very confused. I knew this was just a passing infatuation, I tried to put her from my mind. And once I did try to tell you about it.’ He looked at me, pleadingly. ‘At the farm. In bed that afternoon, just before—’

‘Yes, yes, I know.’ I got up quickly from the bed. He had tried. Of course he had. That terrible day. Minutes before Neville Carter had drowned. Evie… there's something you need to know.

I went to the other window in our bedroom, the pretty little round one, like a porthole, with the circle of stained glass in the middle. We'd found it in Bath, on a long weekend, hustled it home and got a builder to knock a circular hole in the bedroom wall, pop it in. My arms were folded tightly around me as I gazed out to the street, transformed to a riot of colour through the stained glass.

‘And then, when Neville died…’ Ant paused; beside me, but looking out of his clearer window.

I turned to him, incredulous. ‘You felt you owed it me? To marry me?’

‘No, of course not, Evie. But we were so… so in it together. And suddenly, what I felt for – for Stacey's mother – seemed so frivolous, in the light of what had happened. It belonged to another age, a carefree, careless age. One I no longer inhabited. It felt so wrong. I'd elevated it in my mind to something courtly and noble, and all at once it became… fancying a student. Suddenly I was the sort of man who let children drown while I shagged my girlfriend – oh, and meanwhile, lusted after my pupils.’ He hung his head. ‘I hated myself. I took a long, hard look at myself. Walked all the way around and thought, no. It was a wake-up call.’ He began to blink rapidly. ‘But I didn't just marry you because it was the right thing to do, Evie. I married you because I loved you, and realized I'd been temporarily diverted.’

I stared at him. He clearly believed that. I didn't, but he did. He'd talked himself into believing this girl was all part of his shame, and being a good, nice, decent man, he believed it.

I swallowed. ‘OK, Ant. Quick as you can, canter me through the next bit, there's a good chap.’

He spread his hands out, palms up, a despairing gesture. ‘There isn't much to tell. You and I got engaged, and then a few weeks later I went out for a drink one night, when you wanted to watch something on television, and I went for a walk through the city and ended up at the King's Head.’

‘Did you know she was working there?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you stayed till closing time and walked her home?’

‘Yes.’

‘And it was a mild night and you walked down by the river, past Magdalen Bridge – where was she, Balliol?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then you took her in your arms and —’

‘Yes, yes! Stop it, Evie. I'm not proud of it.’

‘I need to know.’

‘Well, you do know.’

I breathed in deeply. Let the breath out shakily. ‘Yes, I know. You felt trapped. You felt you were getting married out of force of circumstance, and you felt you had unfinished business and you finished it, in a field, by Magdalen Bridge.’

He hung his head.

‘Did you feel it was finished, Ant? Is that