My husband had left me for another woman, but we kept in touch. He called me whenever he needed me. Sometimes it was early in the morning, on his way to work. Sometimes in the evening, when he walked his new woman’s dog, a thirteen-year-old Russian Terrier named Becky. Or, occasionally, in the middle of the day. We’d meet in different places: under a bridge, in a garden behind a row of azalea bushes, in the dungeony car park of his office building. Our meetings were brief. He would stand close to me but never touch me. He would let me stroke his hair like I used to when we were married.

Then there were times when I didn’t hear from him. Days went by and he didn’t call.

The woman was much younger than him; he’d met her when she delivered sandwiches to his office. High-quality sandwiches with home-made bread and organic feta cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. I’d learned that she was pregnant from the ultrasound picture he put on Facebook, which, even without a caption, won him two hundred and fifty-seven Likes and eighty-three messages of congratulation.

I’d moved out of our house and into a ground-floor flat with a small north-facing garden that stood in darkness almost all year round. Most days I sat still in the kitchen and watched the light moving across the floor until it reached my feet and warmed them. The building was quiet except for the baby on the top floor. It cried for hours. I’d seen the mum walking in the neighbourhood, pushing the buggy. Sometimes she would stop in the middle of the road, pale and mumbling, while the baby kept weeping.

Before he became successful, my husband used to sell toys out of the boot of his car. All sorts of toys – plastic dolls dressed up in different outfits, puzzles, wind-up cars. They were all neatly arranged in the boot and across the back seat. We would drive out on weekends and he’d knock on random doors. He had the kind of confidence that could afford rejection. People trusted him. I should have told them the truth. I should have said that he treated people like toys and toys like people. But I hadn’t said anything; I’d waited in the car with the windows rolled up. People don’t warm to me. My kids don’t answer the phone when I call them. Instead, they send me links to videos on YouTube: a cat playing the piano, an elderly woman rapping, a child saved at the last minute from sure death. Under the link they add one of those emojis: a round face with tears coming out of its eyes. It’s supposed to be laughing, but I know it’s crying. I can see its heart breaking.