My sister kissed my husband in front of thirty people at her own anniversary party and called it a joke. Her husband had a wrapped present in his hands and an envelope she had never opened.

I had not spoken to that woman since about 2018. We were at school together. She is the one whose utility room it was.

I rang to apologise for New Year 2016, and I got about two sentences in before she said: “Oh, Iona. I knew.”

She had known that night. She had come looking for her husband and had got as far as the kitchen door, and had heard me in there getting Romy’s coat, and had turned round and gone back to the party.

Because — and she said this without any edge at all — “you were handling it, and I was thirty, and I did not want to be the woman who made a scene at her own New Year’s.”

Her marriage ended in 2019. Not because of that night, she says. Because of four or five other nights, with other people, over three years.

And then she said the thing that took the floor out.