Long holiday weekends make me think of Julian — I can’t help it. We had so many good ones in the beginning. I think always of the first May Bank Holiday weekend in 2006: epic Friday night at Amanda’s, a dinner party of six that somehow morphed into a dance party for 25; downing pints at the Highbury Vaults on the Saturday, starting at 11am, then hiding out with Julian in my new little studio in the Cotham Road, post-Palace on the Hill, as Minty and I called our flat before she chucked me out. Julian and I were still a little raw from our recent break-up-and-make-up debacle, but it seemed to sharpen every pleasure rather than pull away from it — like he was finally mindful that my absence was something he could not bear, and that I was perfectly capable of walking away and forging a life on my own.

On the Sunday, we took a bottle of port up Brandon Hill and got utterly trashed on the syrupy stuff. We spread out on the burgundy Vellux blanket I’d brought with me from California, playing Arab Strap through the tiny plug-in speaker stuck into my iPod. The whole day stretched on and on, golden and honeyed, with Julian plucking daffodils for me and weaving bits of clover into my hair, and I couldn’t imagine myself more in love with Julian and Bristol and the world and being alive.

We stumbled into the White Harte when the sun went down, meeting up with Alex and Miranda like nothing had ever happened, like Alex and I had never happened only a month before. If Miranda felt any animosity towards me, she had tamped it down firmly into the earth beneath her, and certainly didn’t show it beyond ostentatiously kissing Alex’s hands as often as she could. The four of us later watched the Monday sun rise as we lounged on the balcony of Alex and Julian’s flat, and if Alex watched me a little too closely at times as he smoked his way through another pack of Silk Cuts, I tried not to notice (and was thankful Julian did not).

The last one we spent as a couple was the new year flipping from 2016 to 2017. Suffolk, this time, at the cottage Julian’s sister Annabelle lived in. Theberton, I think. So much fog, the whole time we were there. Rained a bit on New Year’s Day. Julian and I were just so over by this point, but trying very hard for appearances to be a couple in front of the company we’d gathered: Jamie and Bex (newly a couple then, and heading to the altar later this year), Will, Charlie and Sasha, Annabelle (of course), and Alex. The last of these vexed and thrilled me the most. I smiled so hard that long, long weekend, smiled no matter how shitty I felt, no matter how much I resented being around my husband. I smiled whenever anyone was looking at me, laughed when Julian made fun of how terrible and common Americans were, pretended not to hear Annabelle tell Sasha she thought something was up between Alex and me.

Which of course there was, but nothing as easy and simple as the two of us finding a spare bedroom. Ah, no. Nothing so easy as a kiss, nor simple as a fuck. Al and I were both so messed up and living fully in each other’s misery by this point, feeding on each other’s daily heartache over the phone, feeling out the corners and contours of our joint and disjointed loneliness. For Alex, it was Lucy’s absence and his mother and sister’s ever-increasing financial dependence on his salary; and for me, Julian’s calcifying disdain for my inability to carry a child for him, I mean, for us. By denying ourselves any physical consummation of our desire, Alex and I only fed our passion, which was its own tart pleasure.

Actually having to be near Alex — more than a voice now or a face on a computer monitor — made me feel physically sick. If he and I were somehow alone in a room together — possible even when nine people are cooped up in a cozy three-bed cottage — I’d walk out. I thought that if I touched him — a desire that thrummed in me the five days we camped out in Theberton — I would not be able to stop, just as I was not able to stop myself 11 years before, when Alex found me in tears at a party, Julian having walked out in disgust at some minor transgression on my part. But I would not touch, would not be touched. Noli me tangere.

Everyone went to Minsmere on the Monday for a walk (Will was a twitcher — a birdwatcher) but I stayed at the cottage, feigning a slight cold. I just wanted to stay in bed and listen to Radio 4, sipping brandy. (I was actually able to find the very thing I listened to in my chilly room that morning — this.) Julian had been more attentive than usual the night before, hovering about me like an overprotective chaperone, and essentially shutting down any attempts Alex would make to start a conversation with me. Looking back, I understand Julian must have already started to put the pieces together, even before we got to Annabelle’s. The truth was already starting to consume him: his best mate and his wife had fallen in love with each other. Again.

Oh, Alex and I weren’t so stupid and sloppy this time as we were over a decade before when Minty caught us making out in my bedroom in the Palace on the Hill, listening to Belle & Sebastian’s “If You’re Feeling Sinister” in a cloud of Nag Champa incense. No, but it was like some stupid costume drama where the air of intense desire between two stuffy Victorians who can’t act upon their lust becomes palpable to others around them. (Sasha told me later that it felt like walking into a wall of pheromones.) Instead, we texted each other, like horny teenagers, in front of everyone. (“Lame,” Rachel told me. “You should have just fucked him and been done with it.”) It must have seemed a little odd when the others were getting loaded on champagne and snorting lines of coke while Alex and I sat on opposite sides of the room, smiling at our phones. To keep up the charade, I was simultaneously texting with Jen, so if Julian had asked what was amusing me so much, I could show him all the Donald Trump memes she was sending me. (Suffice to say, Julian is a fan of Trump, and I am not.)

I was in the process of trying to coax more heat out of the terrifyingly vintage two-bar fire by aggressively jabbing at the heat control buttons when I heard a light taptap on the door. Annabelle had told me more than once that she was convinced the old house was haunted — swore up and down she’d seen a small boy running past her bedroom door at least once a week in the six months she’d lived there. I sat up straight and did not dare turn around, even though the door was closed.

“Melissa,” I heard, the softest tone. “Let me in.” Another tap, and the door’s ceramic knob jiggled a little before I heard it open.

Against my better judgment, I turned around.

Alex hovered in the doorway. I think I would have welcomed ghost-boy more at that moment. “Mel.”

“Go away, I don’t want to see you,” I said, turning my attention back to the fire, jutting out my bottom lip like a sulky teenager.

“What, so we’re supposed to keep texting each other, like we’re not getting exactly what we’ve wanted for the past three months? It was your idea that we all get together in the first place and now you freeze me out?”

He was, of course, absolutely correct: it had been my idea to bring everyone together for New Year’s. I thought in a big enough group of people we’d have adequate cover so Alex and I could… what? Run away together? Sneak away and hide in closets like we did when we were kids? The stakes were so much higher now — Alex was fighting Minty for custody of Lucy, and the last thing he needed was a report from Julian that he had “stolen” his best friend’s wife during a drunken and debauched bank holiday weekend out in the wilds of Suffolk. I was still convinced that Julian would eventually have more compassion for how I was feeling over my miscarriage in August and all would be well again. (I was, apparently, not sufficiently anguished in his opinion; it was true that while I grieved for the loss, I was only eight weeks along and frankly I felt more relieved than anything else, which should have told me something). Julian increasingly took our continuing childlessness as a personal affront, but we were going to start IVF when we got back. Running away with Alex would strip me of my life, and I wasn’t ready for that. It was quite shallow of me, but at the time, it was also true.

“It was a stupid idea, Al. I didn’t realize how I’d actually feel once you were here with me.” I had started slapping the fire surround at this point in a vain attempt to get it to work properly. “I just want to nap now. And why aren’t you with the others?”

“Pfffffft, Will and his birds. Worse than golf at ruining a walk. Fuck that, fuck the rest of them and fuck that useless fire. Let’s go to the pub. Go put your bloody coat on and let’s get out of this place. It’s making us both even bigger arseholes than we already are.”

I couldn’t help myself — I had my first genuine smile of the weekend. He was absolutely right. I turned around and saw my beautiful Alexander — mine — grinning like a fool, dark hair pushed behind his ears, his hands shoved in his jean pockets and looking for all the world like the boy I’d tried once to run away with, but failed.

I grabbed my scarf and my coat and his hand and pulled him out of the room, the hallway, the house, down the road, into the pub, into a booth where we sat and laughed and drank pints of Adnams and were so careful not to touch again for the next three hours. We didn’t talk about our… whatever it was between us at that point. We talked about football and California and London and Lucy, about the passing of my sweet cat Tibbs at Thanksgiving, about Rachel and her soaring career, about music and Doctor Strange, which we had both seen the week before. The stifling atmosphere of our friendship let air in for the first time in months and I felt… I felt like this is how I was supposed to feel with Julian. Safe. Cherished. Still young. Like my opinions had worth and heft. Like I was a whole person, defined as Melissa herself, not wife of Julian.

At my suggestion, Alex texted Julian to tell him to bring everyone to the Lion when they were sick of hanging around being quiet in bird hides with Will. It took barely 20 minutes for them all to roll in (Will looked dejected), pull extra chairs around and fill the table with pints and packets of crisps. For all the world, we looked like any bunch of entitled City-types, loud and posh and ruddy-cheeked in our laughter, downing bitters and G&Ts. But if you’d looked closer, you’d have seen Julian with a territorial arm around my back, never letting Alex out of his sight. You’d have heard not a word exchanged between these friends of over 16 years, between two men who had once shared lecture notes and jumpers and girls and a flat for two years.

When we got back to Pasadena, my tenancy in my marriage to Julian had only a month left in its term. By Valentine’s Day it was all over, thankfully before I’d had a chance to start IVF. As much as it destroyed me, I needed to be cut down for new shoots to appear.