The night before my wedding I heard my maid of honour through the hotel wall saying they'd pour wine on my dress and lose the rings. I recorded four minutes of it with my phone against the connecting door.

The Sunday after. Christmas Eve, in the car, outside my parents'. In the February when I was doing the seating plan at that table and asked him out loud where to put Nadia. And the week of.

The week of. He got as far as the top of our stairs on the Wednesday night.

And then he said the thing I have had the hardest time with, which is that each time he did not, it got more expensive — because by then he was not only telling me about a taxi, he was telling me he had sat on it for a month, and then two, and then four.

That is how it works. I know exactly how it works. It is what I did with a phone in a kitchen doorway in December.

I did not say that to him in that rented kitchen. I was about nine hours from working it out myself.
PART 4 — DILLY