‘Oh, you think you have an edge because you disagree with its 4.6 average on Goodreads? You think it’s a cool personality trait to publicly hate someone who will never learn your name?’

Of course I don’t actually say this. But I imagine myself saying it. This is the first time he is bringing the book, the writer, up to me. I have watched him take apart the novel online, photographing portions of text and gleefully ripping into them, but for some reason it’s only now that he wants to talk about it.

‘Have you read it?’ is how the conversation started.

‘Yes,’ I lied. I am not much of a reader except for when I’m on holiday, but regardless, I start to question whether I haven’t read it because his opinion matters to me.

After some back and forth about the book – he maintains its only merit is the triple narrative, which at first it unwieldy and overly complicated, but comes together in a satisfying conclusion – I finally say, ‘She doesn’t have social media.’ I know this because I have checked.

But he looks at me like I’ve misunderstood the point.

‘It’s a good book,’ I say in a small, wheedling voice that embarrasses me. I hide my mouth with my wine glass.

‘Good?’ he repeats. His disbelief is vaudevillian. ‘That is ludicrous.’

He has these awful lips, they’re very cold and hard and they remind me of how when I was ten I used to lie in the bath on my belly and practise my kissing technique on the wet acrylic.

Furious, I mumble something about it resonating with some people.

‘Oh sure,’ he mocks, ‘the woman with the micro-fringe who only drinks vintage burgundy has something to say.’ Rolling his eyes. If I were brave, I would scoop them out of his sockets and snap his optic nerves with my fingernails. As it is, I bite my fingernails, and they’re very short.

‘Whatever,’ I say. My face is burning. I can’t believe this man has been inside me. A few weeks ago, I was telling all of my friends about him – this writer guy I’d met on a dating app. He writes a weekly column in a national paper and has written a book of essays, which I also haven’t read. My friend, though, has read the book, and some of his columns, and when she found out who I’d started dating, her eyebrows knitted together. ‘Him?’ she asked.

He smirks at me, beer foam caught in his moustache. His fisherman beanie makes his head look like a condom. I can’t believe I am only realising that now. ‘No,’ he says at length, clearly enjoying this, ‘go on.’ When I don’t speak, he adds, ‘You clearly want to.’

‘Well no, actually – you want to,’ I do not say. I swallow down the rest of my burgundy and try not to hiccough.

‘Hmm?’ he presses.

‘Forget it,’ I say. ‘I’m going to the bathroom.’ I go into the bathroom, splash my neck with cool water and run the cold tap over my wrists. Scrubbing at the perfume I doused myself in earlier. There is lipstick on my teeth. I leave it there.

When I leave the bathroom, I turn right at the bar instead of left and walk out of the pub. My breath escapes me in painful snatches. I carry on walking. Frost glitters on the pavement. I turn several times to see if he’s come after me, but he hasn’t. Acid rises up my throat. Right now, or later tonight, or maybe tomorrow, he will redownload his dating apps and he will find several women to terrorise with his monologues about looking for a serious girl. If he’s lucky, one of them will be stupid enough to let him fuck her.

Kelly and I walk hand in hand with the shyness that marked the first weeks of our relationship, and when not so many minutes have passed, we agree our marriage has ended. When it has been decided, we stop walking. I am winded. We have been walking towards the waterline, and I am amazed that something so fundamental can have been determined before we’re even halfway down the beach.

But maybe it was determined long ago: like the day we met. Seventeen years ago, at a karaoke night in the city. Sweat heaving off the basement walls. Tables sticky with cheap wine, shots bought by the dozen. I was sitting with my friends, I think one of them had a birthday, when a boy my age stepped onto the stage, reached for the mic and brought it too close to the speaker. The room ripped with the squeal of feedback. All eyes were on him. He sang Blue Monday by New Order, and he sang it perfectly. I watched every second of it, unaware then that we would fall into bed, then in love. Unaware also that for the next near two decades we would commit our combined sanity to making our marriage work.

I see a small dead crab belly-up on the sand. A hole has been gouged out of it and any meat left inside will have gone bad. I nudge it with my toe and the crab flops, pathetic, to the side. I have an urge to tell it I’m sorry, but Kelly is crying.

‘This is stupid,’ I say. The wind snatches at my words.

He sniffs and swallows the snot. There’s always been something boyish about him – the openness of his face, like he’s perpetually on the cusp of asking a question. But today, I can’t locate that curiosity in him. He just looks tired. I am tired.

‘The thing is,’ he tells me, ‘this might be the least stupid thing of all.’ I hate that he’s right. I disentangle my hand from his and clutch my elbows. It’s possible I am about to vomit. I focus again on the crab. It has a pearlescent sheen and sand caught in and around the hole. By the time I plucked up the courage to speak to him in that karaoke bar, tequila was radiating from my pores. He had a name for girls like me: he called us good-time girls.

‘C’mon,’ he says after several minutes. I let him lead me towards the water. We feel the sand getting colder and firmer, our footprints marking the differences in our gait – mine reflecting my shortness and quickness; his, collapsed arches and a bunion. The freezing wash sucks at our toes. I leave Kelly hanging back and walk in to the knees, bracing my teeth against the cold, holding my trousers up with both hands. They get wet anyway.

This is where he proposed to me. It was summer then: tangerine sky and a gentle, pollenated sifting in the air. It’s late winter now. We have two teenaged children and they both do, and do not, know what is happening to us. They want to get a puppy; we will have to tell them no. Double whammy of bad news – traumatised for life. Despite myself, I make a mental note: joke to Kelly about how at least our kids will have something to go to therapy for.

‘Kelly, look,’ I say. There is a seal bobbing parallel to the shoreline. It looks like it’s looking for a place to land. I cast around, hoping to spot more of them, but it’s alone. Probably it’s become separated from its herd.

Kelly wades in carefully, holding his arms out for balance even though the water is not angry or deep. We stand next to one another, watching the seal. My heart jerks; I want it to find what it’s looking for. I am very careful to not look up into Kelly’s face. I watch the seal until it’s a dot, and then I close my eyes and turn back to the beach.

A mango sorbet stick, dislodged from the bottom of a chest freezer and enjoyed while walking through the village.

Fig jam on hand-torn pieces of baguette. The figs came from the tree by the pool – in the morning they’d be small and hard, and by mid-afternoon, fat and heavy, some of them splashing into the pool water, others splitting open on the tiles – I picked them myself, then took them to a lady in the village who cooked them down with sugar, lemon juice and ginger, and packed the dense result into a jar with whole hazelnuts. Cloyingly sweet; unquestionably decadent.

Chèvre cut from a small wheel at intervals throughout the day, scraped from the blade with my teeth.

Bastardised paella because I couldn’t find saffron in any of the village shops and the market wasn’t on for another three days, and then I got too impatient to wait for the bottom to crisp even though that’s the best part. The asparagus, too, was undercooked, but the meal was made better with rosé wine – plenty of it. Eaten alone in my room while I listened to the drunk sounds of the other residents listing through the cypress trees.

Stepping along the fragrant edge of a lavender field, nothing, though I smoked two cigarettes. I stubbed them out on the tarmac road and pocketed the butts.

Omelette with truffles at one of the outside tables of a local restaurant, which I shared with a resident I’d befriended, along with fries and the freshest tomato salad I have ever eaten. The restaurant was in a small square, which on Thursdays accommodated almost fifty market stalls. My companion was from America and, she had explained levelly, was very rich. I put her at something like fifty-five. No, she had never done anything like this before; really, she was just seeing if she would ever want to retire in the south of France. ‘And?’ I asked her, spearing a bit of omelette with my fork. She waited for the church bells to cease ringing in 8pm. ‘No,’ she said.

Bread. So much bread.

A vegan chocolate pudding that I found in the fridge of one of the small shops in the village. It was gelatinous and the gloopy texture made me nauseous.

Mustard-pickle-flavoured Lays. Moutarde. By the fistful.

Figs, straight from the tree. Feet dangling in the pool or at the small desk in my room. Sucking out the juicy seeds while staring at my laptop screen. A tonic for heightened moments of perceived creative death. When writing a novel, I recommend figs.

A yellow macaron, which I did not like. Reminiscent of eating paper. Do people seriously enjoy this?

Red mullet, which another resident prepared for us all one night. He served it over a sauce made with tomatoes and red onions. We ate it at the long outdoor table, citronella candles burning bright. The tarragon in particular – someone said – tied the whole thing together. That night I slept better than I think I ever have.

Nutella, straight from the jar with a tablespoon.

After much discussion with an Italian man in the local bar about the perfect drinking snack, a small group of us piled into one of the cars and drove ten kilometres to the nearest supermarket, where, the Italian man had informed us, you could find taralli, a toroidal breadstick popular in Puglia. ‘They are particularly good dipped in white wine,’ he told us. So, despite being in France, we bought a bottle of salty Italian. And, he was right.

It all started yesterday afternoon with the guy at the laundrette – and okay no; if I am being honest it did not start with him. It started with me; I am not assertive enough. That is what Jerome tells me. I do not treat interactions like shoving contests. Apparently this is a bad thing.

So this guy at the laundrette, he didn’t take enough off my trousers. I had given him clear instructions: FOUR INCHES. I said this several times. Watched him write it on a slip of paper and loop it through the buttonhole of the trousers. He even showed it to me, this slip of paper. ‘Yes?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I said. I said yes.

And don’t even talk to me about deflecting responsibility, I’ve already addressed that. This liqueur goes down smooth.

Beautiful skin on him, this laundrette man, and perfect teeth. Never trust a man with perfect teeth, that’s what my mother used to say. My dad had perfect teeth. Make of that what you will. I paid the man with perfect teeth twelve pounds and speed-walked home; I was running late. I am almost always running late, and it is because of this, according to most of my friends, that I always arrive with an anecdote. Jerome calls them ‘excuses’.

The clock on the nightstand says 12:04pm. I pour myself another.

So I got home and I slung my trousers, still in the translucent sleeve they hang them in, over the back of a chair while I got ready: oversize satin shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons, flannel tucked into the collar while I applied makeup. I was drinking white wine and listening to nineties pop punk. Late afternoon sun was coming in the window in long slants that made the devil’s ivy glow. In other words: I felt good.

On went the gold hoops and the rings. One last trip to the toilet, and then it was time for the trousers. I’d saved them for last as a final flourish. Yeah, I guess I could’ve, should’ve, tried them on before committing to the whole look. But I will never be talked down from a little outfit—

The hems went over my heels. Like, all the way over. Even with chunky loafers they were far too long and looked stupid – no, with chunky loafers they looked especially stupid. The laundrette man with the perfect teeth had taken off no more than an inch. What does that tell you about men? And they say we lack spatial awareness.

It is ten past twelve. My phone, drained of battery, is face-down in front of the mirror. I might’ve thrown it some time in the night. Might’ve sent several text messages to a certain man. Ya, so Jerome broke up with me on our anniversary. The silly little outfit was silly after all.

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