His familiarity brought tears to her eyes.

With unbearable fragility he placed a fluttery kiss on the corner of her mouth. As if it was the first time. Then another butterfly kiss. And another. Moving inwards slowly, creating pleasure that was almost indistinguishable from pain.

Not moving, barely breathing, she let him administer kisses.

Sex with Oliver was the one time in her life when Lisa played passive. When she wasn’t controlling or rapacious or proactive or voracious. She always let him be in charge and he loved it.

‘I look into your eyes and you’re not even there,’ he often used to remark. ‘You’re just this whimpery, helpless little girl.’

She knew he was turned on by the contrast between her usual bolshiness and such bedroom passivity, but that wasn’t why she did it. With Oliver there was no need to be in charge. He knew exactly what to do. Nobody did it better.

The kisses moved from her mouth to her neck, her hairline. Her eyes closed, she groaned with pleasure. She could die now, she really could. She heard him whisper, his breath hot on her ear, ‘You’re gone, babes.’

Like a sleepwalker, she was led to the bed. Obediently she stretched out her arms for her jacket to be removed, lifted her hips for her skirt to come off. The smooth, cool sheets poured across the bare skin of her back. Her whole body was quivering, but she lay without moving. When he grazed her nipple with his mouth, she jerked as if she’d had an electric shock. How could she have forgotten how sensational this was?

The kisses moved downwards, ever downwards. He placed a tiny kiss on her stomach, so gentle it barely lifted the downy little hairs, but it flooded her with swollen sensation.

‘Oliver, I think I’m going to…’

‘Wait!’

The condom was the bum note, the one thing that reminded her that things weren’t the way they used to be. But she refused to let herself think about it. So he was probably having sex with others? Well, so was she.

When he entered her, a great peace settled. She exhaled long and clean, all tension fleeing. For a second she savoured her absence of agitation until he began to drive himself into her with long, slow thrusts. She intended to enjoy this. She knew she would.

Afterwards she wept.

‘Why are you crying, baby?’ He cradled her to him.

‘It’s just a physical thing,’ she said, already regaining control of who she really was. Enough of that passive stuff. ‘People often cry when they’ve come.’

Their earlier anger and discomfort had been burnt off by passion. Instead they lay in bed, talking idly, wrapped around each other in affection that was bizarrely comfortable. It was as if they’d never been apart, never fought acrimoniously, never thought with bitterness of each other. Not that either of them was naïve enough to think that the sex indicated that a reunion was on the cards. Even when their fighting had been at its ugliest, they’d had sex. Amazing sex. It had seemed to provide an outlet for all that excess of emotion.

Absently she swept her hands along the undulation of his biceps. ‘Still working out, I see. What can you bench-press now?’

‘One hundred and thirty.’

‘I’m impressed!’

After midnight, conversation wound down further and further until eventually he yawned. ‘Let’s go to sleep, babes.’

‘’K,’ she said drowsily. There was no question that she leave, they both knew that. ‘I’ll just go to the bathroom.’

After she’d washed her face, she used his toothbrush. She did it without thinking and it was only after she’d finished that she noticed.

When she returned from the bathroom she put her chilly feet between his thighs to warm them, the way she’d always done. Then they slept, as they had slept almost every night for four years, spooned together. She curled into a ‘C’, with him curled into a bigger ‘C’ around her, hugging her length, his palm warm on her stomach.

‘Night night.’

‘Night.’

Silence.

Into the darkness, Oliver remarked, ‘This is really weird.’ She could hear his pain and confusion. ‘I’m having an affair with my wife.’

She closed her eyes and pressed her spine into his stomach. The rigid tension that kept her back teeth permanently clamped together loosened, lessened and dissolved. She slept better than she had in a long, long time.

In the morning they slipped with almost alarming ease into their old routine. The pattern of domesticity that they’d shared every morning for four years. Oliver got up first and organized coffee. Then Lisa hogged the bathroom while he seethed outside trying to chivvy her along. When he pounded the door and yelled, ‘C’ mon babes, I’ll be late!’ the déjà vu was so intense she had a long, dizzy moment when she couldn’t remember where she was. She knew it wasn’t home but…

When she emerged swaddled in towels, she grinned, ‘Sorry.’

‘You’d better have left me some dry towels,’ he warned.

‘’Course I have.’ She scooted across to gulp some coffee. And waited.

She heard the rush of the shower being turned on, then a while later the sudden cessation of its pounding. Any minute now…

‘Aw, Lisa.’ Oliver’s echoey complaint issued, as expected. ‘Babes! You’ve only left me a naffing face-cloth! You always do this.’

‘It’s not a face-cloth,’ Crouching with laughter, Lisa came into the bathroom. ‘It’s much bigger.’

Oliver scorned the hand-towel that Lisa demonstrated. ‘That’s not even going to dry my knob!’

‘I’m sorry,’ she teased tenderly, and unwound one of her own towels. ‘See, I’m going to give you the shirt off my back.’

‘You’re a trollop,’ he grumbled.

‘I know,’ she nodded.

‘You really are un-fucking-believable.’

‘Oh, I know,’ she agreed, with extreme sincerity.

Alternately mocking and soothing, Lisa dried his hard shiny body. It was an activity that she’d always loved, though some parts of his body got more attention than others.

‘Hey, Lees,’ Oliver eventually said.

‘Mmmm?’

‘I think my thighs might be dry now.’

‘Oh… yeah.’ They shared a wry look.

As they got dressed, across the room she suddenly noticed something almost as familiar as herself. Before she could stop herself, she’d exclaimed, ‘Oi, that’s my LV holdall!’