Much to your annoyance, Bob, if anything, became more deferential. More eager to please. He stopped pestering you for sex every night; it wasn't that his libido, hitherto rampant, had died off completely - after all, you could still taste that tang in the air around his body when he emerged from his morning shower, the scent of his secretions hanging off him like bad milk - it was just as if he felt he had no right to burden you with his requirements. As if expecting the conjugal rite would be in bad taste.

After that, it became easier for you. Bob was clearly unmoved by what you had done. It's easy to understand why you carried on, why you continued to seek this particular form of gratification, why it became a part of the fabric of your life; make the bed, take the kids to school, sleep with the gardener. The kids are Bob's, it must be said. Your need to push him to crack didn't include forcing him to raise another man's children.

You wonder what he's doing right now, good old dependable, pointless, impotent Bob. You wonder if he's satisfied with his lot, if he makes himself oblivious to what you do, if he coasts along in a blissful reverie of suburban comfort.

Later on, once you've been pronounced dead and taken away on a gurney to the meat lockers, and later on than that, when he's worn black and sobbed into your sister's neck and told the world what a wonderful wife and mother you were, will he grieve or rejoice?

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