I told them about everything that had happened—the affair, my confession, Ulay’s amazing reaction. They looked at each other. Then they told me: three days after I’d left for San Francisco, Ulay had taken up with a girl from Surinam, and he’d lived with her in our home literally until the morning I returned.

Her husband’s defence, that he wanted a last chance at happiness, casually wrote their marriage off as unhappy, when Susie felt sure that wasn’t how he had experienced it. Her hunch that this was some kind of mid-life crisis seemed borne out by the fact that, a year after leaving, her husband had got back in touch, saying that he thought he had