“Most often he’d go it alone with the Kleenex’”

MY HUSBAND’S capacity for crying while watching films has always far exceeded mine, and our children’s for that matter.

We were totally at home with this. No-one made a fuss when he collapsed as if bereaved, at Shrek, for example, or choked off sobs when Sally Field choked off hers in Steel Magnolias. In fact, our attitude to his anguish had become a bit relaxed over the years, which isn’t something he minded. Far better, he said, that we asked him to pass the Maltesers while his shoulders heaved with grief during Little Miss Sunshine, than patted him gingerly — or worse — looked the other way.

Sometimes, of course, we joined in. When Matthew died in Anne of Green Gables, for instance, crying was an across-the-board event, and as for the final episode of The Big C, you’d have to be granite to sit through that one without crumpling. But most often he’d go it alone with the Kleenex, while I ate Maltesers and wondered idly whether the fact that he always had first dibs on tears might have had the effect of capping mine. Or perhaps, I’d reflect — as his entire frame juddered next to me on the sofa during Britain’s Got Talent — my heart was just made of flintier stuff. But that was then and this is now. Now, something has happened to my heart, the flinty stuff I mean.