"From September, it will be just the two of us at home"

MY husband and I are outside the house, trying out a pair of matching sun-loungers that he’s just bought.

He says he chose the ones with the floral fabric out of deference to my aesthetic, which might make me feel obliged, out of deference to his feelings, to like them. But the loungers are hot pink and egg-yolk yellow, which would push me past the point of doing anything out of deference to his feelings, even if 27 years of marriage hadn’t already put paid to that sort of nonsense.

“What’s wrong with pink and yellow? You’ve got pink and yellow all the way down the path,” he says, and points down at the garden, where I have ameliorated the dustiest of pinks and the palest of yellows with dense green foliage and the white of a thousand Oxeye daisies.