If all we need is love, why do we always want more?

I dial her number. Again. Finally, she answers.

“I’m on my way, almost there,” my wife says without me having to ask. I can hear that she is driving, so she is heading home, but almost there sounds like a lie. She has a habit of stretching the truth into something more agreeable these days.

“You said you would be here,” I reply, sounding like a petulant child instead of a grown man. “This is important to me.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I’ll be there soon, promise. I’ve picked up fish-and-chips.”

Fish-and-chips is how we have celebrated almost every major milestone. It’s what we ate on our first date, when we got engaged, the day I got an agent, and when we bought our dream house. I’m a little in love with this old thatched cottage on the south coast, just over an hour from London but a million miles from the city. Our only neighbors these days are sheep. Tonight, fish-and-chips was how I hoped we might celebrate my first New York Times bestseller, washed down with a bottle of champagne I’ve been saving for five years. My editor in America said she would call if it was good news, but it’s nearly 9:00 p.m. (4:00 p.m. in New York) and she hasn’t been in touch. Nobody has.

“Heard anything?” Abby asks. I hear her turn on the windscreen wipers, and I picture the rain streaming down the glass like tears.

“Not yet.”