He never used to mince words with her. He used to shout, You daft cow, Alice, you’ve missed a line, you’ve fucked it all up. And she would give as good as she got, and point out it was his line he’d skipped, and they would argue furiously, and laugh, and sort out the problem. It used to be they could quarrel, and that quarrelling was fun. It used to be they could speak frankly with each other. But that was a very long time ago.
