The kitchen air is thick with burnt-toast smoke. The children wave their hands in front of their faces dramatically and I try to crack a joke to R: "Are you giving everyone a sensory experience of smog?" He does not laugh, let alone smile. He does a thing with his mouth, where his lips go all thin and mean, that tells me he finds my jibes tedious. He then pulls his phone from his pocket and starts prodding at the screen, a sign that he has better places to be.

For once he can't escape the chaos of morning because I have to leave early for a meeting. I wave at everyone through the smoke. As R waves back, he knocks a vase of flowers over on its side. This in itself is not funny, but when he starts chiding the cat for being so clumsy (the cat, previously R's greatest ally, looks at him with incredulity because he is nowhere near), we all laugh. R is behaving exactly like the person who trips over in public and then looks down at the ground and curses the pavement.

Still laughing, the boys look to their father, willing him to see the funny side. But R does not laugh. He gives us all an uptight look that says "God, you're pathetic" and then tells me I should clear up the spilt water and broken flowers if I find it all so hilarious. Usually I would want to stick an imaginary axe into the back of his head, or think to myself, "I am never having sex with you again, you moody git." Instead I say: "Clear it up yourself, you arse. I have to go." Which is probably not very mature in front of the children. But still.

Before stepping out of the house, I say to myself, "This too will pass." It's something I picked up from Al-Anon, and like many of the most memorable aphorisms, I find it helpful (even if I have a tendency to misquote). I like this one because it sounds mildly romantic, but also because it recognises that life is never static. Whatever happens, whatever changes from one second to the next, moves everything on. It may get worse, it may get better, but focusing so heavily on a moment as if it defines an hour, a day, week, month or year, is a pretty fruitless thing to do. We have to keep moving.

Yet here I am worrying about leaving the house while R is in such a mood. Although something as innocuous as him being all humourless is hardly a reason to get upset, it makes me remember the times when his behaviour was unpleasant to live with. When he was drinking heavily, family mealtimes, get-togethers or group activities so frequently buzzed with a tension that could not be blamed on one thing, but left everyone feeling ill at ease. Often, I wanted to scoop up the children and run away. I wouldn't tolerate such sore days now, but on mornings such as these I fear that things will go back to how they were.

But as I walk to the bus, I remind myself that weekday breakfasts have always been an angry time for R. Since we met, nothing has really changed. I used to think that he was silently raging in the morning because he was hungover, and when he stopped drinking I thought he was grumpy because he was an insomniac.

I came to the conclusion that R is often just angry at breakfast. Just as I am often quite angry at night when I have a list of things to do, when I'm dog-tired and would really rather be reading or getting in a bath. Instead, I plunge my rubber-gloved hands into scorching water, loudly crashing pots and pans, making all the awake people around take notice.

On the bus, I get a text. "You're right. I was being an arse. I've said sorry to the children. I'm sorry to you, too. It's just hard. Not drinking can be so tiresome."

Within seconds of feeling depressed that things might be slipping, I realise how different things are. How quick R has been to move things on with an apology. How quick he has been to work out what might be wrong. How quick to understand that he might not be able to make everything better, all at once, just as I can't make everything fine all the time.