R has stopped going to his AA meetings. He hasn't been for ages. From two or three a week to nothing in less than seven days seems pretty drastic.

"I thought I'd come back and help you because you sounded stressed on the phone earlier," he says.

It's true. I was stressed. Our youngest was dunking the loo brush into the bath I was lying in. I leapt out to grab it from him, and the phone rang and it was R. I explain this, but he continues.

"I realise I've been really useless recently. I need to be here more in the evenings."

I am worried. I know he is trying to be kind, but I can't help thinking that he is masking his own reluctance to continue with his AA meetings with an obvious show of husbandly consideration for me.

When R was drinking, he often lied about his whereabouts so he could create more time in which to drink. The stories he told were always underpinned with the notion that whatever he was doing, he was doing for me.

"I have to go into town because I want to buy you something really special for Christmas," would often be an excuse for him to down a couple more drinks in the pub next to his workplace. Not surprisingly, the lavish gift would never materialise.

In the kitchen, I watch him make up a bottle for our youngest child. He looks at me and smiles. I force a smile in return.

He calls up the stairs to the children: "Choose a story. I'm coming now."

There is part of me that is genuinely glad he is here, in the house at 7pm. I can sit in the kitchen and listen to some music in peace. I have been moaning that he is never around. And yet my experience of what this means in the long-run doesn't allow me that free-spirited sense of joy, because everything we do now seems to be tainted by a deceitful past. I crave the kind of carefree attitude that allows me to be happy without being bogged down by history.

Later, after sex, we talk.

"You know, part of the deal of us being together was that you kept going to your meetings. I know what happens when you withdraw from people. You stop talking to them, and then you stop talking to me."

"I just wasn't getting AA. I don't get the God bit, and the higher power. And loads of the people talk for too long when they share. And the cup of tea I had at the last meeting was hideous." He laughs at this. I don't join in.

"Anyway, I've still got you," he says, trying to hold me under the covers. I resist.

"I don't want it to be just me you've got. I can't be your only support. You need to talk to people who have similar problems."

Then I realise I am trying to control him again. And I admit that this never works. All the fretting and agonising and worrying about what he is doing to aid his recovery and maintain his sobriety only makes me feel crazy. It has never helped R.

But I have to have boundaries for myself, though annoyingly I can't think of any. And then: "Right. You're sleeping on the sofa. And I don't want sex with you again until you get support. If it's not AA, then you've got to find something else."

"You know we can't afford private therapy. We have no money. And I'm not drinking. That's what you wanted."

The "that's what you wanted" bit worries me, and R senses this.

"Of course, it's what I want too."

"It's not just about the drinking. It's your behaviour. You can stop and be a sober drunk you know."

I'm confused by what I've just said.

I tug the spare duvet out from under the bed, hand it to R and then feel intensely mean that I've turfed him out of his own bedroom.

"Can I take the radio please?" he asks calmly.