I returned home to an empty house with a visceral desire to cleanse. To purge. Starting with my childhood closet. Thanks to my mum’s inability to sentimentally prioritize, my closet was filled with the remnants of a person I no longer am: yellowed essays, awkward pre-dance photos from sixth form, cross-country running medals, a punctured soccer ball.

In a storage bin underneath a stack of musty clothes, I found a bunch of VHS cassettes labeled Football Match, School Play. Beneath these lay the camcorder my mother gave me when I passed my A-levels. I used to love making mock commercials with my friends, but inside my bedroom when I was alone, I got more serious, bellowing voice-overs for atmospheric close-ups of the objects around me, along with Godard-inspired jolting cut-ins of my cat.

Surprisingly, I found the camcorder’s charger beside it in the box. I plugged it in, wondering how long it would take to fuel an electronic device that hadn’t been used in twenty years. I watched incredulously as the power light turned red, my spirits lifting as it did. If my Sony Betamovie BMC-100P could power up like a phoenix, dammit, so could I.

With the camera still charging, I popped in one of the generically labeled School Play videos. It took several seconds for the aged tape to rev back into life, but when it did, I recognized my old friend Matthew from secondary school, all toffed out in poofy knickers and a velvet cape and tights.

The musical was Once Upon a Mattress, in which Matthew played Prince Dauntless, a tit-for-brains whose mother’s unpassable character tests prohibit him from finding a wife. In the scene I’d stumbled onto, he was dashing about the stage, hoping to hear good news from Sir Harry, just back from the swamps.

“You have been on a long and arduous journey, sir!” Matthew said. “But say, please tell me! Have you brought me back a bride?”

I fast-forwarded until I found myself in the role of King Sextimus the Silent. Since I was playing a mute, the only stage indications I’d been given were to chase maidens through the halls. It seems that Mrs. Greenblum, the drama teacher, had a handle on my character even then.

I turned the video off so it would charge faster and lay back in my bed. A long and arduous journey, indeed. I’d catapulted off track. What I’d had with Anne had been good. My own parents were still married, and by some miracle, so were hers. I rewound the tape in the camcorder and decided to erase it. I wanted to erase everything. Start over. Return.

It was raining by the time my parents came home, the perfect weather for a project I’d dreamed up inside my head.

“I just want to film you,” I said, helping my mum put canned beans up in the pantry.

“Film us doing what?”

“Arduous journeys?” I said, brandishing the old camcorder. “About how you two met?”

After assuring them that I just needed to practice in case my next art project had anything to do with film, I had them sit next to each other on the orange couch, but the lighting looked stilted. I moved them into the kitchen and put two chairs back to back so that my mum was facing the stovetop, and my father, the fridge.

“Are you holding us hostage?” asked my mother.

“I just want you to talk.”

“But I can’t even see him.”

I got the camera rolling.

“And why do you want to see him?” I asked.

“Well, I don’t want to sit here in the kitchen and talk if I can’t see him. Are you there, George?”

My dad moved his arm and reached out for her thigh, hitting her in the elbow instead.

“Okay,” I said, from my perch in the hallway, the record light blinking red. “Welcome to my parents. Edna. George. When did you two meet?”

My mum burst out laughing.

“We met swimming,” my dad said, pulling back his hand. “She had on a red suit.”

“A one-piece,” said my mother.

“I offered her an ice cream.”

“A Mr. Whippy!” said Mum. “You know, from the little lorry that used to pull up outside?”

I moved in for a close-up. My mother twisted sideways to get a better look at my dad.

“Get back in your chair, Mum!” I ordered, zooming out. “Okay. And then? What’d you think of each other’s families?”

My father pursed his lips.

My mother laughed. “Is he rolling his eyes back there, Richy, or what? He didn’t like my father!”

“I didn’t like your brothers.”

“Oh, they were just trying to intimidate you. I always liked his mum. She was very beautiful. And young. And she was always wearing yellow. It’s a hard color to pull off.”

“So did they approve of you as a couple?”

My mother’s smile widened.

“Are you kidding?” said my dad. “They approved.”

I paused the camera and sat back in a chair. I had no idea what I was doing. But there was something grounding about being with them in the kitchen, filming this place where I’d eaten countless bowls of cereal and not done enough dishes, been bandaged and given biscuits, and had my dirty nails scrubbed with a brush. There was something about them not facing each other that highlighted the disconnect between what the image looked like — two people stuck in chairs — and what they were saying: two people in love still, and happy with their lives.

“What about the first time you kissed her?” I continued.

“Richy.” My mum blushed. “Please!”

“She kissed me,” my dad said, moving his hand back again to try to pat her. “We were on — it was on the Larsens’ doorstep, wasn’t it? I’d taken her to a party and I was about to walk her home.”

“It’s always so expected when someone takes you to your doorstep,” my mum said. “I didn’t want to wait.”

“And Dad? Let’s see, do you know her favorite color?”

“Purple.”

My mum made a clucking noise. “Violet.”

“And Mum, do you know Dad’s?”

“Easy,” she said. “Yellow. And his favorite toothpaste is Gleem.”

I ignored her non sequitur and charged ahead with my inquest.

“Dad: Mum’s favorite gift you ever gave.”

“Oooh,” he said. “A tough one. You?”

“Quite.” She smiled. “Or . . . my fiftieth birthday. Italy.” She sighed. “Oh! I’ll remember that trip all my life.”

I stayed silent for a long time, just filming their faces as they passed over their memories, my mum staring wistfully ahead of her as if the rolling Tuscan landscape were reflected in the fridge door. She took a Kleenex from the inside of her shirtsleeve and wiped it under her eye.

“And what do you love most about her?” My father looked up at the camera when I asked this.

“She’s kind,” he said. “She’s silly. She doesn’t get wound up.”

“And what do you dislike?”

“What?”

“What do you dislike?”

“Oh, come on, Richard,” he said, frowning.

“Awww. We’re being honest. You’re sitting back to back.”

“Yes, go on, dear,” said my mother, folding her hands in her lap. “This should be interesting.”

“Well,” he said, adjusting his position. “She’s not, you’re not — she’s not a good driver.”

My mother sucked her lip in. “Unfortunately, that’s true.”

“Okay, Dad. One more.”

“No,” he said. “That’s all.”

Mum twisted around in her chair again. “Well, that can’t be all, George. Personally, I have a lot of them! He’s a hummer, but he’s only got one tune. And he never puts the top back correctly on the malt bottle. And you squirt dish soap onto the cutlery instead of on the sponge.”

“Well, don’t hold back now.”

“But he’s a good dancer. You’re a great dancer, Georgie. And he makes the bed in the morning, how many people can say that? And you know, he doesn’t disappoint me.”

She fell silent.

“He doesn’t disappoint me, often.”

My dad looked at the floor.

“Can we stop now?” asked my mother, looking at the camera. “I want to get the beef going, for supper.”

“Sure,” I said, leaving the camera on. “Thanks for playing. Dad, you may kiss the bride.”

“Don’t be filming this!” he said, turning around to reach for her.

But I did.

Lisa’s favorite toothpaste: Tom’s of fucking Maine. Her favorite color? Coral. After a notable orgasm, she’d hum a little song while she washed up in the bathroom. She was all lightness and bubbles and pink.

Anne’s favorite color is cream, not white. What do I love the most about her? She smiles when she’s sleeping. At least, she used to. I like watching her make iced chamomile tea in the summers, with her sleeves rolled up. I like when she prepares picnics. I love the sound of her voice drifting down a hallway as she reads Camille a book. I love the way she brightens when we’re in Saint-Briac, when she stares out at the sea with her hand on top of her head so her hair doesn’t get tangled in the wind. I love the way she used to kiss me after a party, in the car before we drove away, with a light bite on my lower lip. I love that she listens to classical music at full volume in the house, and I love that she’s raised our daughter to swing her arms and dance in circles and enjoy it, enjoy all kinds of music. I love Anne when she’s happy. I loved it when she was.

And Lisa? Who is Lisa? Four months since I’d last seen her now and it’s starting to feel like she’s someone I invented. If it weren’t for the fact that I could still conjure up the textures and urgency of our lovemaking, I’d think she didn’t exist.

Under different circumstances, it might have proved too tempting to be only an hour’s drive away from my ex-lover. Six months ago, I wouldn’t have been able to sit still, much less play canasta with my parents, knowing that Lisa Bishop was nearby. But this was my childhood home, and the only woman who had ever slept here and interacted with the cupboards and the closets, who knew where my mother kept the rarely used ground coffee, was my wife. Back in high school, when I had girlfriends, I always went to their houses. But Anne had slept beneath the Dirty Harry poster on countless visits, never once suggesting that I take it down, the two of us happily entangled in my too-small bed.

Lisa didn’t know my favorite toothpaste, and she didn’t know that I had a weakness for strawberry-flavored milk, nor that if I had the time for it, I would have all of our sheets ironed, just like they were at the Bourigeauds’. She’d never seen my mother place a pillbox on the counter, and stand there in the kitchen counting out vitamins in her floral robe and naked feet. She’d never pressed a Band-Aid over an open cut on Camille’s kneecap. But she did know that right before coming, I liked a single finger up the bumhole and that I wasn’t averse to a roaming tongue inside my ear. She knew I liked a hand cupped around my balls while she sucked me, and that I liked her to narrate what I was doing to her during sex. But so what, actually? Anne knew this, too. My favorite places to fuck were different with Anne, because she was different, she was Anne, but my wife, also, knew about my quirks. The only difference was that I’d allowed Lisa to add things to my sexual glossary while I’d halted all such exploration with Anne.

I want to be a bigger man, a less predictable man than the kind who confuses love with sex. It’s something you do in your early 20s. It’s disorientating. It’s weak. With Lisa out of my life now, I can’t identify whether I did or didn’t love her. It scares me to think that I didn’t. Despite my desire to be forgiven, something in me needs to hold on to her, still.

This is an excerpt from Courtney Maum’s novel, I AM HAVING SO MUCH FUN HERE WITHOUT YOU. In this reverse love story, set in Paris and London, a failed monogamist attempts to woo his wife back and to answer the question: Is it really possible to fall back in love with your spouse?