Not convinced that the other abandonment stories are necessarily folklore either. I stayed at a hotel once on my own and sat for some time with a lady in the bar who told me how her husband had got up one evening and said he was going to close the front door properly and then not returned. She later discovered he had a mistress across town he had been in the habit of visiting and in due course moved in with "but," she said, "of course he always came around for his Sunday roast." Which was the only odd note in the tale and I thought that in her position I might slip something into the gravy ...

And an old school friend of mine who had got married at the age of 17 to an older man was brought back to her parents' home a few months later and went inside while her husband brought in the luggage. She then found he'd unloaded all of her luggage and left his wedding ring on top of the cases and then driven off ... Well, it's one way to make a clean break, I suppose.