‘She’s really sad, I think she wants her mum,’ Sadie says as Gabriela takes Layla in her arms and instantly her cries quieten. When she turns back Tom is watching them with a look that she knows she will never forget as long as she lives.

Telling Sadie to go inside, that they will be in in a minute, she turns back down the hill towards Tom, and she knows that it is over and wonders how she ever believed she would get away with it.

‘She’s your child,’ he says, and she holds his look, clutching Layla to her.

He takes a step back towards the cliff edge and she says, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘What …?’ His face is ashen, the cup gripped tightly between his fingers.

‘Tom, I’m so sorry, I can—’

‘She isn’t mine,’ he says, as if working through the facts in his own mind.

She shakes her head, knowing she should take Layla back in, knowing she shouldn’t be witnessing this. But she can’t leave.

‘Whose is she? I mean, what the fuck?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It doesn’t matter?’

‘I didn’t mean that, I mean … Fuck, Tom, I can’t explain this now. In Moscow …’

Tom’s face falls a bit further and it’s as if the pieces of a jigsaw are slotting slowly into place.

‘Oh my God,’ he says, his words breathless.

‘Tom, we need to get away. I know this is insane – it is insane – but we have to leave. It’s not safe.’

‘You’re mad,’ Tom says, looking at her in a way that reminds her there is no route back from this. ‘You’re out of your fucking mind.’

She takes a step towards him and he throws his hand up, and Layla lets out a sharp cry.

‘It’s OK,’ she says, her mouth against her hair. ‘It’s OK, baby.’

‘You need to go,’ Tom says, pacing back and forth suddenly, as if the ground is threatening to fall away from him at any moment. His voice is trembling and she doesn’t know whether to reach out and touch him.

‘Tom,’ she says. ‘This doesn’t have to mean the end of us. You said it yourself, the kids need us together. They need stability.’

‘Stability?’ Tom stops now and looks up at her as if she has made a brilliant joke.

She moves Layla to her other hip, trying to keep her calm, bouncing her with such intensity that she starts to grizzle again.