‘ “Keep the truth” from me? That’s just a fancy way of saying you lied. As soon as you started doing it in secret, you were in trouble. You know that. You’re the authority on addiction.’

‘It was only secret because you’d have stopped me—and, Luke, I needed them.’

‘Would you listen to yourself. If a client told you that, you’d reef them out of it. You didn’t need them, you wanted them—’

‘You’re wrong. I—’

‘Can you imagine how scared I was? Our baby had died and now I was losing you. When you said you’d taken nothing’—he bit out the next words—‘I. Can. Not. Tell. You how much I wanted to believe you. But I’d been there with you before, back in the day. I knew the signs. Soon after you started on those tablets again, you were taking more than you should. And during the day as well as bedtime. And in the middle of the night. But whenever I asked, you lied.’

I was trying hard to hold on to what I knew to be true. Admittedly, I had taken more than the prescribed amount, and there had been mornings when the pain of a day without my baby was too much. But taking the tablets had always been a choice. I was always in control.

Luke’s version was a distortion. But the solid ground of my conviction was slipping from beneath my feet and I was confused.

‘One evening you were completely bombed, it was fucking horrible, you were slurring and stumbling—’

No. ‘Sometimes I was groggy when I woke up—’

‘It was worse than that. So I went through the apartment and found pills hidden everywhere. Rachel…’

I remembered and even now it made me feel sick. I’d woken to find an array of Ambien laid out on the kitchen counter and Luke pacing in a cold fury.

‘In the box of teabags.’ He’d held up two tablets. Pointing at others, ‘In the freezer. In your coat pocket. Sellotaped to the back of those photos. Have I missed any?’

‘The rice, the basmati rice.’ I rummaged until I found the four pills, then surrendered them to him.

‘That’s it?’ he asked. ‘That’s all?’

I nodded. ‘That’s all. Sorry,’ I whispered. ‘I love you, I’m so sorry.’

He’d pulled me onto his lap, then I buried my face in his neck and gave in to the despair. I cried for our baby dying and me being a worthless fuck-up and the horrible suspicion that I was losing everything.

I’d thought my essential brokenness had healed years earlier—how had I ended up back here again?

‘It’s okay,’ he’d murmured, kissing my hair. ‘It’s okay.’