She tried to fold back time, to imagine seeing Adam at school on the Monday that had followed. How would that have been? If he’d told her then that their night together had been amazing, a shared adventure, despite both of them being so out of it? Would she have believed him then, if he had looked both afraid of rejection and full of hope, and so surely like someone who had committed no crime, who could never want to hurt her or take from her? Would her underwear, clumsily rolled back up her legs, have felt like a sweet, half-arsed attempt at leaving her decent when he had to leave in a hurry? Would she have believed him then?

Becky looked at Adam again and tried to tease him apart, to will him into somehow being different men: her lover, Maisie’s father, her partner in collusion, her friend, her counsellor, her rapist. But none of them had given her the truth.

She won’t forgive him and he won’t forgive himself. They now have that in common, along with a daughter. It will have to be a new wound, one that fits perfectly where she once nursed her questions.

‘How do you feel now?’ Becky asked.

‘I feel trapped,’ Adam said. ‘Like I’m in a prison I’ll never get out of. I don’t feel like I can survive it.’

‘I did,’ said Becky. ‘You will too.’

Then the tears ran down both of their faces; his turned to the floor, hers to the window, her gaze tracking the path of the Thames, snaking to the horizon.

Chapter 30

Becky enters Arlington Square through one of its four gates and stands a while looking out across the flower beds – Union Jack reds, blues and whites – and along the benches lining the central path. A woman sits, reading a book with one hand, pushing a pram back and forth next to her. An elderly couple, in sunhats, summer chinos and dress respectively, sit hand in hand, enjoying the sun.

She checks her phone. Perhaps Amber has changed her mind? There is a WhatsApp thread from Maisie and Adam debating what kind of a cake to make for his mum’s birthday. Back and forth their messages go, each one like a stitch binding their minutes together.

Becky looks up and sees Amber at the end of the square, seated on a bench next to a paved area, partially shielded by an olive tree. Becky plots a course along a line of fudge-coloured flint and beach stones buried into the concrete, and thinks about how Amber could pass for any young, slim Islington professional, maybe someone who has just moved into her first house, paid for by a collection of parents: oversized sunglasses propped against her Rapunzel-golden hair, dressed down in cropped jeans and loafers.