He had stormed out then, muttering under his breath that he wasn’t going to stay and listen to that crap. And he had left her with the ceilings still dripping, the power gone, her mind and body reeling from all that had happened.

He was only gone a few minutes. He couldn’t have got further than the tennis courts before regret seeped into his self-righteous anger. When he came back through the door minutes later, she was swept up in his storm of apologies, his desperate need for her to understand. She chose to believe him. It was not out of character for him to get lost in his son’s company, to forget everything else. And Leah knew that if she allowed doubts and suspicions about Jenna to creep in and take a hold of her this relationship would not stand a chance.

Still, it remained. Like a hair caught at the back of her tongue. An uncomfortable doubt that wouldn’t go away.

He has been careful with her since that night, handling her like a piece of fruit that might bruise easily. But now, as they finish their meal, and he is about to gather up their plates, she sees him stop, put his hands on his thighs, and look at her.

‘You know, I can go and check on him in the evenings instead,’ he says, a small inclination of his head towards the rooms upstairs, and a firmness in his voice that sounds like a challenge.

‘Thanks, but it’s fine. I don’t mind.’

‘But I do mind. I mean, aren’t you scared?’

‘Of course not.’ She laughs – it seems absurd to think of Anton as a danger. His vulnerability from the night she’d found him is still so present in her mind. And how can she explain to Jake that she feels comfortable in the older man’s company? That she doesn’t believe what’s said of him. That she likes him.

Jake shakes his head, unhappy.

‘You’ve seen him,’ she says, ‘how frail he is. Surely you can’t think he’s any kind of threat.’

He thinks about this for a moment, and she can see the battle inside him over whether to pursue it. The morning after it had happened, when she told him how she had discovered Anton in the bath, Jake had said: ‘How come the door was unlocked?’

It hadn’t occurred to her to question that, but under his distrustful gaze, she had become flustered. She remembered the time Matthew had locked her out of the flat, and Anton had let her go down the inner staircase. She had unlocked the door then. Perhaps it had remained unlocked. Jake doesn’t know about that time. He doesn’t know that she had been up there, playing the piano while Matthew was downstairs in the flat alone. So she hadn’t mentioned the door. Merely mumbled: ‘I don’t know.’