She misses him. Misses the softness of his presence. His undemanding company and the way it soothes her. If she admitted such a feeling to Jake he would be horrified. The world is black and white to Jake. He can pin the label ‘murderer’ on Anton and dismiss him from his mind. But for Leah, it is not so easy. She has thought long and hard about Anton’s account of what happened to Charlotte. She has tried to imagine the frustrations within their marriage, the difficulties involved in living with such a woman. ‘I did not kill my wife,’ he had told her, and she had felt the resonance of truth in those words, the fierce demand to be believed right there in his eyes.

Leah is not an innocent. Unlike Jake, she knows the world is not black and white. Images come to her unbidden, memories of the little boy who died, all the sorrow and pain she is responsible for. This thing that has happened to her – this mole – it is a type of penance. Even though she doesn’t believe in Catholic guilt, she feels it keenly. She is a person who has lied to bereaved parents, lied to the police. I deserve this, she thinks, while Jake turns over in his sleep.

Vaguely, she becomes aware of cigarette smoke on the air. It filters through into her bedroom, prodding curiosity inside her. She knows he’s out there in the darkness.

Quietly, so as not to disturb Jake, she gets out of bed, tiptoes across the hall.

She finds her cardigan on the back of a kitchen chair, pulls it around her. She shouldn’t do this. She has made promises to Jake. But there is an emptiness inside her that he cannot fill, that he cannot come close to. He doesn’t understand what it means to be hollowed out with guilt. He doesn’t know what a burden it is.

She steps out on to the patio, feels the warm air against her skin. It seems like an act of recklessness, yet she is drawn on. Her bare foot steps up on to the grass. It crackles under her skin, dry and parched for rain.

The branches of the fruit trees sway gently above her, their leaves silvery under the moonlight. The air smells cleanly of jasmine and lavender, and when she turns to look up at the house, something moves in the garden. Instantly, her attention snaps to it. Through the darkness, she strains to see.

‘Hello?’ she calls. ‘Is someone there?’

No answering voice, no flare of a cigarette glowing through the darkness. The garden is empty – a tangle of weeds and little else.