She reads the words on the page, white noise filling her head, a loosening happening deep in her bowels. A surge is beginning inside her – all those dark feelings she has kept down for years are clamouring now to be heard, threatening to rise and overwhelm her.

‘Well?’ Jake asks. ‘Were you ever going to tell me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yeah, right!’

‘I wanted to. I knew that I should, but –’

‘But what, Leah? I mean, what the hell was stopping you? Were you going to wait until after our baby had been born? Was that it? Wait until I was fully trapped before revealing the truth to me?’

‘It’s not like that. And I wasn’t trying to trap you!’

‘Well, tell me, then. What is it like? Come on, I’m all ears.’

He’s shaking with rage and she knows she must tell him, but not like this.

‘If you could just calm down,’ she begins.

‘Calm down?’ His voice screeches against the side of her head. The veins threading through his neck are pumped to the surface, his eyes bulging. ‘I thought you loved me,’ he says. ‘I believed you trusted me. But you’ve been lying to me the whole time.’

‘I haven’t been lying.’

‘Withholding the truth, then. It’s the same thing.’

‘I wanted to tell you, but I was afraid.’

‘Of what? I’m not a monster, Leah. What did you think I’d do?’

‘I thought if you knew you wouldn’t want me any more.’

He stares at her, then shakes his head, his shoulders slumping forward. His voice drops, a note of bewilderment entering it. ‘I don’t know what I want.’

Fear is alive in her chest. She tries to control it. ‘What this article says,’ she starts quietly, ‘what it suggests, is false. I took care of Cian, but I never hurt him.’

‘Then why the suspicion? Look – what about this?’ He grabs the newspaper, finds the line he’s looking for and reads it to her: ‘Another local tells us that Miss Sullivan was spotted in Supervalu with the baby late on the Friday afternoon before his death. The child was crying, and the babysitter appeared to grow impatient, rocking him in a way that alarmed onlookers. “I told her that she should put the child back in his pram, that she was rocking him too hard, but she didn’t listen. Just turned away and ignored my advice.”’ He puts the newspaper down and looks at her.

‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘You didn’t rock that baby?’

‘No! Not in the way they’re suggesting. I didn’t shake him. I didn’t damage him. He was upset, I picked him up out of the pram to comfort him. And most of the time that weekend he was fine – he was perfectly happy! Just that one time, in the shops, with everyone around. I got flustered.’

‘And?’