She turns from him, pulls at her lip.

‘Leah?’

Her thoughts are turning over rapidly.

‘Did you tell Anton?’ he asks, the sharpness of the question pulling her up suddenly.

‘Did you?’ he asks again, when she doesn’t answer, incredulity leaking into his tone.

She doesn’t speak for a moment. Sinking back against the wall, she closes her eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to,’ she says quietly. ‘It just sort of slipped out.’

When she opens her eyes again, Jake is staring at her, his face made impassive with shock.

‘Please don’t be angry with me,’ she tells him, although he looks beyond anger now. ‘Something he said just triggered it in me. I was upset and he sort of coaxed it out.’

‘Coaxed it out?’ His voice is a low croak, his lips bloodless and pale.

‘I was upset,’ she says again, a tremble in her voice. ‘I felt he understood something.’

‘What did he understand?’

‘What it’s like to carry this guilt and shame around inside you all the time. What it’s like to be judged for something you didn’t do. To carry the burden of a person’s death even though you’re not responsible for it. It’s hard for people to understand – to really know what that’s like. The awful weight of it. But he just –’

‘Unbelievable,’ he says, cutting across her. An ugly smirk has appeared on his face that confuses her. ‘You think he didn’t do it, don’t you? Nineteen years in prison and you think he’s some downy innocent.’

‘Jake, I –’

‘Un-fucking-believable. You keep this secret from me, and yet you confide in him?’

He’s pushed himself away from the kitchen now and is hurrying around the room with a new urgency, gathering up his bag, his helmet, his coat.

‘What are you doing?’ she asks, but he doesn’t answer.

He’s leaving me, she thinks, and the idea makes her panic. The thought of living without love in her life sets off a range of new emotions inside her. She cannot bear the return of loneliness, not again, not after all she has been through.

She follows him out into the hall, watches him slinging the bag over his shoulder, and clipping the clasp of his helmet beneath his chin.

‘It’s pouring with rain,’ she tells him. ‘You’ll get soaked.’

But he ignores her, wheeling his bike to the door.

‘At least tell me where you’re going,’ she pleads, panic entering her voice. This stony silence is worse than his wound-up agitation. It feeds the certainty inside her that this is an ending between them. He’s leaving her.

‘Jake?’

He opens the door, cold air cutting through the little hallway, rain spattering over the threshold. His eyes are fixed on the handlebars of his bicycle, avoiding all contact with her.

‘I need to think,’ he tells her quietly.