Mostly they came together in the basement flat in the mornings while Greg was at summer school and Charlotte was out with the children. Sometimes they snuck across the road to Hilary’s house on days that the builders weren’t there, rutting on the floors of those bare, echoey rooms, the smell of paint and sawdust lingering in the air. They were coupling in his shed at the end of the garden the night Charlotte found out. The party was in full swing back at the house; no one had noticed them slipping away. Earlier in the evening, he had done two lines of cocaine with Steve, a friend from the golf club. It had made him feel reckless and invincible. Hilary, compliant as ever, had followed eagerly when he’d suggested it. He hadn’t spotted Charlotte until she’d found them among the shovels and bags of compost and potted seedlings, his slacks around his ankles, the small mounds of Hilary’s breasts exposed.

Charlotte’s face was white; she looked but said nothing. She’d never caught him in the act before.

‘Wait,’ he’d said, but she’d withdrawn into the darkness, and somehow that made it worse – her silence. Better if she’d cursed them, spat out her fury and hurt. But that silent withdrawal sent a chill through him – the air of finality.

Hilary fell apart then. Pulling her clothes back on, she’d snivelled and prattled on about being caught out and what they should do next. He’d tried to calm her but his mind was addled. God knew what he’d said, what promises or concessions he’d made.

When he’d gone back to the house, everything was as it had been. The rooms still alive with music and drunken chatter. People sitting on the stairs, talking, the party spilling on to the street outside. And Charlotte leaning against the railings, a drink in one hand, a cigarette in the other, throwing back her head and laughing at something Will Bolton was telling her. He marvelled at her ability to act in such a manner – as if nothing had come between them. And when she passed him later in the hall on her way to the kitchen to refill her glass, she had said the words so casually, he almost didn’t catch them: ‘You’re to sleep downstairs in the basement flat tonight, Anton. I don’t want you in the house.’

And that was it. The last time he would ever hear her voice.

A chill comes over him now, a shiver of cold air, as he remembers.

The memory has left him weak. He blinks and looks to the window, sees it is open a fraction, the air passing through it a chill draught against his neck. He gets up and crosses the room, reaches up to pull the sash closed, and as he does so, his eye snags on the flash of colour.