‘We’ll talk when you’re back. See a counsellor, maybe.’

‘Fuck that! I’m not letting some fucking do-goody nosy parker ask a load of shit about our private life. We’ll sort this out now! You say there’s nobody else, and I’m prepared to believe you. You love me, I love you. We are man and wife. That’s all there is to it.’

‘If you say so.’ Pacifying, she borrowed Lester’s favourite phrase, her thoughts flitting back to the old man’s raised glass earlier, toasting Oliver, of whom she and Mack never spoke. Perhaps they should. They’d never sought professional help at the time.

‘I fucking know so!’ he was raging. ‘It’s you who doesn’t know your own mind, wee bird. You never have. You’re fragile. You get all muddled up by your past. Other people exploit that.’

‘I’m not muddled up. I’ve felt this way for a long time. After Oliver was born, I—’

‘We’ve been through all that, Tishy. We’re bigger than that. We’re us. You need me.’ He was trying to sound cajoling, but it was all muddled with tears and sneers, humiliation rocking his core. ‘Don’t leave me,’ he sobbed. ‘Tell me you’re not going to leave me?’

Pax closed her eyes, thinking enviously of Lizzie catching her groom-shagging ex-husband in the act, so much easier to legitimately cast off, however painful. It’s why Mack wanted to accuse a third party, be it vodka bottle or a lover. How much harder was it when there was no blame, no fault, no moral high ground; when one simply stopped loving? When marriage was drowning you in loneliness, you had to save yourself.

‘You’re the one who was threatening to leave me and move to Scotland earlier,’ she reminded him.

‘It’s too fucking cold up here.’

‘You are on a roof, Mack.’

He started to sob again. Long, mournful cries.

‘Mack?’

He wept on. She knew that tomorrow he would sharply about-face, sober once more and in need of a whipping boy. He would punish her for this humiliation, the scorpion sting poised. She knew how he worked, and it helped immunise her against kindness, check the compassion that would say all the right things, the pity that would offer him an olive branch in a family tree with their roots entwined deep in dead clay. She had to tip her head up, hold in the tears fiercely, breathe and keep calm.

‘Tishy, are you still there?’

Pax, she thought furiously. My name is Pax. It always was. My mother nicknamed me as a baby because I slept so peacefully. Like Kes sleeps peacefully. After she left us all behind, I had trouble sleeping. I still do. We must never do that to Kes. Mummy wasn’t allowed to come back for her children. My father and grandfather told her we’d be better off without her. I will never let that happen to Kes. Never.

‘Still here.’

‘Please don’t hang up.’

‘I won’t.’ She was Samaritan-calm now.

He sobbed and sniffled. Blew his nose. Sobbed again, reminding her again not to hang up.