She creeps up the stairs, past all the piles of papers and toys on each step, and hesitates at the top, outside the master bedroom. The door is wide open, the bed unmade. The boy’s room is to the right, dinosaur and Pokémon pictures pinned to the door. Bathroom to the left, a shell mobile rattles in the breeze from an open window. She leans into their room and imagines Max stretched out on the bed. Did he ever think about her when he was here? Stacks of DIY books on the right-hand bedside table, same as at home. On top is a half-empty bottle of Lacoste Eau de Toilette. The only fragrance he ever wears. She steps over the threshold, through a sickly smell of deodorant hanging in the air. A pair of trainers are tucked under the bed, size nines, and his dressing gown is across the back of a chair. She picks it up and breathes in his familiar smell. In the dressing table mirror, she sees her face buried in the towelling material, muffling the sound of her crying, soaking up her tears.

In front of her is a photo of them taken up close, slightly out of focus; they’re laughing, sharing a double ice cream; the tattoo of the letter ‘A’ again, not only on his upturned wrist, but on hers too.

Maddy puts the dressing gown back, stirs a finger through the pile of make-up scattered across the dressing table. A familiar silver-coloured canister standing at the back amongst expensive bottles of foundation, serums and face creams catches her eye. She picks it up and presses, but all it can manage is a splutter of perfume: SHE by Armani. It’s almost empty. Max buys her the same perfume religiously every Christmas. Is he buying it for this slut to make sure he doesn’t come home smelling of another woman? She wrenches open drawer after drawer, full of make-up and fake tan creams and lotions, false eyelashes, hair pieces and nail varnish. Another fucking tart, just like Lisa. In the top drawer of the chest of drawers, she pinches out a pair of white lacy knickers, drops them on the floor and squashes them into the carpet with her shoe. She smiles to think of the time she pushed dirty underwear through Lisa’s letterbox and hung muck-splattered bras and knickers in the leafless tree of her front garden. Four years she’d been having an affair with her dad. Four years of lying to her mother and to her. How long has this been going on?

She stomps back downstairs and shoves the album back in the cupboard. The door springs shut. Something shifts inside. As she turns to leave, she spots a woollen jacket hanging on a coat rack behind the front door. Running her fingers down the line of brass lion-crested buttons, one of them is missing.

Chapter Seventeen