‘I’m not sure where you’re going with this. Is now really the time to explore our intimacy issues?’

‘On the front steps, before Crawford took him away, what did you take from Michael’s back pocket?’

Erin’s embrace of Michael in front of everyone had stood out to me as odd at first, but I’d put it down to my jealousy and her crowing. I’d seen it play out again, Erin’s hand in the back pocket of Michael’s jeans, on Juliette’s weather-cam footage and it had struck me, once again, as incongruous. Michael, in the Drying Room, had tried to show me something before giving me the keys to the truck, but he hadn’t been able to find it. But my envy had masked the reason it had stuck out to me. I knew my wife. She didn’t display affection like that.

Above me, Erin made some rustling noises, then something light landed on the cushion next to my head. I fumbled in the dark until my fingers closed around a small plastic object. It was similar in shape to a bottle cap, though slightly larger and deeper. More like a shot glass. I held it above me; there was just enough moonlight coming from behind the clouds that it gradually took shape. One surface gave a wink. Reflective. Clear plastic, maybe even glass.

‘You’re a clever one, you are,’ she said.

I had a memory of a shot glass rolling off the dash as Michael backed out of my driveway. I’d been a bit distracted by what was in the back seat at the time, but now I realised this was the same object. And it wasn’t a shot glass, but a jeweller’s eye-piece. The type where the open end of the cone was placed over your eye, and at the top was a magnifying lens to look through. (My editor has left a helpful note that it is called a loupe, so I’ll pretend to be educated and use the proper word from now on.)

It had obviously been innocuous enough that it hadn’t been confiscated as evidence, but important enough to Michael that he’d fossicked around to get it from under the seat before he’d been arrested and kept it as part of his small envelope of possessions handed back to him on his release from prison.

‘Why did you take this?’ I asked.