‘How’s Sassy?’ I asked, not wanting to push things again. I’d done that already in this call—and far more than I had initially intended.

‘Sassy’s fine. As always.’

I wanted to ask if she missed me.

‘She’s gone out with Mamma to help feed the chickens and collect the eggs.’

I smiled again. That was always her favourite thing to do when staying with her grandparents.

‘What did you say to her?’

‘Nothing. I just told her we were going to stay with Opa and Oma.’

‘Did she ask you why I’m not there?’

‘I told her you were busy with work and you might come out later.’

‘And will I?’

This time there was a very long pause from the other end of the line.

Into the silence, I couldn’t help myself. I asked the question that had been burning a huge hole through my brain for the past twenty hours.

‘Is there somebody else?’

‘What do you mean?’

I sighed.

‘You know exactly what I mean. Are you leaving me for somebody else? Is the hand thing just an excuse?’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘I’m not being stupid. You spend half of every week away from me. Are you living as another man’s lover during that time?’

‘Stop it, Sid. You’re being ridiculous.’

‘Marina, I need to know.’

‘In that case … no, there isn’t anyone else. There, are you happy now?’

Did I believe her?

I suddenly realised that I should never have asked. Would she have told me even if there were? So was I any the wiser? All I had done was further undermine the trust between us.

‘I’m going,’ she said, clearly angry, and she abruptly hung up.

I berated myself for being such a fool. I had spent most of the past twenty years investigating people, knowing if and when to ask the right telling questions, but here, with my own wife, I had committed the cardinal sin of exposing my own position without getting anything from her in return.

Marina was right, I had been stupid. Really stupid.

My plan to make life with Sid Halley more attractive than life without him had got off to a very poor start, and it was all my own fault.

I watched the eight o’clock BBC news bulletin.

The fire had been pushed to second place in the headlines by the high-profile resignation of a senior member of the cabinet who had been caught on CCTV kissing his secretary, but the reporter in the red anorak was still at the scene in Middleham, which was now bathed in bright spring sunshine. Someone had clearly sent up a drone to give an aerial view, and a team of firemen in yellow helmets could be seen damping down the still-smouldering stable yard.