She walks down the drive to the entrance and, using her phone as a torch, points the beam at the small lock safe attached to the wall. She’d ignored almost all of the emails from past guests when Tom was in prison – they could write to him if they needed counselling, she had better things to do – and she’d almost deleted Renata’s email until she saw the subject line: ‘I can help’. It wasn’t an offer of money but it was almost as good. Renata’s parents had a ‘cottage’ in Wales, she wrote, and it was Kate’s for a week, free of charge, if she wanted a break. Naturally cynical, Kate had assumed there’d be a catch but there didn’t appear to be. The house was hers if she wanted it and god did she; a big house again, not a dingy one-bedroom London flat. For one glorious week she felt like she had been transported back into her old life – a huge house with room to move, to think, to breathe.

She taps out the code, opens the door and takes out the key.

She lets herself into the house, slips off her shoes and steps quietly through the porch and into the hallway. She doesn’t turn on the lights, her phone gives her all the light she needs. She just wants to wake Tom, get him into the car and get him back to the retreat with minimal fuss, and definitely no audience. Renata may want to play the role of moderator but that’s the last thing Kate needs.

She climbs the stairs, stepping softly in her socks. She ignores the bathroom at the top of the stairs and opens the door to the first bedroom instead. She sweeps the beam of her phone across the room. The bed’s empty. Leaving the door ajar she continues along the landing to the next bedroom. She almost doesn’t open it – it’s a twin room and who’d choose to sleep in a single bed when there are doubles available – but she turns the handle anyway. Again, the room’s empty, the beds untouched. She tenses as she approaches the third bedroom on the long landing. This has to be where Tom is sleeping. Renata will surely have taken the final bedroom, the master – huge, light and airy with a beautiful en suite – for herself. It was the room Kate chose, too.