It didn’t take long for me to see what I was looking for. Zac, and a woman in the chair opposite him. They were both leaning intently towards each other. A shard of her light hair whipped briefly into view, though I couldn’t see her features because Zac was in the way. He started to move. Before he could swivel around, I stepped to the side of the door jamb, out of his sightline, then disappeared into the narrow back stairwell I’d discovered earlier. My attempted surveillance had been thwarted within a minute of it having begun.

I was panting by the time I reached the second-floor landing, and wondering how I would make it all the way up to the fifth. I paused to catch my breath and allow a young woman in a blue housekeeping dress to pass.

‘Are you all right?’ One of her hands rose, as if she wanted to steady me, but she stopped herself.

‘Fine. Thank you.’

‘You know that there are lifts?’

‘Yes.’ I raised a hand to brush my hair out of my eyes.

‘And a nicer staircase, for guests?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I help you with anything? I’d be happy to see you to your room.’

‘No. Thank you.’ I began the ascent. I could feel her watching until the stairs twisted round at the next landing, and I was no longer in her view.

I didn’t take my dress off, though I slipped my feet out of the shoes before I lowered myself onto the bed and rested on my left side. I would have chosen that position without Zac’s instruction. All the pregnancy books told you to do it. I arranged one pillow beneath my bump and another between my thighs and knees. I lay on top of the counterpane, but pulled Zac’s side of it over me, so it was like a single slice of bread folded in half with me as the filling in between.

He didn’t hesitate to accuse me of secretly meeting someone else, but he did that very thing himself. And became violent – the broken glass was still in shards near the wall. I remembered the black micro card, and his muttering about a key. A key to what, I wondered. Could it be something from his medical meeting at University College Hospital? The video footage of women that he’d been taking covertly? Something else altogether? I wished he hadn’t noticed when it fell out. I wished I could have got hold of it. But he did. And I didn’t.

My heart was beating fast and my brain was spinning dizzily and my stomach seemed to be shaking around in my torso despite how crowded it was in there. Nonetheless, my eyes still closed.