Half an hour later, I was reading an article that Zac had left the newspaper folded to, which he’d neatly arranged on the corner of the table. The article was about a huge leak of records from a Panama-based law firm, and how the prime minister’s own father was on the list of rich people who put their money in offshore tax havens.

When Zac walked into the kitchen he nodded approvingly at the article. ‘Impressive thing to pull off.’

I took his hand. ‘Whoever leaked that data is a hero.’

‘Doubtful that he’ll appear on the Honours List.’

I stood and pulled Zac against me. ‘I hope they don’t catch him.’

‘I’m glad you feel that way.’ One of his hands was on the small of my back. The other was taking a jar of horseradish sauce from the pocket of his blazer and putting it on the table. ‘I want you to have your dinner exactly how you like it.’ But we ended up not eating anything.

Zac slept with his body pressed against mine that night, and it was the first time I could remember feeling as if I belonged somewhere. When he went into the bathroom the next morning to get ready for work, I listened carefully for the sound of the water running in the shower, then sat up to peek in the drawer of his bedside table.

There was a photograph of a woman who looked like me, with hair the colour of maple leaves in autumn and eyes the colour of moss. She was on a cushiony reclining chair by a beach with palm trees, sipping from a cocktail glass with carefully arranged edible flowers around the rim. She was wearing a tasselled white cover-up, so filmy I could see her orange bikini beneath it. On her left ankle was an oval mark like a black star sapphire, so distinct I wondered if it was a tattoo. Perhaps it was a birthmark.

‘You found my first wife.’ Zac’s voice came as the quilt slipped from my shoulders, or rather, as he pulled it from me, so it was only when those two things, the words and the movement, happened at once, that I inhaled and looked up to see him standing there, though I could hear that the shower was still on.

‘You startled me.’

He sat on the edge of the bed, a towel round his hips. There were drops of water on his shoulders, and he was dripping on me. He drew a wet finger down the centre of my chest and to my belly button, where he left it.

There was no good story to defuse my being caught with the photograph, so I didn’t tell one. ‘She’s very pretty.’ It occurred to me that other than the incident of Peggy and the apple tree when I was four, I had never knowingly been caught snooping.

‘Not as pretty as you.’