But still, as he took a step towards me, I stepped back. Under my feet I felt water. The bath was overflowing and the damp was stretching down the stairs just as it had at Lorelei’s house.

He climbed another step and I took one back. Then my limbs were working without thought and I was running to our bedroom. He came after me. And all the way my mind was turning between two poles: how I had misjudged Nick; how I had misunderstood Charles.

I dashed to our bedroom. And before I knew it he was there too, searching the dresser, hunting through my cosmetics, throwing everything on to the floor.

‘Where’s her hairbrush?’ he demanded. ‘Where?’

‘I haven’t got it!’ I cried.

‘What?’ He stared at me.

‘I … I was making it up.’

He stopped stock still, his mouth opening but unable to find the words. In a moment he too understood. ‘You thought Cawson did it.’

‘Yes!’

His body seemed to collapse into itself, the air escaping as he sat heavily on the bed and put his hands to his temples. The springs groaned, a harsh metallic sound like a cry of pain. I didn’t know what to do, to think. My breath ran fast and shallow. I thought of trying to get out, but I would have had to push past him and could only stare. For a long time he was silent, rubbing his palms on his forehead as if trying to rub away a stain. ‘I just wanted …’ he said, more to himself than to me. ‘I …’

‘I know,’ I said, blinking in the misty light through the curtains. ‘I can see now. I know.’ And I could see now, see all the links in the chain that had brought us here. They were awful and corrupt and selfish.

The clock by my bed ticked. Lorelei laughed again, a reckless whooping cry that rose and faded, seeping into the hard bricks and plaster of the house. I felt that somehow it would stay locked in them, in the fabric of our house. Charles’s eyes were a dark, searing red as they looked to me, then down to his hands. He wiped them with his sleeve, leaving little dark patches on the material, and his mouth twisted into a silent sob. Then his arm went back over his face to shut out the world. I recognized that pain, the very sadness of love.

‘Were you going to go to Ireland?’ I asked. He nodded, his skin glistening below his sleeve. Charles, who, Nick had said, wanted a wife and children more than anything. I guessed what she had told him. ‘Did she say the baby was yours?’

He nodded again, a shallow little double dip of his head, gaze downcast, which spoke of a man whose life had slipped from his grasp a long time ago. ‘But it wasn’t.’ It was little more than a whisper.