‘Mel? Can you get home early tonight? I’ve got a plan.’

I watched Mel as she sent him the text, telling him she was sorry for breaking it off, she couldn’t live without him and she was desperate to see him again. Kingsway, one hour, the usual place. A shopping centre not far from our house. She signed off with three kisses.

‘Where’s the usual place?’ I asked, my voice low.

‘Starbucks.’

‘That’s where you used to meet?’

She looked down and away from me.

‘One of the places.’

‘There were other places, were there?’

She nodded, but said nothing, and we both lapsed into a loaded silence. The only things I could think of to say would make me sound wounded and resentful, so I clamped my teeth together and said nothing.

We waited for five minutes, ten. William came into the kitchen rubbing his eyes and asking for his bath. Mel picked him up and moved to take him upstairs.

I held out my hand to her.

‘Give me your phone.’

‘Why?’

‘Need to be sure that you don’t warn him.’

She looked like she’d just been slapped.

‘I would never . . . Don’t you trust me?’

‘I don’t know who to trust any more. But trust is earned, and we have to start from scratch on that score.’

She nodded, eyes down, and handed me the phone.

‘Daddy’s got all the phones,’ William said, his chin on Mel’s shoulder.

I followed them upstairs and stood in the bathroom doorway as Mel ran our son’s bath, tested the temperature, helped him get undressed, checked the temperature again, and helped him up onto the plastic step and into the water. She sat on the little stool and played with him in a way she’d done when he was a toddler, filling cups and saucers with foamy water and talking with William as he chattered away happily, asking if she wanted tea or coffee or beer or soup or hot chocolate. Each drink had a different price. Watching them play together brought a lump to my throat.

I hit Adam’s number in my phone. I had not spoken to him since the debacle at the pub on Sunday – out of shame at what he’d seen – but now I needed his help.

He seemed to have other ideas.

‘I er . . . can’t look after William tonight, mate,’ he said, his voice hesitant.

‘Just for an hour?’

‘Got to take the girls to their ballet lesson.’

I checked my watch.

‘At this time of night?’

‘Sorry, mate.’

‘Please? I wouldn’t ask unless it was important.’

His voice dropped, as if someone was listening in.

‘What’s going on with you, Joe? Kate said you got arrested for beating some bloke up. She saw it on Facebook.’

‘I wasn’t arrested. It’s bullshit.’

‘Really?’ a note of disbelief in his voice.

‘Yes, really. I wasn’t arrested.’