‘I can hardly remember when Alice was that age,’ Beth said, wrapped up in a cream cashmere overcoat against the October chill. ‘It’s all a bit of a blur when they’re young, isn’t it? Up in the morning, breakfast, school run, play, story time, bedtime. Sometimes I wish I’d stopped to appreciate her a bit more when she was small, but at the time you don’t realise it. You just think it will last forever.’

‘We all do what we have to do. Alice is a good kid, you should be proud of her.’

‘Oh, I am proud. More than I can put into words. I just wish sometimes I could turn the clock back to when she was little, things seemed so much less complicated then.’

We both watched as the small boy ran round to the steps at the foot of the slide and began climbing again.

‘How are you holding up, Beth?’ I said.

She shrugged.

‘Oh, you know. Not terribly well, if I’m honest.’

She listened in silence as I told her about the solicitor’s letter, then about my close encounter with Ben at Kingsway Mall, and my previous night’s interview with the police. There was uncertainty in her eyes. Not fear – I think we were past that – but maybe she was still trying to decide whether I could be completely trusted.

‘The police seem to be focusing a lot of their energies on you,’ she said.

‘Your husband’s got them dancing to his tune.’

‘It seems impossible to think that he could carry this on for so long.’

‘He’s only ever really cared about himself, though, hasn’t he?’

‘That’s not true,’ she said, her voice quiet. ‘Not always. He was very sweet when we first met, when Alice was born.’

‘The last few years, though?’

She didn’t answer. Instead, she looked away from me and started to cry, helpless tears rolling down her cheeks. She was utterly unguarded about it and I thought about how far she had fallen, and how fast.

‘It’s going to be OK, Beth,’ I said. ‘We’ll figure it out. Together.’

She produced a wadded tissue from her sleeve and wiped away her tears.

‘It’s stupid,’ she sniffed. ‘My spirituality has always taught me that everything turns out OK in the end, that things work their way back to a kind of equilibrium. Ying and yang. But I don’t know if that’s true any more. I think sometimes things go wrong and they just stay wrong, and there’s nothing we can do to change it.’

‘I don’t believe that, Beth.’

She gave a sad little laugh.

‘That’s a bit like saying you don’t believe in gravity, Joe – it doesn’t change the fact that it exists.’

‘You know, we could be a team, me and you.’

‘A team?’