Her words were like spikes of ice between my ribs, each one sharper than the last. But I had to keep going, had to get it all out in the open.

‘Have you had sex with him in our house?’

‘Yes,’ she said, almost inaudibly.

‘In our bed?’

She nodded.

Our marital bed. It had been our present to ourselves when we moved in. The first time we’d had a decent-sized bedroom big enough for a king-sized bed. As far as I knew it was where William had been conceived.

As far as I knew.

‘Have there been others, before him?’

She looked up at that.

‘No!’ Very definite.

‘You sure about that?’

‘That’s not fair, Joe.’

‘Fair?’ I laughed, but there was no humour in it. ‘You’d be in a better position to talk about being fair if you hadn’t just admitted to sleeping with another bloke behind my back.’

She stared at the floor.

‘There’s no one else.’

I turned to a framed picture of William on the dresser. A chubby-cheeked toddler in dungarees and a bib, laughing at the camera with a big piece of birthday cake clutched in his small hand. His mother’s eyes. A horrible, sickening thought lodged like a splinter in my brain. I couldn’t get rid of it, couldn’t push it away.

Should think about getting a DNA test. They’re cheap nowadays. And easy. Just send two samples away in the post and a fortnight later you’ll know, one way or the other.

One way. Or the other.

The thought of it made me want to curl up in a corner and cover my head. I couldn’t deal with that, on top of everything else. A DNA test would provide information that I could never un-know. Once that genie was out there, it would never go back in the bottle. So I would have to decide what I would do with that knowledge if it confirmed this new fear. Because if I wasn’t going to act on it, what was the point of finding out in the first place?

No.

William was my son. Nothing could take that away from me. My boy. Today, tomorrow, forever.

‘I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it, for what that’s worth.’

‘Joe, I’ve been such an idiot. Can you forgive me?’

It wasn’t a question that could be answered. Not in that moment.

‘So many lies, Mel. So many.’

‘I know, I’m so, so sorry. Once I’d started I just couldn’t stop, like I was in a car with no brakes.’

‘Tell me about last night, after you dropped Alice home from babysitting.’

She sighed, wiped her eyes again.

‘I drove back.’

‘You were gone for the best part of two hours. Where did you go?’ I indicated the open cases on the bed. ‘And remember what I said about the suitcases.’

‘I . . .’

‘You what?’

‘Ben had left me some messages. I called him back and talked to him for a bit.’