Shielding my phone from the rain, I looked at the screen. It showed the text message icon in the notifications bar. I clicked on it, checking over my shoulder to see if Mel had noticed. She was still sitting on the swing seat, looking at our son, a desolately sad look on her face.

The message was from Ben.

You want to know the truth big fella? Let’s meet. There’s something I need to show you.

3.25 p.m. Ben mob

Raindrops spotted the phone’s screen, distorting the words.

Let’s meet.

Chapter 26

26

I kept my distance from Mel for the rest of the day. Seeing her, hearing her voice, gave me a pain in my chest like there was a boulder pressing on my ribcage. I didn’t know what to say to her, what was supposed to happen next. We were in uncharted territory: my marriage was a shipwreck and I had been washed up on some strange shore where I didn’t speak the language. There was anger too, but mostly a plunging sadness, a sense that much had been lost between us that might never be regained.

Mel put William in the bath after we came in from football, and then made his tea. I shut myself in the study with a bottle of red wine and thought further about the invitation from Ben.

There’s something I need to show you.

But what? And why now? Not to apologise, surely. That was not his style at all.

It could be a trap. Maybe he was going to finish what he’d started on Thursday, with a shotgun to even the odds. Mel had been taken away from him and he couldn’t deal with it, he thought I had threatened to hurt her if she didn’t end their relationship; God alone knew what kind of man he thought I was. Perhaps he thought he had to protect Mel from me, teach me a lesson. I had learned things about Ben in the last forty-eight hours that I would never have suspected, and had to be ready for him if he turned violent again.

It still begged the question: what did he have that he needed to show me?

I booted up the PC and refilled my glass as the computer whirred into life.

Ben had texted a map of the meeting place: a close-up picture of a page from a London A–Z, lots of green space, the A4140 going through the middle of it, Kingsbury HA9, Barn Hill, Fryent Country Park.

Bridge in the park near the open-air theatre. 10 a.m. tomorrow.