‘She’s going to stay with Thea in Melbourne tomorrow, she’ll be out of your orbit for a while.’ Oh, how very hard she was working to keep him sweet! She felt her guilt must surely show, like the scarlet letter, branding her a sinner, forever unworthy.

‘I know she is, but she’ll be out of sight, not out of mind, and she’s driving me crackers.’ He drained his coffee cup and put it in the sink, where he stared at it for a few seconds, just stared, as if the dregs at the bottom might hold some answers.

‘So,’ Ali said, a little uneasy, eager to be alone.

He turned around from the sink and said, ‘So?’

They stood either side of the pale oak surface of the kitchen island, and she moved round it now, to the same side as him, so that he could touch her if he wanted to, although he didn’t, and she didn’t touch him. ‘You don’t mind, then? If I take off?’

‘It’s up to you what you do,’ he said. He folded his arms and leaned away from her, against the sink. Dressed for work he looked polished and controlled, and it was so difficult to gauge his mood. ‘I’m not going to give you permission.’

‘I’m not asking for permission,’ Ali said. ‘I’m asking if you mind.’

‘OK,’ he said, and he sighed like a man whose patience was being sorely tried. ‘Well, cards on the table, I’d rather you didn’t go, but I suppose I don’t mind, if you feel you must.’ He looked at her, and there was a challenge in his expression; she saw it now for sure, and, seeing it, she realised it’d been there all along.

‘What’s going on, Ali?’ he said, and wham, there it was again, that cold liquid fear coursing through her gut, mouth instantly dry, proving her a lightweight once more, even now, at this early stage in the game, when so little actual wrong had been committed. Fight or flight, she thought; how basic we are, how very predictable. She swallowed, and chose to fight.

‘What kind of question is that?’ she said.