‘I – we met in London.’

‘And where do you live now? Did you come all this way to see me?’ Her forehead creased. ‘It’s a long way to come, with them.’ She looked out at the children again.

‘Oh dear, I think – oh poor Fred. He’s hurt his knee.’ I put my cup down too quickly, it spilt on the table, next to the bowl of pungent pot-pourri that looked like bits of dead skin.

‘Kids, we’re off now.’ I quickly slid open the glass door. I was suffocating in here.

‘Have we met before?’ She was standing now, staring at me. ‘You look familiar, now I look at you again.’

‘No I don’t think so. I’d remember, wouldn’t you?’

I ran out into the garden, and plucked Effie off the swing.

‘Mum,’ Alicia whinged. ‘We only just got here.’

‘And now we’re going home. Now. Hurry up.’ I should never have brought them here. Such a bad mother. Such bad parents. I grabbed Alicia’s hand. ‘Bring Freddie. Hurry up.’

I got them to the car, apologising profusely, Kate’s mother standing at her door, nonplussed. I couldn’t tell her the truth, though I’d done nothing wrong. I couldn’t admit I’d seen her daughter dying at my feet. Not now, I couldn’t. I had to make sense of it.

‘What, by the way,’ I croaked, as I shut the back door. ‘What was the man’s name?’

‘The man?’

‘The man you said she loved.’ Though of course I knew the answer. But I had to hear her say it.

‘Oh.’ She stared at me. ‘It was that bloody James. James Miller. He broke her heart when she was a teenager, and then he came back, and he broke it all over again.’

Chapter Thirty

Love Is the Drug

Roxy Music

We settled down to our routine at home. Even without James it wasn’t very different from how it had been before. The children readily accepted that he was working abroad. Until his trial came up, I didn’t want to scare them; I thought they were too little, and when he was acquitted, well, they could wait until they were older to know the truth. Whatever that might turn out to be. If he was acquitted … I pushed that thought away.