He stared at me, his skin blanching. ‘Alive?’

‘Yes, J, alive.’

We hung over the lip of our life. The moment that finally cracked the final vestige of trust between us.

‘I had an idea,’ he muttered in the end.

‘I see.’

‘Only very recently, though, I swear. And I figured …’

‘What?’

‘He owed me.’

‘You? You specifically?’ I felt that familiar flicker of anger now. ‘Not all of us? Just you?’

‘It was me that thought I’d killed him. And it wasn’t my idea. It was Kate’s. She saw him, a few years ago apparently, off his face again.’

‘So she was a whore?’ I said coldly.

‘She was … let’s just say she was a good-time girl. Whatever. She was in love with Charlie Higham, and he had some kind of revenge up his sleeve. When Lord Higham appeared again – well, she knew Higham was struggling for political power. She did it all, I swear, Rosie.’ He grabbed my hand, my hand that suddenly felt terribly cold. ‘I swear it wasn’t me.’

‘And the heroin?’

‘I thought about it.’ He poured a few fingers of whiskey and downed the glass in one. ‘He made it sound so bloody easy.’

‘Who did?’

‘Kattan.’

‘But I still don’t understand. If it was him, if you knew he’d set you up, why didn’t you implicate him in the trial?’

‘They weren’t interested. They literally ignored me every time I mentioned his name. Jesus, Rose,’ he slumped again, his head in his hands, ‘I was just a pawn in something else.’

For the first time in a year, I realised I believed him. The relief I felt was immense. He was telling the truth. I put my arm around him, felt his solid warmth through his sweatshirt. I felt sorrow for what he’d endured; but most of all, I felt relief for our children, that their father had not veered as far off track as I’d feared.

‘I think he wanted me to go down.’ James stared at the wall. ‘But I don’t know why.’

‘Who did? Hadi Kattan?’

‘No.’ He gazed at me. ‘Not Hadi. Ash.’

In the end, who knew? Who knew whether the Kattans came to wreak revenge or whether they just happened to be in our path when we stumbled so clumsily across them? But Maya apparently recovered, and for that I was truly pleased. The photo in the paper at the Islamic protest; it turned out to be a photo taken from the wrong angle, an image from a set snapped by one of Xav’s staff photographers that proved Maya and Nadif were part of a peaceful protest all along – against the fundamentalists, not for.

Some time in the autumn I caught Maya’s appearance on Channel 4’s News, talking passionately against her brother’s involvement with Higham’s party.