‘What? It’s so hard to … Kids all right?’

‘They’re at my mum’s if you want to ring them there direct.’

‘It’s not worth it. I’ll speak to them tomorrow.’

‘OK,’ I repeated. I felt an almost nauseous sensation deep in my belly. ‘James, Liam was here, he—’

‘What? I can’t hear you. I—’

The line went dead.

I paced the house, thinking. I turned the computer on and searched Maya Kattan again, but there was nothing apart from the picture on the London march, and a random shot of her with Paul McCartney’s daughters and a small Geldof at some nightclub two years ago. Then I looked for Hadi Kattan again. His handsome face on the computer: his achievements, his family, his polo team, the possible al-Qaeda allegations that had come to nothing. I searched every article I could find. What was I missing? My brain felt like some old-fangled machine, the cogs grinding uncomfortably against each other.

I tried calling Xav, though I just got his voicemail, despite his earlier message. On Sundays he usually went to ground; we rarely talked about where he disappeared to, but he’d obviously gone there now.

I rang the kids again. My mother sounded surprised – they were still all fine. I paced the house.

I stared at my mobile phone, willing it to ring. It didn’t.

When he came back, my hands shook on the latch as I tried to open it. I looked up into the blackness behind him, and there was a shadow on the half-moon suspended in the sky.

‘I can’t stop thinking about you,’ he said, and he tried to smile, but I saw he couldn’t.

And when he pushed me gently against the wall and kissed me, I felt that great wash of feeling again like a tide, like a wave that has been coming over the sea all this time; it is gentle as it picks you up and you don’t want to fight it, you surrender to the inevitability.

The wave that brought me home.

Afterwards we lay in the darkness, and he said quietly, ‘This isn’t meant to be happening,’ and I said, ‘No, I guess not.’

I thought of Zack’s words. ‘Is there – do you – is there anyone else?’

‘No.’ He was almost vehement. ‘No, there isn’t.’

Neither of us moved. We talked quietly for a while; he asked me about the children, and I thought I detected a yearning in his voice.

Later, when all I could hear was his steady breathing and the silence stretched loosely across the room, I asked, ‘Do you regret it?’

‘What?’

‘This.’

‘No. The opposite.’

I felt relief flood over me for the second time. For a while neither of us spoke.

‘I just wish—’ He stopped.

‘What?’

‘I just wish you weren’t married,’ he muttered into my hair. His voice was so quiet I could hardly hear him.