‘Can I get you anything? Do you want to talk?’

‘It was just a dream.’

‘Same dream?’

‘I don’t really remember. It’s just a dream.’

‘There’s nothing to be scared of, I swear.’

‘Don’t, Aector. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.’

‘I’m sorry …’

She shrugs; so much sadness in one simple act. Self-consciously, she worries at her mouth, tugging at her lower lip, chewing the skin on her thumb. He watches her flick her tongue against her teeth. She says the dream is always the same: a shadow, a patch of jagged darkness, following her relentlessly through an unfamiliar house; the sensation of nearness, the certainty of pain; dirty, bloody fingers in her mouth; teeth coming loose and falling like spilled jewels, tumbling into her lap, glaring gorily up at her in two perfect concentric rings …

And then she wakes. Wakes, and slithers from their bed, and seeks the comfort of the great open spaces beyond the glass, over the claustrophobia of their bed.

McAvoy has always known they would reach this point. His wife is an Irish Traveller; a Pavee to her very bones. The road is calling her. And he, a police officer all the way through, knows that soon, he will have to make a choice.

He can’t stand this. Can’t stand her fear, her pain, her yearning for something he knows he cannot give. Do it, he tells himself. Say something. Demand to know what she’s hiding. Why the phone calls; the texts, the second phone. Ask her who he is.

The darkness hides the blush that blooms in his cheeks. He is disgusted with himself. Would whip himself bloody for his disloyal thoughts if his suffering did not cause his wife so much pain.

She slips into bed beside him. He pulls her close. Presses his mouth into the crown of her head. She twists her fingers in his chest hair. He feels her tears against his skin.

Just try, he tells himself. This isn’t how it’s meant to be.

He steels himself. Whatever she is hiding, he needs to know. So do the children. They deserve better than this. Deserve the mum they know: effervescent, ferocious, funny, raw. They deserve Roisin McAvoy – not this listless, distracted wraith who drifts in and out of their lives and who wakes in terror that only seems to be soothed by the vastnesses beyond the glass.

‘Roisin, whatever it is, I swear, whatever you need, or whatever you think you might have done …’

Her whole body stiffens in his grasp; her fingers clutching at his skin as if afraid of falling.

Then the buzz. The damnable vibration of the work phone on the nightstand. The sudden blue light, illuminating a name, and a picture of a formidable looking woman with dark hair and blue eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ he begins, but Roisin is already rolling out of bed; already shrugging on her leopard print dressing gown and giving him that smile of hers; the smile that breaks his heart.