I shoved another Fruit Chew into my mouth, rode past a woman with an empty child-seat on her bike, felt my stomach tighten. I’d always wanted one for the kids but had never got round to it. Oliver was too big now; Sophie might still fit. They were lovely, my children. Could I start again with Biddy? Yes, I could. But my kids – had they been abused?

* * *

Since I’d involved the Friends of Zac group, showing them the information we’d gathered, sharing the recording I’d made, the investigation had intensified.

Within a day, on the Saturday, it was clear that he’d never slept with Jia. She was horrified when I told her we thought they were together, wrote: Fucking no way – I thought he was my friend!

Josh, that same day, told me and Biddy that everyone thought Zac had been sleeping with Sarah for months, that I’d given them my blessing.

‘That’s so messed up,’ Sarah said when I told her on Saturday evening, then burst into tears.

‘Because it’s a lie?’

‘Yes, Chris, because it’s a lie.’

Somehow nobody – not even Josh – had broached the subject of Zac and Sarah with me, in all of those months, not even a hint.

‘We’re all grown-ups,’ he’d said, hands up defensively. ‘I’m a believer in live and let live.’

Brienne Halliday – Zac had never been with her. The photos he’d supposedly taken of her were lifted from her Instagram. I’d contacted her on Facebook, spoken on the phone. She’d laughed at first, stopped laughing.

The Canadian barista at Small Axe remembered him when I asked on Sunday morning, but only vaguely, and baulked at the idea they’d been a couple. ‘He always seemed a bit weird to me,’ she said. ‘Those big glasses of his … No way.’

On Sunday evening I’d bitten the bullet, gone to Biddy’s, apologised to Winford.

‘I was just worried about your children, Chris,’ he’d said, lying across Noel’s lap on the sofa, Cedric growling.

‘Yeah, mate, I know.’

Zac hadn’t rented with a live-in landlord called Marcus in Brunswick. The psycho furnishings, the oppressive feng shui, were his and his alone. Biddy had gone there on Sunday afternoon, spoke to the owner-occupier, who told her Zac had been a nightmare.

On Monday evening I said to Josh, ‘Maybe now we can go through his boxes.’ They were still in Josh’s spare room; he’d stripped the bedding, the sheets brittle with, oh gross, brother, dried semen, dragged the mattress onto the balcony to air.

‘I’m still not sure,’ he said. ‘I know that sounds weird, given the givens, but …’