She gave a curt nod but didn’t meet his eye, stubbing out the diminished cigarette in the saucer she was using as an ashtray. They had decided to wait before broaching the subject with Beth, until a time when he and Abi would sit down with their daughter, reassure her of their love for her, then gently press her to open up to them. Abi had acquiesced to him that this was the best approach, yet still he could see the resistance within her, impatience and frustration impelling her to follow her instincts and shake the child awake.

‘All the allowances we made for Melissa. When I think about it now, the way I’d scold the girls anytime they complained about her coming over … Do you think it’s because they knew what she was, and we didn’t?’

His glass was empty and he wanted to refill it, but his limbs felt liquid, unstable. His head swam with vodka, the strangeness of the night. The two of them sat in silence, nursing the feelings inside them. Mark remembered the suicide note he’d found, the list of instructions that had infuriated him at the time – information about bank accounts and post office savings, phone numbers scrawled down for boiler repairs and roof maintenance. He recalled how he felt when he’d turned the list over and seen the words: ‘I’m sorry’ scrawled across the back. His disappointment at those words, their flimsiness, their inadequacy. But now he wondered whether she had meant Beth.

Then, a thought occurred to Abi. ‘That is, unless it didn’t happen.’

‘What?’

She looked at him. ‘Unless Beth made it up and then told Corinne. She lies sometimes. All kids do.’

‘But this? To lie about something so—’

‘I know. You’re right. It was just a thought.’ Then she asked hastily: ‘Do you think Eva knows anything about it?’

‘I doubt it. She would’ve said if she did, wouldn’t she?’

Abi shrugged. ‘A year ago, I would have said yes. But now … She’s become so distant. I hardly see her these days, and when I do, she doesn’t want to talk.’

‘She’s growing up.’

‘Yes. She’ll be gone soon and then Beth not long after her.’

Abi gave him a direct look. He had the sense that she was steeling herself.

‘Things have gotten pretty bad between us, haven’t they?’

Meekly, he nodded.

Her brow furrowed with a new confusion, and she continued: ‘So bad that you had to seek comfort in Corinne? A girl no older than our daughter?’

A wave of shame washed over him. ‘It wasn’t like that, Abi,’ he said softly. ‘But I have felt lonely for some time now and she seemed to understand that. It was friendship – kinship, maybe. As if we came from the same background – the same place of unhappiness.’