‘No, sit here for now,’ he says, indicating a chair by him. ‘We wait to be called, for the charges to be read.’

‘All rise,’ a clerk in a sweeping robe says. I’m struck for a second that, if everything changed on that night in Verona, everything is about to change again now. A play in three acts. Then. Now. And the future, whatever it may bring.

The judge enters and we bow our heads to him, exposing the most vulnerable parts of our necks, and then, it begins.

39.

Then

Lydia

As Lydia slides the gearstick into reverse, going for a late-night run to Tesco for comfort food, the sound system clicks on. Expecting the radio, she reaches out her index finger to turn it off, but Joe’s voice comes over the speaker system. The display lights up with a call as Lydia stares at it, confused.

‘What is it?’ a woman’s voice says clearly. Lydia stares at the house, her mind whirring. Joe must be on the phone, which has transferred to the car’s hands-free when she turned on the engine. She sits there, waiting, frozen, hoping the call continues.

Joe must realize, because it stops. Lydia stares at the display, then gets out her phone and takes a photograph of the number. He’s calling a woman. He’s calling a woman when she’s out. Lydia feels hot, her raincoat sticking to her chest and bare arms. Maybe he’s deleted his group WhatsApps with Frannie and Cathy because he’s told them. Maybe he plans to leave her.

The anger hits her next.

She will be calling that number, she thinks, as she wrenches the car into gear. For the first time ever, she is glad she is not pregnant. That she isn’t in too deep with this man who is keeping secrets from her.

40.

Joe

It’s the next week, and it’s late. Joe is locking up the practice, as they have no overnighters tonight.

He switches off the lights in the backroom and stands there in the gloom, blinking, doing nothing except thinking. Some of the time, he’s able to cope with it. He’s okay if he’s busy. He’s worst in the morning, in the lag of the few seconds between waking up and remembering. His brain goes from nothingness, to something’s wrong to that. When he sleeps, he is the Joe of before, and when he wakes, he has to go through the painful process of becoming the Joe of today. Joe the accomplice. Joe the criminal.

He sighs, walking through the prep room, through Cathy’s meticulously neat consultation room, and out into the reception.

Frannie is sitting at the desk in the dark, playing Solitaire on the computer.

‘Fran?’ he says, surprised. ‘Where’s Paul?’

‘Mum and Dad’s,’ she says. ‘I was supposed to go out to dinner, but … I don’t know. I didn’t want to.’

‘Oh,’ he says, stopping and standing in the dimness next to the dog scales. He reaches a toe out to press them and they spring to life, illuminating the room a harsh blue that he knows will last exactly thirty seconds. ‘Who with?’