Joe stares up at the ceiling, where she’s likely sitting in that way that she does, perched on the side of the bath, toes in their bathmat that she launders religiously once a week, and puts his head in his hands, wondering what to do. Wondering if there’s a possible solution he could think of that doesn’t hurt anyone. That keeps Frannie safe. That keeps Lydia safe but not excluded. But there isn’t. He sits back down again, his eyes closed, tears budding, listening to the sound of the bath filling up, the water rising and rising but not yet spilling over.

He can’t tell her. It’ll break her. That he has done something illegal, something connected to violence. Her father hit her and her mother. The first time, he held her wrists so tightly they left marks, Lydia says. The second was a punch to her stomach. Lydia told a teacher only after the twentieth time. She’d lived through all that violence.

She would leave him. He lifts up his head. But is that the right thing to do – to take that choice away from her? Or is the right thing to do to continue to protect her from the knowledge?

He climbs into bed next to her later that evening. She is sleeping, he can tell. Deep breathing. She’s on her front, the way she always sleeps. It’s hot in the bedroom, and she’s thrown the covers off herself, the soles of her feet exposed to the air. He sits, looking at those feet, that bum, the limbs of his wife that he promised to love forever, to honour, to forsake all others for. So what is he doing?

But it isn’t that simple. Nothing is. Frannie – in some ways – means as much to him as Lydia. Which is the right choice?

Lydia must feel his eyes on her, because she stirs. ‘Spare room,’ she mumbles into the pillow. It has a small wet patch on it, a drool patch. Joe loves the intimacy of marriage, that he is allowed to see these things about another person. But it no longer seems to be something he is allowed. He must throw it away, to save his sister. Can that be true?

‘I want to talk,’ he says gently to her, not wanting to startle her, to scare her away.

Lydia sits up, saying nothing. She’s naked, but she draws the duvet up her body, covering her breasts.

‘Let’s say that I’m helping somebody who’s done something illegal. Something really illegal.’

‘How illegal?’ Lydia says immediately.

Joe lowers his gaze to the bedspread, to that patch of drool on her pillow case. ‘It would get life in prison,’ he says softly.

Lydia blinks, looking at him. ‘What?’ she whispers. And then she moves her foot away from his, that beautiful, round heel of her foot that looks exactly like a peach, and asks him one question only: ‘Why are you doing that?’

‘Love,’ Joe says.

Lydia stares straight ahead and nods slowly, appearing to think. And then she says: ‘Why are you telling me now?’