‘Stop rescuing the kestrels,’ she says softly.

‘Hand her over?’

‘Just – just stop. She’s killed somebody, Joe.’

‘I can’t stop. I can’t.’

‘What are you even doing?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘But it’s her problem,’ Lydia says. ‘It isn’t your problem. She’s your sister. I’m your wife.’

‘We’re being blackmailed,’ Joe says. Lydia swallows. ‘We’re going to pay it.’

‘Who by?’

‘Evan.’

The word is like a cold breeze in the night. Lydia is suddenly freezing. Evan. Joe’s original cover story, back when the lies to her began. ‘Right,’ she says softly.

‘We’re going to pay him off.’

‘How much?’

‘A stake in the business,’ Joe says.

‘God, Joe.’ Lydia stands up. ‘I can’t be part of this,’ she says. ‘When we do have a child –’ she sees Joe’s shoulders relax at the when – ‘I can’t … I can’t have them be involved in this. This is criminality, Joe. Murders. Blackmail. Bribery. What next?’

‘It’ll go away,’ Joe says. ‘I said – we’re going to pay him off.’

‘And then what?’ Lydia says softly, looking down at him, his skin bronzed and illuminated by the lights from their house.

‘What are you saying?’ Joe asks, looking up at her.

‘I’m saying there’s a choice here,’ she says. ‘You have a choice.’

‘I don’t.’

‘They’re the family you came from – but I’m the family you chose,’ she says.

Joe hesitates again. Lydia can tell he’s going to say it. The breeze seems to still around them, the night holding its breath too.

‘But you … you don’t … I don’t mean this harshly, Lyds, but you can’t possibly understand this.’

‘Why’s that?’ she whispers. He might yet not say it. He might not. All this time, never letting her truly in, not in on the family WhatsApp group until recently, always on the sidelines with their inside jokes. He’s going to say it. He is.

‘You don’t have a family … you don’t have …’ Joe says, but Lydia is already walking away from him, towards those lit-up windows, towards the house they share together, away from those words, those words that are so careless, so reckless with her feelings, they may as well be knives.

Lydia sits up in bed, alone, Joe banished to the spare room. She is half a bottle of wine down, and angry. She cannot believe he said it. She cannot believe it.

None of it. That he buried a fucking body. That he lied to the police. That he bribed Evan. But, most of all, that he said it. That he said she didn’t understand family.

She brings the glass of wine to her mouth and finishes it, then pours another. She stares at herself in the mirrored wardrobes that sit at the end of their bed. She looks deranged. She looks heartbroken.

They’re going to find the body any day now.

And, when they do, it is Lydia who holds all the cards. It is Lydia who could ruin them, this perfect family. It is Lydia who could demand whatever she wants in return for her silence.