Lydia stands then, trainers on the wooden floor in front of him. She is going. She is leaving now. She is leaving him.

‘Don’t go,’ he says softly. Lydia is standing right in front of him now. There’s a bag in the hall. He’s staring right at her, but he can see it in the corner of his vision. ‘Where will you go?’

‘I asked you to stop this, and you haven’t. You’re kicking tables and being so – so unpredictable. So angry. I just – this isn’t what I signed up for.’ She holds up her palms, like somebody pushing something away from them.

‘Look. Evan is all paid now. It’s done. It’s over,’ Joe says, trying to grab for her hands.

‘You paid Evan’s blackmail, even though I asked you not to.’

‘He was going to call the police.’

‘You did it anyway. You’ve been very clear about where I fit in in all this,’ Lydia says. She places a warm hand on his arm. It’s so easy to be magnanimous when you’re the one leaving, Joe thinks nastily, though he knows that isn’t right – that it isn’t fair.

‘Lyds,’ he says. ‘What was I supposed to do? Hand my sister in?’

‘Consider your wife,’ she says. ‘That’s all I asked for. And you just – you just didn’t. You don’t. I can’t compete with this.’ She gestures towards Frannie’s house.

‘She needs me,’ Joe says.

‘So do I.’

‘So what is this?’

‘I just need to be away for a while,’ she says. ‘I’ll call you.’

‘Oh, right – great. A phone call,’ Joe says, rage bubbling underneath his skin. ‘You promised to love me forever, and now I’ll get a phone call.’

Lydia shoots him a look, a wounded look, her cheeks red, and he wishes immediately he could take it back. To fall on to his knees and beg her. To hold on to her hands and plead. ‘Lyds,’ he says thickly.

She shakes her head, her mouth tight. ‘Let me take it back,’ he says. ‘I’ll do anything.’

‘You won’t.’

‘I will.’

‘Okay, then – end it. Truly end it.’

‘Hand Frannie over?’

Lydia puts her hands on her hips. She looks tired. ‘It won’t end until you do,’ she says. ‘Not really.’

Joe hesitates. He imagines doing it. But he can’t hand Frannie over. He can’t, he can’t.

‘I could stop helping her.’

‘So if the police reinterviewed you tomorrow –’

‘What? I should hand her in?’ Joe says emphatically.

‘So you would lie for her again?’

Joe stares at his feet. They lost Rosie and they never got over it … he can’t lose Frannie too. He tries to find a solution that isn’t that, that isn’t full of absolutes, as tears clog his throat.

‘Lyds, I –’

‘I thought as much,’ she says.

She removes her hand from his arm, his little kestrel. Tears blur their living room as he watches her get ready to go.

As she’s leaving, he can’t help but ask her.