‘Uh… what?’ Ben sat up.

‘Shhh, it’s okay.’ I laid a hand on his chest. ‘It’s early. I just wondered where you were. You didn’t come to bed?’

‘I’m going to get a shower.’ He stood up quickly and headed upstairs. I didn’t have the energy to feel displaced by his behaviour.

By the time I made it upstairs I could hear him in the shower so I went to the bedroom to wait for him.

Despite the cold outside, I opened the curtains and the window an inch to let in some air. A fresh salty breeze hit my nostrils and I took a moment to gaze out to sea, I tried to decipher the ocean from the horizon but it was still too misty and barely dawn. I tried to feel something from the vast stretch of water just outside the window that went on for miles, as though it had no end. I could hear the waves through the small crack in the window. Such a simple and familiar sound.

Ben came into the room as I was settling myself back onto the bed which I had straightened out so it looked a little more inviting, rather than the tangled mess I had woken up in half an hour earlier.

‘It’s freezing,’ Ben said and shut the window. I watched him dry himself and put on a pair of jogging bottoms. Ben had popped out a few days ago and picked up basic sport casuals for us. I heard Annie greet him at the top of the stairs and tell him to keep the receipts for when the insurance money came through. This sentence had been used many times already and I wasn’t sure at what point I would drop the bombshell that Eve and I never once took out home insurance.

I had lied to the police.

Who lives their life with a sense of impending doom? Those were Eve’s words. Apparently, we should have done. For it was certainly how I would live my life from now on.

I looked at Ben now as he was dressed and he had an intensely sad look in his eyes.

‘I don’t know what to do any more, everything is a mess.’

‘I know,’ I said.

‘I know you’ve lost Eve, and I need to be here for you, but I have to go, Daisy. I have to go. If I don’t go, I will lose the job. If I lose the job it will kill the career I have been working towards all my life. This is my one and only opportunity. If I lose it, that’s it. You don’t get a second chance in this industry.’

My heart started racing and I tried to swallow but it felt forced. ‘So you’re bailing? Five minutes in and you’re bailing? Jesus, Ben, I thought you were here for me. This is it, for better or for worse. This is the worse and you can’t handle it.’

Ben approached me, took hold of my shoulders and looked me directly in the eye. ‘I’m not bailing. I have to go.’