‘I’m sorry,’ I told Aidan. ‘It’s not that I don’t want you to know, it’s just . . . I can’t say it. I can’t say the words.’ A lie. I didn’t want him to know; I had wanted to please him by agreeing that we should tell one another, but that wasn’t the same thing. If I’d wanted him to know, I could have promised to show him the file under my bed at home: the trial transcript, the letters, the newspaper clippings.

‘I’m sorry I’ve told you so little,’ I said. I needed to cry. The tears were there; I could feel them inside me, blocking my throat and chest, but I couldn’t squeeze them out.

Aidan knelt down in front of me, rested his arms on my knees and looked at me hard, so that I couldn’t look away. ‘It isn’t so little,’ he said. ‘It’s a lot. To me, it’s a lot.’ That was when I realised that he wouldn’t go back on the deal we’d made. He wasn’t going to ask me any questions. My body sagged, limp with relief.

I showed no sign of wanting to say more. Aidan must have assumed I’d reached the end of the non-story I had not quite told him. He kissed me and said, ‘Whatever you did, it makes no difference to how I feel about you. I’m really proud of you. It’ll be easy from now on.’ I tried to pull him up onto the bed. I wasn’t sure what the ‘it’ was that he thought would be easy; he might have meant making love for the first time, or the rest of our life together, all of it. I had left my last life behind, and now I had a new one with Aidan. Part of me—a big, loud, insistent part—couldn’t believe it.

I wasn’t nervous about the sex, not any more. Aidan’s idea had worked, though not in the way he’d hoped it would. I’d confided a little, and now I was desperate to do anything but talk. I wanted physical contact as a way of warding off words.

‘Wait,’ Aidan said. He stood up. It was his turn. I didn’t want to know. How can the things someone has done in the past make no difference to the way you feel about them in the present? I knew too much about the worst human beings can do to one another to be able to give Aidan the reassurance he had given me.

‘Years ago, I killed someone.’ There was no emphasis, no tone to his voice; it was as if he was reading from an autocue, each word appearing on its own and out of context on a screen in front of him.

I had a terrible thought: a man. Please let it be a man.

‘I killed a woman,’ Aidan said, in response to my unasked question. His eyes were flooded. He sniffed, blinked.

I felt my body begin to fill up with a new sharp sadness, one I was sure I wouldn’t be able to stand for more than a few seconds. I was desperate, angry, disbelieving, but not frightened.