She pulled up the Land Cruiser’s trajectory around Chittagong, after it had dropped them off in Cox’s Bazar on the first day.

‘There.’ The big black car had travelled up to Bhatiari, paused, then travelled across to the head of the long Sandwip pier that reached hundreds of yards out to sea, and paused again. It had made its way south along the coast road, stopping here and there. Then finally, it had headed back to the factory in Sagorika.

‘And what,’ Casey glowered at the screen, ‘were you doing up there?’

41

41

Back in London, after a long day at the Post, Miranda turned the key in the door of the pretty house in Queen’s Park. That hollow key sound, every evening.

‘I’m home,’ she called. The dream trappings, the trapped dream. ‘Hello?’

I have to tell him.

I don’t know how.

The front sitting room had been knocked into the back, like every other sitting room on the street. Tom had wanted to extend the kitchen, right the way across the back of the house. He liked the way the Adamsons had done it, at number 56. Family space, they called it.

He hadn’t got round to it.

Not yet.

‘Hello?’ Miranda called again.

When she walked into the kitchen at the back of the house, Tom was sitting at the table with an expression she didn’t recognise on his face. There was a bunch of pink roses, still wrapped in their brown paper, shoved awkwardly into too small a vase. The water had splashed on the countertop.

‘Miranda . . .’ He jumped to his feet.

She was so surprised for a second that she had to lean a hand on the kitchen surface.

Not yet.

No.

‘Tom?’ Miranda couldn’t keep the shake out of her voice. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Miranda, I had no idea.’ Tom was walking towards her, smiling, one hand reaching for hers. He had a leaflet in his other hand.

‘What?’ Miranda blinked at him.

‘I’m so sorry, darling. So sorry . . .’ Miranda didn’t recognise his smile for a second, realised that she hadn’t seen it for years, not properly.

‘What on earth are you talking about, Tom?’

Her husband held it up, a brightly coloured pamphlet. Miranda saw it with a thud of realisation: a leaflet from Dr Greystone’s clinic.

The secretary must have handed it to her as she left her appointment. And Miranda had shoved it in her handbag, without thinking.

‘You looked in my handbag?’

He was surprised for a moment. ‘I needed a pen. You always have pens, in your handbag.’

The journalist’s habit, it had been their joke for years.

‘Right. Of course.’

‘I didn’t know, Miranda. You should have told me. We could have . . .’

Tom was opening the leaflet, peering at a bouncing baby.

‘It’s not,’ Miranda sat down heavily at the bleached pine kitchen table, ‘what you think.’