“. . . of us knew where he’d gone, and—”

It was curious, the shapes that lips formed during speech.

“—he was late for the briefing but no one had heard from him and then a member of the public found him, and he wasn’t breathing—”

Her head had snapped up then, and she stopped watching Simon’s mouth and searched again for his eyes, and when her husband’s friend found the courage to look at her, the landscape was so bleak that she had to turn away.

“I’ll drive you to the hospital,” he had said.

She had known then that Adam was dead. Because Simon would have told her if he were alive, however badly injured. Because she had used those words herself when she had knocked at the home of a teenage boy who had borrowed the family car, or a sister who had slipped out to meet a stranger off the Internet, or an uncle who had got into a fight outside the pub.

She could not bring herself to burden their families with the truth, not all at once. The car journey to the hospital was to prepare them for what they would find there.

Wildeve had staggered against the desk, bruising the back of her thighs, a dark smudge of pain. Simon had caught her wrist and kept her upright, but the shock, the grief, was not how she expected it at all.

Her heart was not collapsing in on itself or breaking into pieces. She was not a reduced husk of herself. Instead, she walked the wide, empty spaces of pain. She felt herself opening up, like a house with a dozen empty rooms. So much nothingness to fill.

One day ago, she had been a wife. Now she was a widow.

Wildeve touched her temples. The pain was still sparking, like an ignition that would not catch, but it was dulled for now. She forced herself to get up. She needed water. Something to eat.

As she stumbled down the stairs, gripping the banister to anchor herself against her blurred vision, she became aware of a shadow behind the front door.

Adam.

Her heart stuttered, as if he had somehow found his way home, and the past twenty-four hours had been nothing more than a terrible dream.

But the doorbell was ringing and Adam had his own key, and when she looked again, the shadow was taller and broader than her husband had been. She was about to shout, to tell the journalist to leave her alone, when a familiar voice spoke.

“C’mon, Wild, open up. It’s me.”

She had been avoiding him, but now he had seen her, moving around the hallway. Damn Jim Sheridan for giving her away.