Emil stared back with an inscrutable expression, but Bell could see some of the bombast had been taken out of him by the honest ferocity of Max’s words. No denials. No excuses. Had Emil expected guilt-ridden capitulation?

‘She wanted a divorce and you did too. You did too, until you found out about us! And that tore you up! You couldn’t bear that she loved me and not you. That she always had.’

‘Always had?’ Emil mocked with a shrug, but the gesture lacked the flippancy of even a few minutes ago. ‘Then why did she marry me?’

‘Take a fucking guess! You had decided you were going to marry her and that was that. Nothing was going to stop you and nothing could! Look familiar?’

Bell flinched at his ferocious anger – she’d never heard Max swear before – scarcely able to keep up with the chicanes of their past. She’d had no idea about their interlocked pasts, none . . . She heard something rustle behind her and turned to see a camellia bush, its leaves splaying in the wind, a bird, hopping about.

‘– But let me tell you something! She’s been happier with me these past seven years than she ever was with you! We’re a family now. You can’t destroy us. You won’t. I won’t let you! Hanna has tried to deal with you kindly. Compassionately. But this stops here, right now.’

Emil sat quietly across the table, allowing Max his bite-back, giving him his voice. But as his calmness extended ever further, Bell sensed something unsettling in the unexpected generosity of that. Max’s words should have been body-blows to him, everything he never wanted to hear. He should have been retaliating with more insults, more anger, blows even. Max, his best friend, had been having an affair with his wife. He was entitled to be angry about that. But to give Max his moment so calmly . . .

‘Did you never wonder why she was so anxious that I shouldn’t remember your affair?’ he asked after a moment, in a collected voice.

‘Because she knew you’d be a fucking psychopath about it!’

Emil shook his head slowly. ‘No. It wasn’t that. It was worse than that.’

‘Don’t give me that! You’re obsessed with her. You’ve pinned your whole life’s worth on getting her back because you can’t bear that she fell in love with me and she’s still in love with me!’

He held his hands up in docile surrender. ‘You’re right, Max. I was obsessed with her. She was all I could ever see. I didn’t know why, she just filled my head – awake, asleep, all the time. She was the last thing I saw before the car hit.’

‘Yeah-yeah-yeah, here you go again!’ Max snarled, out of patience and at the end of his tether now. ‘The last thing you saw. The first thing you saw.’

‘She was the last thing I saw before the car hit.’

Max stared at him, picking up on the pointed echo. He gave a frustrated shrug, as if to say, ‘So?’