Patrick must sleep on the other side of the bed, nearest the window. Silently – and quickly – she crosses the room, around the bed, until she’s standing in front of where he sleeps, feeling the cold of the wind at her bare shoulders. On his side of the bed there is a lamp, nothing else. She feels disappointed, as if this intrusion owed her a better insight. She opens the door to his bedside table: there’s a nail file, a pair of reading glasses, an out-of-date slim green horse-racing diary. She closes the drawer quickly, flinching at the sound it makes. There must be more to him than this. She looks around, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary that she can see. She goes to walk back around the bed and that’s when she hears it, a footstep out on the landing, a sigh she knows as someone reaches the top step of the stairs – Patrick. She looks about her frantically. She’s standing, clutching the towel around her, stuck between the bed and the window. If he comes in here now, that’s where he’ll find her. What would she say? She can’t go out. Not now. She’s trapped.

She throws herself down on the floor at his side of the bed just as the door starts to open. She rolls on her side, the towel coming undone, but more than half of her body disguised under the bed. She moves silently, shuffling an inch or so further under the bed. She lies on her back. Holding her breath, breathing with the very apex of each lung. There’s less than an inch between the valance sheet and the floor. She sees his feet at the door. To her right, the towel trails out under the bed. If he walks around, he’ll see it. But she can’t risk moving a muscle. She holds her breath, her nose almost touching the underside of the mattress between the wooden slats. Patrick’s feet start to move slowly round the bed. The valance sheet has caught on her bare shoulder, exposing it. She wriggles, only a little, and feels the sheet loosen, dropping towards the floor. She can’t see his feet now, he must be at the very bottom of the bed. Then suddenly, she hears a faint sound from downstairs. Maureen calling him. Please say he hears it too.

‘Yeah?’ Patrick shouts downstairs to his wife.

Chloe’s whole body tenses.

But there’s no reply. He sighs, she hears a foot shuffle on the carpet, although she can’t see it. Another sigh, this one longer. And then the creak of a floorboard as he walks out of the room, pulling the door shut behind him.

Chloe lets out a long breath. But she doesn’t move, not until she hears him going down the stairs.

‘What is it, Mo? I’d just gone to get my . . .’