It was as though I thought I could outrun it, the sudden absolute conviction that I hadn’t been given the true version of this either.

That my wife had lured Michael Copeland to the top of the cliff and then pushed him off.

I sat in the car, breathing heavily and shivering from cold, or shock, or something. Horror, maybe. Disgust.

Fear. Fear that I didn’t know what was really inside my wife, what she was capable of doing.

This is the point in the story where I could have made yet another correct moral choice.

Where I went home, confronted my wife and told her that I knew what she’d done. That we could find a way to work it out together; go to the police and confess everything that had happened.

Except, I didn’t do any of that.

What I did was think about the child she was carrying – our child – however abstract that still felt. She’d go to prison. Because how could she have explained what happened to Michael Copeland, without also telling them about Liam and what happened in 2003?

I started the engine and drove home.

We were due at Patrick and Julia’s in less than an hour.

AUTUMN 2003

LIAM

‘Love? Liam? It’s actually five o’ clock.’

His mother’s voice bleeds through his consciousness until he can’t ignore it any longer. He’s dimly aware this isn’t the first time today he has heard it.

There is an apologetic tapping at the door now, which then grows in confidence and he winces, wishing he could disappear into the depths of the bed and never come out.

‘I’ve got you a cuppa here,’ she says now. ‘Would you like me to bring it in?’

Liam hasn’t locked the door and, before he can say anything, she is there, at the entrance, somehow looking sympathetic and annoyed all at once. Then she sees the state of the room and her brow wrinkles.

‘I’ll just bring it in, shall I?’ Then, more decisively, ‘I’ll bring it in.’

She picks her way through the discarded clothes and junk on the floor with exaggerated patience, as though having to hack her way through thickets of thorny undergrowth, then places the cup of tea next to the bed.

Liam grunts a thank you. Hopefully she may leave now. But she is still standing there, gazing down at him.

‘Are you still under the weather?’ she says but doesn’t wait for his reply. ‘Only, your dad is worried about your work.’ She always does this; hides her concerns behind what he thinks. Like she has no mind of her own. It’s pathetic.

He mumbles something about having ‘squared it with Janice,’ his line manager. But he hasn’t really. Who cares if he goes in?

Who cares about anything?

Finally, Mum takes the hint and leaves the bedroom, sighing theatrically as she goes.