This seemed to soothe her until she grudgingly allowed the plastic nipple of the bottle into her mouth for a small suck, before spitting it out again and starting to cry once more.

I didn’t dare leave the house in case Anya came back. I wanted to speak to Zoe, just to hear a friendly voice, but what could I have said? That I had no idea why my wife had been arrested? Before she left the house, Anya had made me swear, a ferocious look on her face, that I wouldn’t tell her parents yet. This felt wrong on so many levels but I decided I would honour her wishes if she was back within twenty-four hours. Otherwise, they had to be told.

As I began to pace around the house with my increasingly furious baby daughter held against my shoulder, I mentally picked over what might be happening at the police station.

What would Anya say? Might she actually confess? This thought caused a curious sensation of fear and relief at once. It would depend on what they had on her, of course.

Why now? Why arrest her all these months later?

These thoughts played on a loop around my mind. By nine in the evening, Livi had cried herself out and was lying on my chest, spent, while I stared at the television on low volume and tried not to think about how much I wanted to get up and get a drink.

When I heard the sound of an engine outside, I started to move into a more upright position and then the front door opened into the living room.

She looked drained. Her face was chalk-white and she had a milk stain on one side of her white T-shirt where she was leaking.

Without meeting my eye, she just said, ‘My tits are like hot rocks. Give …’ and held out her hands for the baby, who instantly woke and began to grizzle.

Anya sat down opposite me and latched the baby on, with a small wince. Livi instantly began to drink with little happy grunts, one little star of a hand pressed against her mother’s neck.

‘What happened?’ I said, after the silence had dragged on for a couple of moments.

She sighed and laid her head back against the sofa cushion, before closing her eyes.

‘Someone says they know,’ she said in barely a whisper. She paused, swallowing visibly. ‘About him going over.’

‘How?’ I said. ‘Were they there?’

She shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t say other than that they’d had a tip-off.’

Acidic bile rose in my throat. I could only be there for her through whatever this brought if she told me the truth. But I couldn’t confront her when she was so beaten. Knowing her, she would just clamp down and go off to bed without saying another word.

‘That why they let you go?’ I said. ‘Because it’s just their word against yours?’