‘Grace knows Michael, Romy. From when she did work experience with him when she was sixteen …’

Romy froze. Work experience, sixteen. The words were so etched on her brain that Finch did not need to finish his sentence.

‘There’s no easy way to say this …’

She heard his next words as if from another universe and found her legs going from under her as she fell back on the sofa.

Finch’s expression was tortured. She saw him swallow hard. ‘Did you know?’

The letter. Romy blanched. It was Grace who wrote the letter. Multiple thoughts cascaded through her brain – but she was too shocked to make sense of them.

‘Did you, Romy?’ Finch’s question was more strident this time.

‘No,’ she muttered, not looking at him. ‘No, not at the time … and not that it was Grace.’

There was silence and she glanced up to see bewilderment on Finch’s face.

Taking a deep breath, Romy went on, ‘I got an anonymous letter …’

‘A letter? When? What did it say?’

‘Exactly what you’ve just told me.’ Romy held her breath.

She heard Finch gasp. ‘So you did know. You were actually told your husband had assaulted a sixteen-year-old child,’ his emphasis on ‘your husband’ cut through her like a knife, ‘but you did nothing about it?’

‘It wasn’t like that. I had no idea who it was from.’ Romy, heart pounding, tried to gather her thoughts. ‘And it only arrived three years ago. What could I have done when there was no name or contact details? And Michael flatly denied it, of course.’ The words of the letter sprang before her eyes: I just thought you should know who you’re married to. Romy could quote the letter verbatim, but that phrase, in particular, haunted her, pushing through her day-to-day thoughts at random intervals in the following years. It had only begun to fade since she’d moved to Sussex and distanced herself from Michael – since Finch had started to divert her into different waters.

‘Do you still have the letter?’ Finch demanded.

She nodded.

‘Show me, please.’

She got up, shaking, and went to retrieve it, locked in her dressing-table drawer. Now she wished she’d torn it up when she’d had the chance.

Finch had tears in his eyes as he scanned the creased sheet of notepaper. ‘It’s exactly what she told me last night,’ he murmured.

They were both on the sofa now. But there was no togetherness. Romy held herself stiff and scared beside him, the distance between them vast.

Lifting his head from the page, he frowned at her. ‘So what did you do when you read it?’

‘I – I showed it to Michael, obviously.’

‘And what did he say?’