‘Because apparently you had no one to talk to either.’

‘Claire?’ He reaches for my hand. ‘Please don’t cry. Please. I can’t bear it.’

‘I’m not crying because I’m upset. I’m angry. I’m so bloody angry that—’

‘It wasn’t even a kiss, not really.’

‘It’s not that!’ I throw his hand away from me. ‘It’s you. You and Billy and Stephen and Jake. Things go wrong in your lives but instead of talking about them you smash things up and drink and cheat and lie. What’s wrong with you? What the hell is wrong with all of you?’

Mark stares at his feet as I scream in frustration.

‘Why didn’t any of you talk to me? I could have helped.’

‘Could you?’ Mark says softly.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘There are some things you can’t control, Claire – some things you can’t fix. It might not make sense to you, the way we deal with our shit, but it’s our way of coping.’

‘So Billy was right to throw a rock at your car, was he? Graffitiing his school was a good thing? So was winding up his brother and insulting you?’

‘I don’t know.’ He sinks back down onto the weight bench and rests his head in his hands. ‘I don’t know anything any more. I knew we were going to have a tough conversation tonight but not about this.’

‘What did you want to talk to me about?’

‘This.’ He touches the laptop bag on the bench beside him.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I found some photos on it,’ he mumbles through his fingers. ‘Photos of little boys. Naked photos.’

A cold chill runs through me. ‘Whose laptop is that, Mark?’

He looks up at me. ‘It’s Jake’s.’

Chapter 50

Neither of us speaks as we stare out from the garage. The laptop, resting on top of the bag, is on the floor in front of us. Neither of us want to touch it.

Mark told me he borrowed it from Jake’s room this morning, after his own laptop had failed to boot up when he’d installed an update. Jake had already left for work and Kira was still asleep in bed. She stirred when Mark knocked on the door, then waved a hand towards the desk when he’d asked if he could borrow Jake’s laptop.

Mark didn’t try to log on until he reached a service station on the M4 on his way to Chippenham. We bought the laptops for both boys for Christmas two years ago. Mark set them up. He created their accounts and gave them both the same password – BRISTOLCITY123. Jake hadn’t bothered to change his and Mark was able to log straight in. He downloaded some PowerPoint images he needed from OneDrive. And that’s when he discovered the pictures in Jake’s downloads folder.