Matt froze. He stood very still, locked in position, and strained his ears. Had that creak come from the staircase? He could no longer hear the sounds of Anne shuffling around on the floor beneath him. He couldn’t hear a thing. From the small window above the desk came the soft sound of rain and wind.

After several more seconds of silence, Matt let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding and continued to scan the desk with his eyes. He leaned over and grabbed the first WHSmith notepad on the pile. He flipped open the top and saw a shopping list. Discarding the pad on the table he grabbed the second one and flipped that open, dimly aware that he was running out of time.

The second notepad contained a few scribbled numbers and what looked like some calculations that Matt couldn’t make sense of. The borders of the pages were lined with doodles. A tree grew up the right-hand side of one margin, its branches stretching among the scrawled numbers like grasping fingers. In the top left-hand corner of another page a large, dark eye stared out at him. Matt closed the notepad and discarded it.

He’d flipped the top page of the third notepad open and was about to put it straight down again when he stopped. The writing here was still unmistakably Anne’s but it was harder to read, as if it had been scribbled down very quickly, and at first Matt hadn’t noticed the name at the top of what appeared to be a letter.

He took a breath and brought the notepad closer to his face. Outside a stronger gust of wind kicked up, howling around the brick house.

Dear George,

I don’t remember much, but I remember enough to know I hate you. I really, really fucking hate you. You’ve taken a large chunk of my life and turned it into a black hole.

I know it’s you. You’re the reason I feel tired all the time, the reason I jump every time the door goes. You’re the reason I have to remember to take pills every day, and the reason I go and see Tricia once a week. You’re the reason my son hardly ever comes to visit.

I don’t remember much, but I know it’s you. So here’s what I do remember.

I remember I loved you once. You were kind when we first met, and the years before we were married we had fun together. We went places together, we were a normal couple. I think we were a normal couple. Even though the stuff that comes later is blurry I’m sure I remember most of our first few years together, and I trust myself on that.