She’d given me a clue herself in the voicemail message. The new place, she’d said. That meant she had recently moved – and we, she’d said we, so she was likely married, as I’d imagined. Again, by paying a bit of money, it would be an easy matter to look Suzi up on the Land Registry website. So that’s what I did. I wasn’t sure if it was Susie or Suzy or Susan or Suzanne (the latter, as I learned), and I also learned the name of her husband. Nicholas Thomas. When I saw the address, isolated, receptionless, likely to get snowed in, I knew it was meant to be. And there was a cottage for rent right next door. All I had to do was give up my house, the one I’d lived in with him, and since I could no longer afford it anyway, that was not a hard choice.

A few weeks later, after I locked up the house, I drove to the graveyard. The stone was still so clean and fresh, sparkling with granite chips. It was obscene, really. Beloved husband. Not father. He’ll never be that now, I thought. I left a cheap bouquet of flowers, dyed chrysanthemums in plastic wrap – I couldn’t afford the good florist any more, the one with crackling brown paper and twine and fat dewy rosebuds – and then I went.

My plan at that point was to crush Suzi. Hurt her, maybe physically, certainly mentally. To ruin her life in every possible way. Not by telling her husband – that would be too easy. But by forcing her into ruining it herself.

I hadn’t counted on two things. First, that she was pregnant, walking about brazenly with a bump under a jumper I recognised as Patrick’s; I had bought it for him. I assumed it was Patrick’s child, and she had hinted herself that she thought so. The idea of that was dizzying. He was gone, but his child had been left behind, like an unexpected gift. A little girl or boy with his dark hair and blue eyes, just as I had pictured all those years, in the pastel-shaded nursery I had ready and waiting. His baby. If I broke Suzi entirely, blew her life to pieces, I might lose my chance to be near this child when it came. To hold it in my arms. The thought crept in: maybe Suzi wouldn’t even want it. Her dead lover’s baby, an accident. Why would she? When I got to know her, that thought strengthened, came to life. Suzi was not maternal. She was disorganised, chaotic, unhappy. Their house, for all its mod cons, was a terrible place to raise a child. So I kept watching, and the thought kept growing.