I walked back to my car, my head so full it felt like an over-brimming glass, like it might spill and run out of my ears if I didn’t keep very still. Dr Holt knew Suzi – he must have been the doctor she spoke to when she went to the hospital in search of Patrick. But why was he emailing her? I wished I’d taken the notebook from Patrick’s desk. I hadn’t liked to do it with him watching me, but would I find Dr Holt’s name in there, among so many others? Had he been part of whatever Patrick was up to?

On my way out I passed a doctor in a white coat, handsome with greying hair. He was on the phone by the coffee machines, a teasing, smiling tone in his voice. ‘OK. But I’ll only have an hour, alright?’

Arranging an affair? Meeting his mistress? He wore a wedding ring, and I thought about his wife, maybe at home wrangling children to bed, wondering why he hadn’t come back yet. Pouring herself another glass of wine, when she really shouldn’t. Watching some crime drama on Netflix, the kind about cheating husbands, when her own was out flirting with other women. When you hear stories about women who are married to serial killers – Sonia Sutcliffe, for example – or whose husbands turn out to have four other families stashed away, you always say, how could she not know? She must have known. But I realised now that some people were just so good at lying that you not only believed them, you actually did your best to. You so much want to believe that what they tell you is true, you do the lying for them.

Suzi

Suzi

‘Hello, Suzi?’

When my phone rang about an hour after the police left, my heart rate went through the roof. So many different things that could ruin me right now. I didn’t understand who it was, from the name that came up. I answered with shaking hands, recognising Dr Holt’s voice. Of course. I had saved him under a fake name, because that was the kind of person I was now. A liar.

‘Oh! Hello.’ I wondered why he was calling me, and what might have happened if Nick was here. How I would explain myself.

‘Are you alright?’

‘Not really.’ Where to start – the police, Damian, Nora? ‘You know what I was telling you about my neighbour, that I thought she was – that she’d been married to Patrick?’ I still couldn’t think of you by that name. ‘Well, I was doing more research and I think she might have done something bad in her childhood. Something violent. I’m scared, you see, for my baby.’