His face creased in puzzlement. ‘Of course! The money’s yours too, you know that.’ Then why do I have to ask you for it? I had access to our joint account, but there were no cashpoints anywhere near, and the taxis round us didn’t take cards yet. Even if they did, he’d be sure to ask where I’d gone, why, who to meet.

‘It’s just – I hate having to ask for it. I miss having my own money.’

He gave me a look of bafflement. ‘We’re married, Suzi. What I have is yours too. Sometimes I think you don’t understand what being married means.’

There it was, the tick of the bomb in the ground somewhere. I kept very still. ‘OK,’ I said weakly, and took the notes he doled out to me, feeling the greasy paper against my palm. I didn’t know how much longer I could keep this up, begging for scraps of freedom every day.

Once Nick had gone, I bumbled around the house getting ready. Even with things the way they were, it lifted my heart slightly to have an errand, a reason to go out. I washed my hair, even put on a little make-up. The thought was tickling the edges of my mind – what if you were there? I was going to the place you worked, if you’d told me the truth about Dr Andrew Holt. I stared at myself in the mirror, my pale winter face, the dark circles round my eyes that didn’t shift no matter how late I slept. The mousy roots were showing through the red of my hair, but I wasn’t allowed to get it touched up, since dye was bad for the baby, like so many things. Not to mention the pregnant belly stretching out all my clothes. Did I even want you to see me like this?

When I went downstairs, I encountered a new problem with the alarm. I couldn’t get out the door. When I turned the handle, it didn’t budge. Had Nick set the alarm wrong, put it on the ‘out’ setting instead of ‘stay’, the one for when we were home? But no, it would have gone off by now if so, I’d have triggered the motion sensors. I frowned at the control panel, a bewildering mass of buttons and lights. Was it the same code as the one outside? Oh God, my brain was like cotton wool. Tentatively, I keyed it in, and a small benign bing sounded, and the door opened. That was a close one. For a moment, I had almost been a prisoner in my own home, instead of merely feeling like one.