I couldn’t resist it. Luckily – and luck was something that had deserted me a long time ago – the phone screen had not yet locked itself. As I trotted along the street, trying to put distance between me and the café, I clicked the back key, and saw a whole host of feeds. It looked like a bank of security cameras, but all trained on rooms in Nick and Suzi’s house. Suzi wasn’t there – I’d seen her leave in a taxi earlier that day, on another mysterious errand. I clicked back again. I was in an app called Home, and it controlled temperature, music, lights, door locks.

I had one more thing to check. Under ‘Find My Friends’, an app I had discovered on my husband’s phone and realised could be very useful, there was Suzi, clearly marked. She was in London, somewhere in the City. He could follow her every move. Had she any idea? She couldn’t have. Suddenly I was afraid for her. She knew she had to be careful, but did she know just how careful? Did she know how much he could see?

Suzi

Suzi

Damian and I went to the small public garden around the corner, which even in the freezing weather wasn’t empty. Awkwardness kept us several feet apart, and all I could think about was the last time I spoke to him, that day in the office kitchen. I didn’t want it, I’d said. Had it been an assault, as you had insisted when I told you? I didn’t know. I felt too ashamed to ally myself with real victims, women pulled into bushes on their way home, hands pressed over their mouths. I had brought this on myself.

We walked around, hands jammed in our pockets to stay warm. Damian said, ‘So what are you doing here? Are you coming back to work?’

‘No – I can’t really right now.’ I laid my hands on my belly. Trying to use it as armour, shield myself from the flood of memories he brought back. My stomach was queasy, roiling with undigested pasta and green tea. The smell of that alley. The wetness of his mouth against my neck. Oh God, Suzi. ‘I just – I needed to talk to you. Do you remember when someone smashed your car up a while back?’

‘Yeah, but . . .’ He frowned. ‘Hadn’t you left by then? That was like, in the summer?’

‘I just – I saw it on Facebook. Well anyway, the same kind of thing’s been happening to me.’ I told him about the issues with the alarm and speaker, the dead thing in my garden, the writing in the snow (glossing over what it said). His frown deepened. We’d stopped walking now, and he was bouncing on the balls of his feet, his breath like smoke in the cold air.