The open brown box on the worktop.

George stands next to it, a knife in his hand. I can tell from the set of his jaw that he’s angry.

He’s angry again.

Chapter Nine

George

Now

George is furious with himself. He knows it’s guilt that drives him home at lunchtimes as well as a desire to see Archie. He isn’t treating his wife well, and it pricks at his conscience each time he sees her, and yet when he does spend time with her, he can’t help snapping at her as if everything wrong is down to her and her alone. And there’s such a lot wrong, it seems impossible to think he can ever put it right. Does he even want to? He loves his son, he really does. And his wife? He thinks he must still – that’s why he still hasn’t made a final decision – but it’s a question he asks himself endlessly.

George is home earlier than usual. On the street is a car he knows belongs to a reporter. He stalks over to it and tells him again to piss off before he calls the police.

He shouts, ‘Hello,’ as he steps through the front door although he knows nobody will answer and not just because Leah’s car isn’t on the driveway – there’s something different about the atmosphere when Archie’s not present. Even if he’s asleep the space somehow feels lighter. Happier.

George hasn’t been happy for a long time. He hopes he and Leah will be able to talk calmly later. He had tried so hard to repress his anger last night but nevertheless it had spilled out anyway. He needs to apologize. Throughout their marriage it seems he is always saying sorry. It’s Leah’s day off but he can’t remember if she said she had plans today. They only half listen to each other nowadays. Hear what they want to hear.

He tosses his keys onto the worktop, his eyes skimming the kitchen. It’s tidy. Clean. At first glance you wouldn’t guess a lively four-year-old lives here. There are no Lego bricks strewn across the floor. No stick-man pictures clinging to the fridge with magnets. George frowns. He was sure there were displays of Archies ‘art’ on the baby-blue Smeg a few weeks ago. The only reason Leah would have taken them down would be to make the fridge easier to wipe clean and the thought of this makes his stomach plummet.

He can’t go through it all again.

George pops a cappuccino tab in the Tassimo machine and while the coffee bubbles into his mug he gazes at the photo of them all at Drayton Manor. He remembers it well. It was a couple of years ago and Leah was going through a good patch, which meant they were going through a good patch. After the event they never talk about – just before she fell pregnant with Archie – he had thought they’d never have any sort of normality again. That the woman he fell in love with had vanished for good, but then she had started seeing Francesca and everything changed. She’d visited so many therapists before but Francesca had been different. She hadn’t looked at them with sympathy in her eyes. Or with the horror he had seen before as Leah began to roll out the story of her childhood. Instead, she had said she wanted to focus on the future. To help them all move forward as a family. And she had. For a time.