The anniversary.

The fucking anniversary.

He’d be glad when it was all over and they could all move forward with their lives.

A fresh start.

George picked up his handset and rang Marie again.

This time she answered.

Chapter Ten

Leah

Now

George puts the knife down on the worktop next to the cardboard box and opens his arms just as Archie bowling balls into them. ‘Have you had fun at nursery?’

‘Yes! I talked to a real policeman!’

George raises his eyebrows and I give an almost indiscernible shake of my head. The police were nothing to do with me. Not this time.

‘Have you ever met a real policeman, Daddy?’

There’s a beat before George says, ‘Yes,’ but unlike Archie, there’s no excitement in his voice, just an underlying sadness and regret and again I think about all I have put him through since we have been married. The endless interviews. The detectives. The psychiatrists. The whispers that I should be sectioned despite me being adamant that I knew what I had seen. What I had witnessed.

Throughout it all he had never left my side, holding my hand. Promising me that he wouldn’t let them take me away. That he could look after me.

He believed me. He believed in me.

The lies came later.

My lies.

His.

Last week I found our bank statements and it is all worse than I’d feared.

‘We’re fine. We’re managing,’ George had said. ‘I’m working my arse off to get us back on track.’ That much was true, at least. He is always networking, trying to bring in new business. It’s not fair the burden falls to him. Especially when I can’t give him the one thing that he wants.

Another child.

He has always been the one desperate for a sibling for Archie. I’ve been reluctant to agree. Truth be told, I’d been horrified when I found out I was pregnant with Archie, as I’d been so careful. George has stopped asking me for another baby. I hope it’s because we can’t afford one right now, because the thought that he might still want a large family – but not want one with me – is almost too much to bear.

I look at him across the kitchen, my handsome husband with his mop of dark hair and blue eyes that look permanently worried. He is slipping away from me. For a split second I wonder how much money the journalist had offered Marie. What we would have to say to generate enough interest to rocket our bank account from red to black, but I dismiss it instantly.

There are things I will never tell no matter how high the stakes.

‘How’s your morning been?’ I ask George as I lift the box from the worktop. He puts Archie down.

‘Go upstairs and wash your hands while Mummy and I make you some lunch.’

‘Okay, Daddy. I’ll fly.’ Archie stretches his arms into wings and zooms around the kitchen twice before he thunders upstairs.