Watching him.

He’s out.

‘I couldn’t face leaving the house. The thought of him out there.’ She stares out of the window with wide eyes.

‘He was always going to be released sometime,’ George says, but his voice is thin. The memories of what happened last time he was released are still raw. Then he had desperately wanted to save Leah. He knows he should feel the same now. George reaches for his wife but she leans sideways on her stool, away from him. Instead, he crosses to the sink to wash his hands. Afterwards, she allows him to hold her but her body is stiff.

‘We can’t let this affect Archie. You can’t keep him inside forever. He needs to go to nursery. You have to go to work. You can’t let that… that man be the ruin of you. I bet he hasn’t given you a second thought. Any of you. Leah, you can choose to—’

Quickly, she pushes him away. ‘It seems we all have choices to make. I saw Marie yesterday. You’ll never guess what she said?’ Damp patches form in George’s armpits. He doesn’t know what he should say to that, what he could say, and so he says nothing. Has Marie given away their secret? He doesn’t think Leah would have kept quiet about it for twenty-four hours if she had. Infidelity isn’t something his wife would forget to mention. Besides, Marie would have warned him, wouldn’t she?

‘She’s been approached by a journalist.’

‘We’ve all been approached by journalists the past few weeks.’ Even George. He’d felt sick at first as the man in the coffee shop had leered at him as he pushed his card into George’s hand. What’s it really like living with a Sinclair Sister? Does she have trust issues? Issues with men? George knew what he was asking and he had wanted to throw a punch until the man hit him with a figure his paper was prepared to pay. ‘Fucking scum,’ George muttered but he was still staggered at the money on the table.

‘I say journalist, but it’s TV. A live show.’

George tries to rearrange his features into one of surprise, as though it’s the first time he has heard this.

‘They want a new angle, apparently. I guess the fact he’s out there again, gives it a new angle.’ She laughs bitterly.

‘What do Carly and Marie think of the TV idea?’

‘Marie’s all for it. She thinks it will be healing. Get everything out there once and for all and lay it to rest. She thinks we’ll be left alone then.’

‘Maybe she’s right?’ George says cautiously. ‘You have nothing to be ashamed of, Leah. None of you,’ he says although he knows Marie should feel ashamed.

Does feel ashamed.

‘Marie says she wants forgiveness. Don’t we all?’ She sighs.

‘Yes,’ George says softly. Sometimes he thinks he wants to be found out but Leah doesn’t ask him what he needs to be forgiven for and he wonders – not for the first time – whether part of her knows. Whether she really believes he has so many evening meetings. ‘Maybe meet with the producer and talk it through? It could be good for you. Good for us.’ George purposefully doesn’t mention the huge fee he knows is at stake.