That was true. He thought he hadn’t, had prayed at the time that she didn’t ask him, but really he wanted someone to scream it, to break the big thick silence of suspicion those cops had woven. She’d leaned forward again and taken both his hands into hers, his big hands that had rested like dead weights on the cheerful yellow formica of that table – a scratched and ruined thing that had seen the Hunts laughing and feeding and joking round it for years. The table where Billy had taken his first solid food, dribbling the mashed carrot down his tiny pointed chin from a gummy smile that would break your heart. Where Jess sat in her clip-on chair and offered her parents pulverized pieces of bread and butter from a chubby hand with squeals of delight. Now, just Sam and Katie, and a lump of horror that sat between them like stone.

‘Sam. Listen to me.’

He’d listened, afraid of what she was going to say.

‘You’ve never killed anyone.’

Then, although his face had remained rigid and blank, he’d screamed inside like he’d been waiting to scream all his life, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, but I have! My God I know I have. It’s happening again. These ten years of happiness have just been a cruel trick. Dear God, let me die before it happens again.

If Katie could have read the contents of his heart she would have recoiled. He knew it. But she could not. And instead, she got up and held him from behind, and they’d climbed the stairs and put out the lights and got into bed like everything was okay. Sex was out of the question. They’d both known it somehow, neither one wanting to make those first tender suggestive touches that would lead to the inevitable. But they’d held each other and Sam had held her even more tightly when the sudden jerking of her body meant she’d fallen asleep in his arms. And now he was here, alone in the dark, believing he’d been alone in the dark his whole life, his time with Katie and the kids a brief step into the light to which he had no right.

If only he could know. He thought of the faces of McGee and Daniel. Daniel knew something more, Sam was sure of it. He’d seen the expression of disgust on his face when he looked at Sam and he had to know why. He was a straight guy, Daniel Hawk. Sam had liked him though he hardly knew him. It was important not to know him.

There were no Kinchuinicks on Sam and Katie’s long Christmas card list and that’s the way he wanted to keep it.