He hadn’t thought about their last disastrous coupling for hours, but it haunted him again now, alone in the dark, lying beneath the family car like a bug. He’d felt her hate last night as he came in her, and was lost in it, confused by it, devastated by it. He knew nothing any more. Everything had changed and no one had told him the new rules.

Sam still wasn’t sure why he didn’t want the cops to know where he was. After all, they were just watching him. He hadn’t been arrested. What could they arrest him for? But the nightmare events made him desperate to stay free and mobile. The thought of being in a confined space with nowhere to run from the dark thing that brought that madness was too much to bear. He wanted to move around silently for a while without the eyes of two men noting his apparent eccentricity. And he had to see Katie.

It was important to move now while it was dark, in case an upstairs light came on that would stream into the snowy yard like a follow spot, picking him out for any watchers like a frightened actor on an empty stage. He got up and, keeping low, reached the kitchen door, opened it and slipped inside. The warmth of the room pillowed against his freezing face and hands, and he stood with his back against the door for a moment savouring it. It was the second time that week he’d entered his house like a thief, and as he stood in the dark, feeling the heat and smelling the remains of a coffee brew, a huge and unexpected surge of anger rose in his throat.

Sam Hunt had not expected to feel hounded again as an adult. It seemed to him before he met Katie that he’d been running and hiding for most of his life, disappearing into the forest to sleep on mossy beds, lying in snow-holes with branches of evergreen to soften the icy floor, and returning to his home, as he was tonight, with a troubled, churning heart and a dread of being observed.

He turned around, pulled the blinds in the kitchen, flicked the light on and called out.

‘Katie?’

He walked through to the lobby and heard the sounds of the TV from the sitting room. They were all in there, Katie on her feet by the time he pushed open the door, Billy in a curled ball on the sofa sucking his fingers, and Jess on the carpet with a mess of objects for her short-term amusement scattered around her in a semi-circle.

Sam locked eyes with his wife and gulped back a grief that was more profound than any he had known when he saw only two cold blue pools of mistrust watching him. She moved forward a couple of small steps, standing slightly in front of the children in an unconscious protective gesture.