He took the case into their bathroom, got a razor blade from his shaving bag and put a clean slice in the lining, tearing it quickly. What he brought out of the cavity was shammy-wrapped and moist. A jeweller’s box. There was a seal of parcel tape, already cut. He was afraid to open it, but had to know. Small pieces tumbled out at once and bounced across the tiles like pebbles. Teeth. Gone yellow with tobacco. Bloody at the ends of their long roots. And in the box’s top there was a strip of a straw hat, torn ragged. He recognized it right away, before he’d even read the message stitched on the reverse. For my darling Geoffrey love Maureen.

Revulsion climbed up from his guts so fast, he didn’t make it to the toilet bowl – he sicked into the bathtub. For a while, he stayed there on his knees, doing what he could to get his breath and stop from sicking up again. He rinsed his mouth out underneath the tap and washed the chunks of oxtail, carrot, barley down the plughole. All that he could think was: Woldingham 9264. He had to tell them now. There couldn’t be another deviation or excuse. He needed to account for what she’d done.

On the way downstairs, his fingers brushed the merry bunting on the banister. He almost dropped the box. The hallway seemed a thousand miles below the ground and every step he took was noiseless, numb. Just yesterday, he’d come down these same steps and she’d been standing at the mirror with her coat on and her hair blown dry. She’d given him a look as she’d turned round: not pained, not troubled, nothing. But he should’ve seen it in her blankness. Long John Silver.

He could hardly carry his own weight by now. The duskiness inside the house bewildered him. He saw the parlour door was open and the Christmas bulbs around the tree had been switched on. And there was Florence, lighting candles on the mantelpiece. As she spotted him, she shook the flame out of the match that she’d been using. ‘Charlie, what’s the matter?’ When he tried to speak, his voice went missing. ‘Did you find something up there?’ She came and took him by the shoulders, touched his forehead with her palm. ‘You’re so clammy. Sit down here, sit down.’ She steered him to the sofa, perched beside him. ‘Arthur!’ she called out. ‘I’ll fetch him. Just sit here. I’ll fetch him.’ And she hurried off.

The Christmas lights went blurry in the corners of his eyes. He smelled the paraffin of molten wax. The sick cloyed hotly in this throat. He was wishing for the same thing now as he’d been wishing for two years ago: that somehow Joyce would have a better explanation for it all. But, even then, he’d known the consolation wouldn’t come. The coppers hadn’t taken anything she’d said as truthful either – and why should they have listened to a word she’d said? A witness had already phoned the station to report them. PC Higgs had told him so. ‘He’s given us a statement. Says he saw a pair of youngsters meddling with the Jaguar across the road. Revving it so loud they woke up half the street. A girl who must’ve been six feet, he reckons, and a shorter lad with dark hair just like yours. Coincidence or what? The girl was driving, so he reckons, but the lad was underneath the bonnet, got the engine running. There you are, see. No point acting innocent with me. You’re going to be charged the same as her.’ He wasn’t going to take the blame for this, as well. They’d hang him for it. Hang her, too, if they could find her. He was going to retch again, but kept it down.