‘You wouldn’t understand, Janie,’ he had said to her. ‘I was running that company for most of my working life, and now look at me.’ He had gestured at his face – scarred, still raw from the burns.

Janie had wanted to tell him that of course she understood, but she had bitten her tongue. What did he think she had been through over the last five years? She had been completing this same circle since the moment they decided to leave London.

But Harry clearly didn’t realise this, and maybe that was partly her fault, because she had never told him. Now they had drifted so far out of reach of one another that she considered there was no longer any point mentioning it.

Instead Janie had continued to do what she always did and carried on, paddling furiously beneath the surface, but above it pretending everything was all right. She was mainly doing this for the girls, because it had been hard for them, with their dad hitting rock-bottom in the early weeks after the fire, refusing to leave the house. Janie had plastered on a cheery smile and continued to tell them this was a perfectly understandable and temporary reaction, and all the while she pushed her own feelings to one side. They could be addressed later down the line.

But she had come to a point, after that last conversation, when she needed to speak to someone. And eventually she had picked up the phone and called Sophie. ‘I was going to leave him,’ she admitted in a burst. ‘Only now I can’t.’

Sophie had listened as Janie talked, and when she finished Janie said, ‘I’ll never forgive myself, you know.’

‘For what?’ Sophie had asked.

‘If it wasn’t for me, you would have taken Miles to court. He would never have got away with what he did to you.’

There was a beat before Sophie said, ‘No. I’m not sure that I would have.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know that I would have put myself through that, it had nothing to do with you. Not really. If I’m honest I told myself at the time that the best way for me to deal with what he did was to try to forget it ever happened.’

Janie was silent for a moment. Then, stunned, she asked, ‘And did you?’

‘No,’ Sophie said. ‘But it’s finished now. He’s dead,’ she said bluntly. ‘And going back to you and Harry, you don’t ever have to feel guilty about what decision you make. You just have to make the right one for you.’

Only it wasn’t that simple. Because what was right for Janie might not be right for the girls. And anyway, despite all that, how could she? ‘What would everyone say?’ she had cried down the phone to her friend.