Of course Sophie told her what Janie would tell any of her own friends – that it didn’t matter what anyone said; her true friends would be there for her, no matter what. But the platitudes didn’t help.

And so Janie carried on watching Harry scurry around in circles, listening to him debate what he was going to do.

The funny thing was, she realised, as they sat in the kitchen that morning and the girls continued to play on the trampoline in the sun, he hadn’t once asked her what it was she wanted.

In fact, since Ella was born, she couldn’t actually remember a time when it had been about her. It had always been about Harry.

Finally she turned to her husband and said, ‘We need to talk.’

His gaze flicked up from the phone, which he’d dragged back to him.

‘I don’t think I’ve been totally honest with you,’ she said. Her hands shook against the cup that was still poised at her mouth, and eventually she put it down on the table and held it there.

‘Okay,’ he said cautiously.

Janie opened her mouth, still not entirely sure what she was going to say. Because until that moment she hadn’t known that she was going to bring up again the details of Sophie’s rape at the hands of Miles Morgan.

To his credit, her husband listened. And as the girls continued to play outside for another hour, Janie managed to tell her husband exactly what had been going on in her life for the past five years, from the moment she’d told him about Sophie to the point when she knew she was being followed.

When she finally finished, she picked up her cup and drank the cold tea while waiting for him to speak. She didn’t miss the tears that had appeared in the corners of his eyes, or the hand that she no longer recognised as his wipe them away with the tip of his thumb. He no longer wore his wedding band. He had been tearful then too, when he’d told her he couldn’t, a week after the fire, though at the time Janie had stared coldly at him, thinking that was surely the least of their problems.

‘Why are you only telling me all this now?’ Harry said.

She wondered what was going through his mind as he asked her. If she’d told him when it first happened, they might not be sitting here now, in their current situation. If she had told him, he might never have brought Miles back into their lives. The fire might never have been started.

Is that what Harry thought? That this was her fault? He wasn’t accusing her, but she couldn’t get the thought out of her head, because Miles’s actions had been the catalyst for the fire. Of that she was certain.