Perhaps there is still a chance to win her back? If she has spared her parents the ugly details, they may yet root for him. True they never really gelled but with a child on the way perhaps they might see the sense in their daughter remaining with her husband. Perhaps I could lay it all out before her and beg for her forgiveness? He thinks about it. She will see, she will understand. Yes, that’s it. I will go over to her parents’ house now and I’ll take her out somewhere fancy. I’ll revisit the old days in Manchester, the times we were both happy. I’ll mention the house, how much she longed for it, remind her that we were happy there for a while and that we could be happy there again. I’ll lay it all on the line. I’ll say, ‘It wasn’t my doing. I was seduced into it, drawn into something much bigger and darker than myself that I did not recognise and was powerless to resist.’ Quick, quick, yes, that’s it, that’s exactly what I’ll do.

Feeling unexpectedly buoyed by this thought, he hurries out into the hallway, grabs his coat and picks up the keys to his Volvo, too absorbed to notice the shadows of two people through the milky glass of the front door until he is almost upon them. Who can this be? Not thugs collecting debts, as he has staved them off for now with the proceeds of his mother’s bracelet. Oh of course! It is a couple of carers from the nursing home, come to tell him regretfully of his mother’s death. Ha! Little do they know that the moment they are gone he’ll go straight to the cellar and open the bottle of twenty-five-year-old Macallan he has been saving for that very purpose. He stops for a moment, his hand on the door, feeling strangely hollowed out. Odd how you can hate someone but not quite enough to stop loving them.

He takes a breath and opens the door to find a man and a woman, both in their thirties, conventionally but inexpensively dressed, standing on the front path, just shy of the doorstep, wearing serious expressions. The man steps forward and introduces himself. Cullen hears the word ‘detective’ and nothing more. The woman opens her mouth but he cannot catch anything she says at all, for the loud buzz in his head. What he does understand is that both the man and the woman are expecting to be let inside.

‘I wonder if it can wait? I have an appointment to get to.’