Chloe decided she would give Max twenty-four hours to consider his options. Rav was due home soon and she couldn’t imagine hiding all this from him. She hoped against hope, though she had tried not to let it show when they met, that he would do as she asked. Admit to it. Tell Zadie’s family. Let them understand that the thing that ended her university career, saw her move home and run out of steam in her attempts to be a real adult, was not her fault. She had no doubt they would have assumed that Zadie had got herself into trouble, that the bruises she would have come home with – if she hadn’t covered them up and hidden them – were somehow her own fault. They deserved to know that their daughter was good, and kind, that she was a victim of what Max did to her, just as she was really, truly trying to get her life back together, to get on track and move forward.

But if he didn’t confess, she would have to do it. She would have to go through with it. She would have to make good on the threat she had made, to tell one of the worst lies a person could tell. She had watched a parenting programme once – she must have been hung over, or cleaning the house, or on the sofa with a cold. The nanny had told the parents that as soon as you threaten to do something you had to follow through. If you didn’t take away the toy or cancel the party or whatever it was you had said you were intent upon doing, you would teach the child not to respect you. It was like that now. She had told Max that she would ruin his life if he didn’t do as he was told, and now she was going to have to follow through on that threat, no matter how much the prospect of it scared her. She wished she could find that feeling she had had sitting across the table from him, that she could summon the strength the rage had given her, the power that came with needing to hurt him.

That evening, as she was preparing for her first day back at school, she planned a welcome-home celebration for Rav. He was due back the following evening. She had been a bad wife since he had been away, claiming that she was in the shower or about to eat dinner when he called, avoiding his texts and sending scant replies to his emails. She had claimed that she was feeling inspired, that she was finally working on the play she had been talking about writing for the last ten years and never done anything about. But in fact she was trying to pretend that he wasn’t real, or at least that the plan she had been so pleased with didn’t involve betraying him.