‘She left it for me at the house. She knew it was a family ring. Presumably she thought that my parents would be in touch to get it back from her if she didn’t.’

‘You always seemed so … guilty.’

He smiled, a sad sort of half-smile. ‘I felt guilty about that night. But not because I hurt Zadie. Because I kissed you. Because I liked kissing you. She told me I could do whatever I wanted that night, as long as I didn’t touch you. But I couldn’t resist.’

She tensed at the idea of Rav hearing this, knowing that she and Max had kissed when they were together. Then she laughed at the ridiculousness of it all, at her own stupid reaction. Rav had done something a hundred million times worse.

‘Why?’ she asked him now. ‘Why would you do that to her?’

‘We had a fight.’

‘What could you possibly have had to fight about? You barely even knew her.’

‘I was in love with her.’

The world swam for a few moments.

It was too much.

The ‘psycho’ Zadie was seeing at university, the one Louella had told her about in the conversation that had made her so completely and utterly sure about Max – it hadn’t been Max. It had been Rav.

He had hurt Zadie. He had hit her hard enough that she bled. Left bruises all over her perfect skin. Which meant that he had the capacity to do something she could never, ever have imagined him doing.

Rav had been in love with Zadie. Of the people who had known them both, she had thought he had chosen her, liked her best. But he had in fact liked Zadie better. Loved her. And moreover, she had spent the last fifteen years talking to him about Zadie, about where she was, about what had happened to her, while he held this piece of the jigsaw out of her reach.

‘Did you and she ever …’ She trailed off, praying that the answer was going to be no, that he would say they’d never had any contact, that nothing had ever happened between them.

Rav sat down. His skin was grey. ‘Yes.’

She closed her eyes. ‘When? How many times?’

‘We were sleeping together for six months. I wanted her to tell Max. I wanted her to end it with him so that we could be together. I told her that night that unless she came clean with Max and called it quits with him, we were over. She said no. She laughed at me, said she couldn’t believe I would ever think she’d choose me over Max. And I saw red. I lost it. I hit her.’

‘Six months.’

‘Yes.’

‘All the time that you and I were getting together.’

‘Yes.’

‘When did it start?’

‘The party where we met. I met her there, too.’