‘I was going to sleep in Natalie’s bed tonight.’

‘Not tonight. You shouldn’t be on your own tonight.’ He lay down in the spot that had been his for the whole of their marriage. Bess walked around to her side of the bed. Glancing briefly up to the gap at the left-hand side of the blind, she saw the bedroom light go off in Helen Maxwell’s bedroom and her jaw tensed, thinking of Andrew in that grotty hotel room, hiding.

Pulling back her side of the duvet, she slid into the familiar dip where her hip nestled and felt the creep of Mario’s hand across the mattress until he found hers, and then there they lay, staring up at the three-arm chandelier, which had cost more money than they had had, their arms forming a bridge across the bed.

‘Thank you for telling me, Bess. I know that wasn’t easy.’

She nodded.

‘We have a lot to think about and a lot to talk about,’ he confirmed.

‘Yes, we do.’

‘I can’t take it in. I’ve got so many questions . . .’

‘I’ll answer them as well as I can, but not tonight.’

‘No, not tonight,’ he agreed.

There was a pulse of silence.

‘We are very different people, aren’t we, to the ones who waltzed up the aisle together all those years ago?’

‘We are. I’m sorry, Mario.’

‘I’m sorry too.’

The two of them lay silent and she felt the pull of sleep. Mario let go of her hand and wriggled on to his side, and as he got comfortable she heard the familiar knock of the headboard on the wall, which had worked its way loose over the years. Chutney pushed his head against her legs and got comfy in his own spot at the bottom of the bed, anchoring her foot.

‘We got lost, Bess, didn’t we? We got lost along the way. I feel like I never really knew you, not all of you, and that’s a lot for me to take in. I feel like you didn’t give me the chance. You could have told me about Ellory and that barrier would never have been there.’

She nodded through a fresh batch of tears, but knowing that tonight would be her first sleep unburdened by the secret that had weighted her dreams since she was sixteen years of age.

‘We’re going to break up our little family, Bess, aren’t we?’ His words were thick through his tears and her heart broke. She saw his broad shoulders shake as he cried.

‘I think we are,’ she managed, ‘but it’ll be okay, Mario. We’ll put it back together in a different shape. We’ll both start over.’

‘I think you’ve been waiting to start over, Bess, waiting to begin . . .’

He clicked off the lamp and she nodded into the darkness, knowing this to be true, but also aching with some of the fear that had dogged her life. Yes, they would both start over, but they would be okay, they would take what they had in their pockets and make the best out of it, and they would be okay . . .