How could I move out? This was my dream house. But already it felt tainted, tape fluttering around the edge of the lawn, dirty footprints tracked through the house, and the office – well. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to go in there again. If it had been Jodi, no doubt she would already have booked a team of contract cleaners.

Mike. Karen. Mike and Karen. My brain was refusing to accept it. There was one upside though. Why would he have confessed to something so huge, if he wasn’t telling the truth about the attack? ‘Is there a way to prove it?’ I asked pathetically. ‘If people had sex, say, earlier on in the day, and then later she said he raped her?’

‘It’s her word against his. That’s why so many rape allegations go nowhere – there’s usually no evidence, if the people know each other, that it wasn’t consensual.’

‘So – they might not prosecute?’

‘She did report it right away. And you saw what a state she was in. Plus the bruising. All of those things tend to be . . . taken into consideration. Aggravating factors, they call them.’

‘She was drunk. Really, really drunk.’ I could hear the words coming out of my mouth, but I didn’t understand that it was me who was saying them. How could it be? I knew the correct way to talk about sexual assault and this wasn’t it, plus it was Karen. But it was also Mike. I felt torn in two, an ache running down the centre of my heart. ‘I just mean . . . maybe she couldn’t be sure.’

‘I know. Honestly, Ali, it could go either way.’

‘Did Bill see anything? Where was he?’

‘Gone to bed, he said.’ In Benji’s room, which was at the back of the house, not overlooking the garden. Had he seen Cassie sneak out to the woods? And what had woken Jodi, why was she downstairs before me?

‘Jake?’

She shook her head. ‘I haven’t seen him. The police took him somewhere – he was so angry.’ She reached over and squeezed my leg and I felt a sob hiccup in my throat. ‘Stay strong, Ali. There’s a good chance this will all go away.’

But the affair. The knowledge of Mike and Karen together, in our house, with our kids there. How could that go away, even if it turned out he hadn’t hurt her at all?

I looked up as there were footsteps in the hall and Cassie burst in, still in her heavy pyjamas, printed with little dogs, a total contrast from yesterday. ‘Mum. What the hell is going on?’

Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

Benji cried. He was still a little boy, after all. ‘But I don’t understand! Where’s Dad?’

‘He’s at the police station, love. They’re just asking him some questions, trying to find out what happened.’