But he wouldn’t go to prison. He wasn’t guilty. I still couldn’t believe he’d ever hurt a woman. He was a liar, yes, and a cheat, and I hadn’t known any of those things about him, but he wasn’t violent. I knew the signs of that and he’d shown none. Hadn’t I looked for it, all the way back at university? I wasn’t stupid. I knew that if you came from a home where violence was normal, it felt comforting to seek it out again, though of course you wouldn’t realise you were doing that. You’d think you’d chosen a man who was loving, and passionate, and intense, until the day you said the wrong thing or made the tea the wrong way and he’d throw the cup right in your face. That was not Mike, despite the lies. Sure, he got stressed at work, and yelled now and then, but everyone did that. If anything, he was more patient with the kids than I was. I’d lost count of how many screaming rows between Cassie and me had been defused by Mike, with a few well-chosen words. And there must be lots of trials that ended with acquittals. That was the whole point, surely.

There was a knock at the door. Soft, inconspicuous, unlike the way Mike roused me from the bath when he couldn’t find his running shoes or thermos or Fitbit.

‘Ali?’ said Bill.

‘Yeah?’ I was naked on the other side of the door. He must know that. It felt wrong, somehow. Too intimate, him there and me in here, in the silky water. I could hear him breathing, and I flashed back suddenly to the kitchen, the night of the party. We hadn’t talked about it – if it had even been a thing. There was a pause.

‘Um . . . sorry to disturb you but I think you should know . . . Karen’s here.’

Jake

‘Oi. Posh boy.’

He didn’t look round. Already his hands were trembling, his breath catching in his lungs. Don’t be scared. Just stop it. Stop it.