When he’s gone, I drink steadily, letting the light fade around me. The moth has stopped its incessant banging, leaving me alone in the silence. I wait. Feel a blanket of calm settle round me.

‘Aoife.’

Her name fills the room, spinning into the edges and the cracks, like a spider’s web.

‘Aoife?’

The web stirs, a ripple running through it.

‘Am I doing the right thing?’ I ask. Silence is the only answer.

I wish I was by the sea, watching the possibilities roll towards and away from me, before the tide washed up death and horror; I wish I could go back to that night and stop the decisions we made from the choices we were given. I wish those choices had been different and our lives could have become the possibilities contained within them.

‘But isn’t that what everyone wishes?’ I say into the dark. ‘We were no different.’

I feel the silence judge me. Hanging there like a pointed stare.

Anger blows the web away.

‘I did my best with what we had. I’ve always done my best for us.’ My heart is thudding against my chest, but when I feel it creep to my throat I say, ‘Fine.’

Righteous molten anger takes over.

‘Have it your way.’

I pour what’s left of the wine and down it.

‘If a letter won’t bring an end to it,’ I stand, ‘I’ll stop her myself.’

Eleven

Arriving at the rooftop bar, Carla pushed her way through the crowd of city workers, students and tourists before placing her gin and tonic on a tall circular table. Hot, flustered and irritated, she kissed her fiancé Baz on the lips.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said, taking a seat on one of the three bar stools. ‘Work.’

‘Fighting the good fight.’ He smiled, tipping his half-empty glass towards her, clearly two pints down and well on the way to a third.

‘How was your day?’

‘Two leaks and a minor flood,’ he replied.

‘Fighting the good fight,’ she grinned, watching him laugh.

Carla turned to look out at the view across the Oxford colleges, with their spires and arches, feeling the stress of the day falling away. God it was beautiful, like you’d landed in another world – if you ignored the McDonald’s round the corner whose doorway served as a makeshift homeless hostel.

She took another sip of her drink and was just about to start rolling a cigarette when she spotted Gerry, Eve’s husband, in the corner of the roof terrace. He was seated alone but two half-full glasses sat on the table in front of him and he was tapping his finger on the surface of the table as if waiting impatiently for someone to return.

‘Isn’t that Gerry?’ Baz said, following her stare. ‘What’s he doing here – not exactly his scene, is it?’