A thin flame of optimism flared inside her. They could do it. Start again. It would just take time. She sensed a presence in the doorway. Edward was watching her. She held out her hand in welcome.

He took a step towards her but he didn’t touch her. His expression was agonized. ‘I can’t do this.’

The words hung between them, a demarcation line.

‘This’ – he gestured around him – ‘is fucked up. This place, this situation. My job.’ He shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe what was happening. ‘I don’t want to give up everything.’

‘You’re not giving up me,’ she said. ‘Or Honor. We’re still here.’

‘Honor wants to come too.’

He stated it so matter-of-factly that she didn’t understand what he meant until he retrieved his jeans from the wardrobe and his toothbrush from the en suite.

‘We’re checking into a hotel.’

In the brutal light of the bathroom, his skin was a patchwork of lines, a sprinkling of grey at his temples. The events of the last few days were written in the stoop of his shoulders and the too-loose shirt that had always fitted him so well. His eyes were flat and unforgiving. No sign of his wedding ring. A stranger.

‘Our whole marriage has been a sham,’ he said. ‘You’re not the woman I thought you were. You deceived me. I would never have married you if I’d known the truth.’

‘I’m still me,’ she said, but the words were thick in the back of her throat.

‘But you’re not though, are you? You were never the you I thought you were.’

And what could she say to that?

She trailed him around the house like a lamb, bleating out entreaties, begging him to stay and despising herself for it.

At one point, she tugged on his arm, desperate for any scraps of his attention. ‘I didn’t do it,’ she blurted out, and his look of contempt skewered any hope she had of convincing him of the truth.

By dusk, it was clear he had made up his mind.

The ERPPU had lent them a car – a grey Fiesta, a couple of scratches on the door, about five years old, easily forgettable – and Catherine pressed the key into Edward’s hand.

‘You can’t call a taxi,’ she had said after finding him rummaging through takeaway menus and business cards in the drawer. The incredulous laugh that had slipped from her broke up into a sob she couldn’t contain.

Edward patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. Honor was on her phone, leaning against the wall of the hallway, waiting to leave. She didn’t look at her mother once.

‘We’ll call you tomorrow,’ he said. ‘A bit of space will do us all good.’

And then they were gone.