‘We met at uni. She was at Glasgow and I was at Strathclyde and we had some mutual friends. We went out for about six months and then she broke it off over the summer. When I say she broke it off, technically I was the one who said let’s finish this, but she kind of engineered it: she was increasingly horrible to me until I’d had enough. We got back together a couple of years later. She had gone out with a few guys in the meantime, one of whom I vaguely knew. He told me a very familiar tale. So when the same thing started happening again, I called her on it.’

‘Brave move.’

‘Desperate move. I was crazy about her. Still am. It was touch-and-go for a while, kill or cure. Turned out to be cure, just. She admitted to herself what was going on. She said it helped to externalise it; unfortunately, she’s only ever able to externalise it in retrospect.’

‘At the time she can’t admit to herself why she’s doing it?’

‘That’s it. She gets horrible to me because part of her thinks I’m going to leave and she just wants to get it over with, while another part wants to know I’ll never leave no matter how horrible she is.’

‘Can’t be much fun for you.’

‘Over the years we’ve got better at anticipating the triggers, but sometimes they come at you sideways. It’s a lot less fun for Anne, so I try not to feel too sorry for myself.’

‘What triggered it this time?’

Neil paused, looking intently at her for a moment, considering and then discarding the option of denying that such a situation was ongoing right now.

‘It’s been a slow burn. We both knew it was coming, but awareness of it isn’t like a magic talisman. Megan turning four back in April kind of started it off. That was the age Anne was when it happened. Megan starting school was always going to be a tough time. It’s supposed to be one of the big happy milestones as a parent, but secretly we were both dreading it. We talked about it, though, and came up with a plan.’

‘Is this where Jim Sharp comes in?’

‘Partly. Megan was in nursery: same one as Charlie is in now. We knew that one of the bonuses of her starting at the local primary school was that we wouldn’t have to be paying her nursery fees any more. Anne had often talked about hiring a detective to look into the case, because the police had been worse than useless. I was against it because I thought it would just keep the wound open indefinitely. Who knows how long you could be paying somebody, especially when they have a vested interest in keeping the investigation going. No offence.’