‘They weren’t shouting kill her!’ she said. ‘It was a bit worse than that, dear!’

Suddenly I understood that I had misheard the angry widow and her daughter.

What they had actually screamed at me was, ‘Killer!’

I felt the smoke from the cigarettes curdling in my fluttering stomach, stinging my eyes and choking my throat.

‘Killer! Killer! Killer!’

28

Christian

I arrived early at the school gates for going-home time, so early that nobody else was around, and I watched the press conference on my phone with the sound coming through crisp and clear on my Apple AirPods.

‘Killer! Killer! Killer!’

The woman facing the cameras and microphones did not look like Tara.

Is this what it would be like now, I wondered?

This public sifting through our dirty secrets?

You think you know someone so well and then one day you realise that you are a fool.

Because you do not know them at all.

The brute fact of Tara’s cheating was bad enough.

But as I watched that farce of a press conference, I felt like I had lost my best friend.

And the thought made me sadder than I had ever felt in my life.

I watched until it all started to fall apart after James Caine’s widow showed up, pointing and shouting and refusing to go quietly, and I was glad to turn my phone off when Tara and the other women got up and fled.

More parents and carers were arriving at the school gates. I stood apart from them and tried to avoid eye contact. But there was a woman who smiled at me, and who did not look away, and who drew my gaze.

And I could not tell if she was an older childminder or a younger mother but, in her smile, there was that thing we all seek, that look of recognition in the eyes of a perfect stranger.

You see a glimpse of another life you might lead.

A fleeting hint of a way out.

She smiled at me and from somewhere far away, a bell began to ring. It was only the bell for going-home time, but it felt like more.

A wake-up call.

Then the children were coming out, and Marlon was brandishing a red paperback in his paint-stained hands.

‘I’ve got a new story,’ he said. ‘Look.’

And I looked. White Fang by Jack London. A Puffin Classic. A wolf on the cover, showing his gnashers.

‘Born in the wilds of the freezing-cold Yukon, the wolf-cub White Fang soon learns the harsh laws of nature, growing fiercer and more independent in his struggle to survive,’ I read aloud. ‘Yet buried deep inside him are distant memories of affection and love. Can he learn to trust man again?’

‘Another book by Jack,’ Marlon said. ‘Jack wrote more than one book, you know.’

‘That’s great, kiddo. There are lots of great stories in the world.’

The woman was collecting a girl who was not her own child.

She smiled again, and said, ‘Bye then – it was nice almost talking to you!’ And – again – there was that look of recognition in the lovely face of a woman who I had never seen before in my life, and like White Fang, her smile stirred distant memories of affection and love.