Tara and I pause before a metal detector.

‘Shoes off?’ Tara politely asks a female prison guard.

The guard grunts a bored affirmative.

Tara passes through the detector and it begins to beep.

She holds up her arms while the guard searches her and turns back to look at me, trying to smile, and that attempt at a smile – she doesn’t quite manage it – makes my throat close up.

Tara’s skin, I see, is flawless. All the things she has been through have not left a mark on her face. Why have I never noticed that before? I should have noticed her perfect skin before now, I think. I should have loved it.

Before our perfect world started falling apart.

It had been two weeks since Leo had been given a life sentence for the murder of James Caine, and he was ready to talk about the practicalities of his new life.

‘There are two one-hour visits every four weeks,’ he said at our table in the visits room. ‘You can send as many letters as you like but they’re read by the staff. There’s some email scheme coming in, apparently, but it’s not live yet. They can’t open letters from your solicitor. You can’t call the prisoner. We have to call you.’

But despite his chatter, some light had gone out in him, I thought.

He looked from Tara to me and back again.

‘What does Kevin say?’

This was what concerned him most of all. Leo was worried about DCI Stoner. He was frightened that the authorities had not quite finished with our family.

Leo wanted to know that Tara was not going to be prosecuted, that Stoner was content with the conviction for murder, and that Tara was in the clear, no matter what reckless conversations she may have had with the two Daves.

‘No more charges,’ I said, meaning no obstruction of justice, no fleeing a crime scene, no conspiracy to murder. Tara was clear of all that. ‘Kevin said the police and CPS wanted what he called a realistic prospect of conviction,’ I said. ‘And that wasn’t Tara.’ I hesitated for a beat. ‘That was you.’

Leo nodded, sat back, satisfied. He was thinner than I remembered. Always lean and hard, his face had taken on a hollow-cheeked gauntness. The skin seemed stretched tauter across that bald head. He stared off at the children’s play area, lost in his thoughts.

‘Dad?’ Tara said, trying to bring him back with her own list of practicalities. ‘Big Dave is keeping an eye on the business until you decide what to do. And Mum says she’s all right for money.’

‘My boys have got enough work until the summer,’ Leo said, distracted. ‘After that …’

It was hard to talk in there. The proximity to all those other people, some of them in tears, some of them raising their voices in anger and frustration, the mask-faced scrutiny of the guards. The noise of the children in the play area.