I watched her on her laptop. She seemed so young and fresh and untouched. She was a smart, beautiful young woman in a weird pink bridesmaid dress and nothing bad had ever happened to her.

I watched her face as she called up some of her favourite podcasts.

This could work, I thought. This could actually work.

This was my way out.

This shining, hopeful, gap-toothed new day.

But when Skyla had gone back to the kitchen to carry on with her work and I had gone back to mine, I went to the window and the car was still there, and DCI Stoner was still taking a hit from the bottle on his lap, and he was still staring at our home as if he knew one thing with total certainty.

Guilty.

Guilty.

Guilty.

Then I was heading to the door with Skyla’s voice calling to me from the kitchen, the first time I had ever heard her say my name, and my blood was up because the detective in the car wanted to take away my future.

I was ready to rip his throat out. And I felt that way right up to the moment he got out of his car and stood there, waiting for me, his big hands hanging loose by his side and the vodka on his breath. I was not going to rip this man’s throat out. Not today.

‘You haven’t been totally honest with your wife, have you?’ he said. ‘Get in the car, Christian. I want to show you something.’

I looked at the familiar roads flashing by. Stoner was driving too fast. He was not wearing a seat belt. The smell of vodka filled the car.

‘What kind of cancer does your father-in-law have again?’ Stoner said.

‘I have to pick up my son soon,’ I said.

‘This is not going to take long.’ He grinned. ‘It’s not going to stop you doing your house-husband chores, OK? You know the park? That’s where we’re going. So he’s refusing treatment, is he?’

I didn’t have time for this.

It would be Marlon’s going-home time soon.

Stoner drove faster.

‘He’s refusing surgery,’ I said.

‘Staring down cancer.’ He shook his head in admiration. ‘He’s a brave old man, your father-in-law. I don’t think he took a nailing hammer to James Caine’s skull. But then that only makes him even braver, wouldn’t you say?’

We had reached the park. Stoner pulled up across the street from the playground. It was that mid-afternoon period when the swings and slides and roundabouts were still annexed by the youngest, pre-school children.

‘You see that couple with the two little girls?’

A tall, athletic-looking black man and a small, neat redhead were gently turning two small kids on the roundabout. Two girls, a toddler in the early staggering stages of walking and the older one about four.

‘You know who that is?’ Stoner said. ‘Of course you don’t know. How could you possibly know? But have a guess. Go on.’