I told him I needed to go out later – the burglar alarm kept going off at the office and I was going to have to go down there and investigate. Christian merely shrugged at my carefully prepared lie.

When Christian and Marlon took Buddy for his late afternoon walk, I had a shower, trying to wash off the long day – the time spent driving fast and worried sick on the motorway between Bushey and town, and all the rest of it – my doctor’s appointment in Harley Street, Marlon’s disastrous riding lesson, James Caine’s verbal punishment and the fear Uncle Jack saw in my eyes when he offered to get my dad to help me. But somehow the day’s dirt seemed to stick to my skin no matter how hot the water, and no matter how hard I scrubbed. I dressed in a default little black dress with my favourite tailored jacket from Stella McCartney thrown over the top.

I looked in the mirror and I saw it wasn’t enough. I was consumed by the sudden urge to hide my body, to hide my face, to hide myself. Everyone would be looking at me and no one must see.

So I dug out a long green Prada raincoat from my youth. I put it on and found a Tokyo Giants baseball cap that I had brought back as a souvenir from Japan for Christian and he had never worn. I tucked my hair up inside, pulled it on low over my eyes, gave myself one last look. I resembled a boy in an Eighties synthesiser band – Pet Shop Tara – and then I quickly left the house, my hair still damp, before my family got back from walking the dog. Leaving was easier if I did not have to look at their faces, if I did not have to lie to them any more. I was sick of all my lies.

It was early evening when I arrived at the hotel. James Caine opened the door in his bathrobe. He smirked as he stood aside to let me enter. I didn’t want to hurt him. I just wanted him to leave me alone. I wanted him to stop torturing me. I wanted him to understand why this could not go on. Most of all, more than anything in the world, I wanted him to stop threatening to turn up on my doorstep and say things to Christian that would make my husband look at me in a different way for the rest of our lives. But I knew that James Caine saw exactly what Uncle Jack had seen when he looked at me in the stable.

Fear.

Because everything frightened me now. I was scared that Christian was going to know the truth about me and what I had done, I was scared of coming to this hotel room when I should have been preparing for an early dinner with my family, I was afraid of James Caine’s physical strength, and his cruelty, and I was afraid that I was too weak to stop him doing whatever he wanted to do to me.