His voice, the voice I loved, came through the child monitor.

‘Buck was neither house-dog nor kennel-dog,’ he read. ‘The whole realm was his …’

I looked at my own phone, for a message from Ginger, for a sign that it had all been a terrible mistake and nobody was dead and the police were not coming.

But there was nothing. Ginger had made her call. Of course she had. A man had been murdered.

‘He plunged into the swimming tank or went hunting with the Judge’s sons. He escorted Mollie and Alice, the Judge’s daughters, on long twilight or early morning rambles. On wintry nights he lay at the Judge’s feet before the roaring library fire.’

When Christian came back into the living room, holding the Puffin Classic edition of The Call of the Wild, Buddy padding behind him, he saw that I was holding his phone. And he didn’t even flinch.

How many men can you say that about? How many women?

Christian was smiling as he placed The Call of the Wild on the coffee table.

I carefully placed his phone on top of the book. Then I went to him and found his mouth with my mouth, my perfect fit.

He laughed when I squeezed him as hard as I could. He hugged me back, with none of my damaged, desperate madness in his embrace, and I snuggled there in his arms, enjoying his sweet warmth and hard bulk, as familiar to me as my own face.

‘Love you,’ I whispered, dislodging his glasses with the top of my head.

‘Love you too,’ he said, adjusting his specs.

And I wanted him inside me.

And I wanted him to hold me.

I wanted him to tell me all those things about loving me forever, all those priceless promises that I had been so careless with, all those treasures I had taken for granted, all that love I had betrayed. I wanted to wake up in the middle of the night and discover – and it always felt like a small miracle to me – that we had been holding hands in our sleep.

I never did that with anyone else, I wanted him to know. I never held hands in my sleep with any other man. Nothing meant anything apart from you.

But it was too late for all that now.

That was all over. That time was done.

Christian’s smile finally faded when he saw my eyes were bright with tears.

And I knew I must tell him now that everything he thinks he knows about his life is wrong.

His phone began to ring.

‘Don’t answer it,’ I said, and something rough in my voice froze him.

He held me at arm’s length, all smiles long gone.

‘Tara?’

His phone stopped ringing.

‘What? Tell me. Come on, I want to know.’

No, I thought. You really don’t. But I looked at his face and I took a breath.

Then I heard the sirens and I felt my husband pulling away from me, as if he was pulling away forever, and there was a look on his gorgeous face that tore me apart, because it showed that he did not understand what I had brought to our family’s door, and into our home, and into our marriage, and into our bed.