‘Christian didn’t really come into it.’

She shook her head with disbelief. ‘But – how could your husband not come into it?’

‘I’m not proud of any of it, OK? Look, I was nervous and he was kind and I was drunk and he was there. There was an earthquake.’ I shrugged, aware of how pathetic the gesture must seem to Mary’s unflinching eyes. ‘I can’t explain it to you because I can’t explain it to myself.’

But I could hear Ginger’s voice. From the start, my best friend had understood it better than I did.

And you thought you would get away with it, Tara.

And you thought you had earned it.

Yes, I thought.

All of that.

‘The man – you saw him, Mary,’ I said. ‘The one who came to the office that morning. Remember him? He was not quite as nice as he seemed. He was a rotten bastard, Mary. He took photographs of me sleeping in his hotel room. He threatened to tell Christian. Then it all got worse.’

She looked appalled. ‘How could it get any worse?’

‘I tried to cut him off but he wouldn’t let me go. He wouldn’t let me act like it had never happened.’ How much should I tell her? The alleged broken condom? No, I thought, too much information. ‘He came to my house when I wasn’t there. He went inside and looked around. He spoke to Christian. He was a bastard, Mary. The bastard of a lifetime. And that journalist who is calling – that must be her waiting at the end of the street – is there because last night someone killed him.’

‘Killed him? That man who was here?’

I nodded. ‘And the police came late last night and took Christian away.’

She was shaking her head. It was too much. ‘But … Christian would never hurt anyone,’ she said. ‘Would he?’

‘Christian didn’t know anything about what happened in Tokyo,’ I said, looking at my watch. My husband had been in police custody for ten hours. The shame stabbed me, opened me up, made me sick of myself. ‘But I guess he does now,’ I said.

Mary sagged into a seat, the coffee forgotten, watching me blankly as I headed for the door.

‘Where are you going?’ she said, and I could see my father shaking his head.

You bought the ticket, Tara!

‘I’m sick of hiding away,’ I said.

As I approached the woman waiting for me at the end of the mews, I realised that I had seen her face before, in the happy, carefully curated world of social media where families are always unbroken and lives are forever happy and the days are all fulfilled and enviable and fun, and at last I understood why this woman was waiting for me.

‘Don’t you know me?’ she said. ‘I’m James Caine’s wife.’

17

Christian

‘Did you know?’ the detective asked me.

What could I tell her?

You always know, don’t you?

You look away. You – quite literally! – don’t want to know.