Clare stares at me, her head tilting fractionally. ‘Did something happen on Monday you haven’t told me about? After you got to St Mary’s?’

I shrink slightly from her scrutiny. ‘No. I didn’t see him again, I swear. They’ve already looked at the security film on the boat, they know I got off first. And even if he was walking behind me the whole way, once they check the other cameras they’ll see I came straight here.’

‘So they literally met you off the boat this morning? That must have been a shock?’

‘Yes.’ I keep my voice steady. ‘It was pretty early.’

She shakes her head. ‘I don’t understand why they’re so interested in you. What motive could you possibly have to harm him?’

I shrug.

‘What did you argue about? You still haven’t said.’

My continued silence serves only to steer her towards her next, most damning query: ‘Why aren’t you really allowed to see Melia?’ And I watch helplessly as her mind files through the possibilities, her head quite still.

She’ll throw me out, I think. Where am I going to go? My heart rate accelerates even before she says it, an animal reacting to its predator’s pheromones:

‘Oh my God, I know what you argued about. I know why the police wanted to talk to you.’

‘Clare—’ I leave her name hanging. There’s no script for this; it’s a testament of my cowardice that in all the months of my affair I have never rehearsed this showdown. Now that it’s happening, I know instinctively I should deny, deny, deny, but sheer stupefaction gets the better of me and I say nothing at all. I’m no longer thinking.

A flush spreads over her face and she blinks as if to refresh her vision. ‘Something’s been going on between you and Melia. You and Melia.’ She repeats her name in an altered tone, disgust thickening her voice like mucus. As I finally begin my denials, she breaks in, right in my face, her breath coming rapidly: ‘How long? And don’t insult me by lying. No more lies.’

‘Since the spring,’ I say, at last.

‘What does that mean? May?’

‘March,’ I admit.

That’s a second shock, I can tell. She’s wondering how she could have been unaware of what must have been an attraction from the get-go. She’s probably thinking, Well, of course he would fancy her, but what would she see in him? Or maybe I’m doing her a disservice. Another one. Oh, shit, why the hell aren’t I denying it? Denying it and counterpunching with injured pride?

‘Where did you meet? Not here?’ Not in my house. Even in this moment of profound crisis, the inference goads me.

‘No, at a friend of hers’ place.’

‘How often? Once a month?’ Her words come in gulps. ‘Once a week?’

‘About that, I suppose.’

‘So you’ve had sex, let’s see . . .’ She tots up the weeks, nine months’ worth. ‘Thirty-five, forty times. More, probably. Or is it waning a bit now? Hang on a minute, they got married in August . . .’ As the next dirt-encrusted penny drops, she begins to tremble. ‘You continued after that? That’s the lowest of the low, Jamie. Even if you couldn’t give a shit about me, what about Kit? You were one of their witnesses.’

I stay silent. Anything I say will be ammunition smashed back at me.

‘Did he find out? Is that what you were rowing about? You need to tell me, Jamie, this is bloody serious, it could be seen as a motive for murder!’

‘I know that!’ I find my voice. ‘He didn’t find out, no, but he was slagging her off and threatening me and I got angry. I was worried he would go back and, I don’t know, hurt her or something. You know what they’re like.’

There’s an uncomfortable sense to this last statement, an implication that I acted to intercept him, but fortunately Clare doesn’t pick up on it. ‘Evidently I haven’t got a clue what any of you are like.’

I breathe deeply, slowly, knowing I must get this right, that this is now crisis control of the highest order: ‘Clare, I’m sorry you had to find out this way, I really am. I know there’s no way back from it, but I honestly don’t think Kit’s going missing has got anything to do with me. Or her. I told the police I think this might be drugs-related.’

But I’m a fool to think I can wrench control of this dialogue: Kit’s whereabouts are disregarded while she processes my betrayal. She’s on her feet now, hands shaking so the wine threatens to spill. Her face twists with fury. ‘All this time she’s been acting like I’m her mentor. Women helping women. Woman screwing women, more like!’

‘Don’t fire her, Clare.’

She looks for somewhere to put down her glass, stumbling slightly, fighting tears. ‘I couldn’t even if I wanted to. It’s not illegal to seduce a colleague’s partner of ten years, just fucking rude.’ Her neck is streaked with high colour, hair dishevelled from her pulling at it; she looks both wild and destroyed. ‘I can’t believe this is happening. I want you to leave. Get out.’

I experience a whoosh of horror. And not only horror but also, farcically, given how much I’ve risked and how long I’ve been risking it, surprise. Surprise that she’s exercising the power that’s been hiding in plain sight all these years, even when a well-paid career of mine afforded me the illusion of equality: this is her castle and I’ve been allowed to be king of it only on a grace-and-favour basis. If it were the other way around and she had been unfaithful to me, I would still be the one who had to beg for the stay of execution.

I keep my voice level. ‘Come on, that’s not fair. This is my home, my home of ten years, I must have some rights. Let me stay until I sort something out. I’ll move to the spare room, I’ll keep out of your way.’

‘I know you will, you won’t be here. I can’t speak to you anymore, I can’t look at you.’ She retreats and I hear her in the loo under the stairs, fan turning, water splashing.

This is bad, I think. Trembling, I finish my wine, rehearse my next pleas: Please, can you just let me stay another week, till the New Year . . .

The doorbell rings – our online grocery order – and bag after bag is passed across the threshold. The delivery guy tells me he’s worked non-stop over the holidays and I fish in my pockets for a tip.

‘Much obliged.’ If he hears the sound of a woman weeping a few feet away, he makes no remark. Maybe it’s not the only evidence of domestic dysfunction he’s witnessed this shift (isn’t it the case that more divorces are initiated after Christmas than at other time of year?).

When he’s gone, I knock on the loo door and call out, ‘Please, Clare, can we talk about this?’

‘Go away,’ she responds, the words muffled by the door between us and by her tears. ‘Go away.’

And I think, with disgraceful relief, that ‘Go away’ is at least a notch of an improvement on ‘Get out’.

30

27 December 2019

I’m startled awake by the sound of a door thumping shut, a vibration in my body, and I think for a moment I’m on the riverboat, absorbing the sickly bounce of the tide as heating pumps through the cabin, smothering me. (I dream of the river often now.) But then I feel the brief dip in temperature as the outside air reaches my skin and the living-room furniture takes shape.