‘This morning, first thing. Merchison came round. Warned me to leave you alone.’

A small smile slides across her lips. ‘Bless them. They’re very protective.’

‘Little do they know they’re protecting the wrong person.’

‘They certainly are.’ Sensing my exhaustion – or is it fragility? – she says, ‘It’s not long now, we’re almost there. I doubt you’ll hear from them again. It’s down to me now.’

I feel inadequate then, a fraud, leeching strength from her when I’m the one who should be supplying it.

‘Stick to the plan, Jamie. We’ve been through it a hundred times, we’re word perfect.’

She steps towards me and we kiss again. My last doubts roll away and my mind dares consider the next thirty-six hours.

‘Who’ve you got staying here tomorrow night?’

‘Elodie.’

‘The girl you were with yesterday?’

‘Yes. She’s very concerned about me. She knows I just want a quiet night in, so there’ll be no persuading me to go out and party. She’ll be out for the count by twelve thirty with the sleeping pill, won’t wake up till late. How about you?’

‘Clare’s going to be home.’

‘You definitely don’t need a pill for her?’

‘No. Once we’ve gone to bed in our separate quarters she won’t come looking for me – unless it’s to hold a pillow over my head.’ I’m recovering my confidence now, my humour. My arrogance.

‘Separate quarters,’ Melia echoes. ‘So she really knows we’ve been seeing each other, wow. Should I be fitting extra locks to my doors?’

I grimace. ‘She found out on Friday, so if she was going to kill you, she’d have done it by now.’

‘Friday? Are you serious?’ Melia nuzzles me. ‘Tell me everything she said. Can you stay a while?’

She leads me into the bedroom, a tiny room heaped with shoes and bags and books and chargers and myriad other possessions. The small wardrobe overflows, the mantelpiece holds an ugly tangle of fairy lights either dead or forgotten. I wonder if the bedding has been changed since Kit last slept here. Between stretches of kissing, I describe Clare’s discovery of our affair, unsure what to make of the obvious arousal it causes in her, and soon too absorbed in my own pleasure to care.

*

Thirty minutes later, I surface from Melia’s sheets as if from under a mask of fresh oxygen, renewed, recalibrated. Disgracefully, since I’ve just been wrapped around his wife in his bed, it’s only as I leave that I remember to ask, ‘How is he, by the way?’

‘He’s okay,’ Melia says. ‘Not great at killing time, but that’s Kit.’

I picture him, sullen in his solitude, restless for playmates, stewing in his own resentment.

Just you wait, Jamie.

Just YOU wait.

We’re not so dissimilar in the end, Kit and I. We’re both happy to sell the other down the river.

The only difference is, one of us knows the other is doing it.

37

31 December 2019

New Year’s Eve in London, city of nine million. A day and night of mindless drunkenness, of emergency departments split at the seams with the survivors of pub bust-ups and party mishaps. Of carnival and carnage.

A perfect night to bury a crime.

Every minute of today must be accounted for. The Comfort Zone closes inconveniently early, at 4.30 p.m., and knowing Clare will likely stay at work till at least 6.30, I head from St Mary’s Pier to Starbucks on the high street, laptop bag heavy on my shoulder. I’ve chosen the venue both for its security camera and its array of perky staff, at least one of whom will remember our banter about my unusual order: Earl Grey with steamed almond milk on the side. No one ever orders that. I tell the server I work in a café myself and have never been asked for it.

Something DC Parry said bubbles to the surface and gives me momentary trepidation: You seem very confident of the cameras. Almost as if you’ve gone out of your way to be seen. In other words, an innocence too ostentatious might easily be construed as guilt.

The Wi-Fi was playing up at home this morning, I rehearse. Following a change in circumstances, I wanted to start applying for new jobs, had a quick look in my break. My search history backs this up, including a browse of the website of a big chain of coffee shops, and in my sent folder is an email to the manager of a café in Greenwich, enquiring about a weekend manager’s vacancy. Even so, there’s a chewing sensation in my gut, like parasites devouring me from the inside.

Arriving back home at the same time as Clare, I’m on tenterhooks in case she’s had some mercurial change of mind and decided to escape me for the night. I am trading on the power of association by having a bath mid-evening and putting on pyjamas, nice brushed cotton checked ones that her parents bought for me a few Christmases ago. I wonder what Melia imagines I wear in bed; would she think pyjamas only for old men? We’ve never spent the night together. If you add together the hours we’ve been together, does it qualify as long enough to love? Long enough to trust?

I ignore these questions and concentrate on Clare. The pyjama ploy works and by nine o’clock she’s dressed for bed too; we’re sitting together in front of the TV watching ancient episodes of The Big Bang Theory. Anyone looking through the window would think us a normal couple opting out of the party scene in favour of an intimate night alone, not a pair trapped by their estrangement, by the undisclosed machinations of one of them and the misplaced beneficence of the other. Clare’s drinking chilled Chablis, but I’m alcohol-free. Even sobriety may not be enough for me to navigate tonight.

During a scene on TV in which two characters break up, she suddenly clenches. I wonder if she’s thinking how much she hates me. The sheer audacity of my still sitting here in her house, abusing her generosity, disrespecting her.

She sighs and I dare ask: ‘What?’

‘I’m just wondering when that detective of yours is going to pull his finger out.’

So it’s not her hatred of me that consumes her. I should have known. She is a woman of great focus, Clare, and her focus has turned away from her own humiliation and towards crime fighting. But I have no doubt that it will return and when it does I will need to be ready to go.

‘The moment he’s back at his desk, I’ll be on to him,’ I assure her. ‘The day after tomorrow, his office said. Then I’ll send Kelvin’s report. I’ve already drafted the email with our theories. All in my name, as we agreed. You’re not mentioned.’

She nods, satisfied. ‘I went to check on a few flats on our rentals roster today. The ones that haven’t had any viewings over the break and I reckon Melia might think are safe to squat in.’

‘You did?’ Jesus, even at the eleventh hour, she’s blindsiding me with her resourcefulness. ‘Any signs of habitation?’

‘No.’ She groans. ‘Not that I would have known what to do if I had found him. It was silly to think I could take him on on my own. He’d have killed me, probably.’

‘Of course he wouldn’t!’ I protest.

‘Why not? If he doesn’t mind destroying your life for monetary gain, he’d probably be happy to destroy mine while he’s at it. Happier, probably, since I represent the land-owning elite he hates so much.’