‘Yes?’

‘When you talk to them, they’ll be clever. The best way to stop yourself saying stuff is to not think it.’

‘I’ll remember that,’ I said.

*

As for the crime itself, time and place were quickly agreed: New Year’s Eve, the blackspot east of the Hope & Anchor. Melia would arrange to meet Kit for one of their long nocturnal walks (they would each have an old-style pay-as-you-go phone for their untraceable messaging), and I’d be waiting, concealed by the night, ready to distract him for a minute or two while she prepared her attack.

Initially, Melia thought we should dispose of the body in the river, wait for it to be washed up, but I’d read extensively on the dangers of the tidal Thames. ‘The undertow can keep bodies down there for days, even weeks. What if it screws up our alibis? Or the body comes back so decomposed you can’t see any wound? We don’t want it declared a suicide.’

Suicide meant no money, hence my vociferous denials to Clare and Gretchen that Kit had ever had any such intentions.

As for the knife wound, ‘Leave it to me, I’ll research how to do it properly,’ Melia said, as if talking about growing tomatoes or reupholstering an armchair. ‘The last thing we need is him living to tell the tale.’

‘I can’t believe you think you’re capable of this,’ I remarked, in another apartment with high windows and floors as smooth as glass. The dusk had come a little earlier then, the light lower.

‘It’s not like I’ll enjoy it,’ she said. ‘It’s just got to be done.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ I said. They’d been together for years, been in debt for as long. ‘What changed? What did he do to make you hate him?’

She shook her head. ‘He’s going to destroy himself anyway, look at the way he lives. This way, we get something out of it. A future, you and me.’

‘Until you decide to do the same thing to me,’ I said. It was meant as a wisecrack, but she answered with the utmost sincerity.

‘No, we’re different, Jamie. We’re special.’

*

Clare was an unexpected obstacle.

It goes without saying that ideally she wouldn’t have found out about the affair; that was a variable of which I lost control, thanks to having been unsettled by my ‘interrogation’ that morning. Had she not done the decent thing and let me move into the spare room, I would have had to beg for a reconciliation, a last chance.

She rocked the boat a second time by storming off to her parents, when I needed her to be at home for New Year’s Eve to alibi me. She came through for me again, but not before I’d had to line up Dad to understudy her, an alternative that would have been far from ideal.

Then, a third time, when she guessed the plan. The fake plan. She had a better nose for a bluff than I did.

When I remember New Year’s Eve at home with her, my pulse slows a fraction. I picture her in her pyjamas standing in front of me on the landing, making her suggestion: Do you think it’s completely impossible . . . ?

The suggestion that I now understand was my last chance in every conceivable way.

Dear God, I should have fallen to my knees to take it, weeping with gratitude.

*

And so the police hear out my true confession – hours of it; by the end, I’ve almost lost my voice – but thanks to my having established myself as a fantasist regarding a certain non-existent detective double act, they make no bones about considering my account the improvised alternative reality of an unhinged mind.

‘So you told these other “investigators” that Mr Roper disappeared because he owed money to drug dealers, but now you’re saying it was an insurance fraud gone wrong and he was killed by his wife?’

‘A faked insurance fraud.’

‘We can’t keep up with your imagination, Mr Buckby.’

‘It’s not imagination,’ I cry. ‘It’s the truth!’ There’s a kicking sensation inside my head and my eyelids crunch as I blink. ‘Melia persuaded him I’d be convicted for his murder without there being a body.’

As the three of them regard me with opposing emotions of pity and pitilessness, the bright-eyed detective says, ‘Well, the fact that there is a body would appear to contradict that.’

*

Even so, I persist with my truth during the months of remand that follow. I persist with it even in the face of Melia’s reported denials, of the ever more convincing case being assembled by the prosecution. My defence team is sympathetic, but pragmatic, repeatedly explaining to me that it is not what I have done or not done that matters, but what they can prove I’ve done or not done.

For instance: when my phone search history is examined and the words ‘How to inflict fatal knife wound’ found in a private browsing mode that I wasn’t even aware existed, I can claim the search was made when I gave Melia my passcode so she could download her favourite songs for me, but I can’t prove it. (Our first meeting after the wedding, too, before I’d even agreed to her plan. She was already setting me up!)

For instance: when it’s discovered that a knife is missing from the Comfort Zone – the very one I loaned in the first place – I can claim Melia took it during that single, helpful visit of hers, but I can’t prove it.

And, when my team requests access to the security footage at the Royal Festival Hall and it’s discovered that at no time are Merchison’s and Parry’s faces captured with any clarity, but only mine, I can claim they’d studied the angles in advance, but I can’t prove it.

Oh, and when a hoodie is found in the bushes of Prospect Square with my both my hairs and traces of Kit’s blood attached to it, I can claim Melia kept it back that night and tossed it over the railings, but I can’t prove it.

I could go on.

I’m urged to consider a manslaughter plea, but I do what they do in movies and I refuse to compromise. I make my ‘not guilty’ plea to all who will listen, including judge and jury.

But in the end, it will come down to who they believe: her or me.

Well, I think we can all guess which way that’s going to go.

44

Some months later

I won’t dwell on the trial. Just as she has been a highly credible witness with the police, so Melia is with the court. Attending in the company of a victim liaison officer, she is dressed in slim black trousers and white blouse, the prim and servile uniform of a waitress. Her hair is demurely styled, soft on her shoulders, her brave eyes shining with grief, and I’m guessing she intends the silver heart pendant at her throat to be taken for a love token from her dear, departed husband.

I study the jurors’ faces when she gives her evidence and I see they want to, variously, mother her, befriend her, comfort her, fight for her, or fuck her. She’s got ‘it’: something for everyone. They should have invited agents and casting directors to judge her performance alongside the legal professionals and sworn good citizens.

Don’t get me wrong, my barrister is excellent and challenges her on her inconsistencies, but she is consistently earnest and agreeable – even apologetic that her messages might have been mixed or misunderstood.

Her fingers reach frequently for that silver love heart.