‘Oh my God.’

‘Can you come down? We – I need to talk.’

I know what she is saying. She is trying to make it sound innocuous, in case Owen is listening, but we need to speak, urgently, before the police interview her, and perhaps us. We need to straighten out our stories.

‘Of course,’ I manage. ‘I’ll come tonight. The last train to Salten isn’t until nine thirty. I can make it if I can get a cab to the station.’

‘Are you sure?’ There’s a sob in her voice. ‘I know I’m asking a lot but Fatima can’t come, she’s on call, and I can’t get hold of Thea. She’s not answering her phone.’

‘Don’t be stupid. I’m coming.’

‘Thank you, thank you, Isa. I – this means a lot. I’ll call Rick now, tell him to pick you up.’

‘I’ll see you soon. I love you.’

It’s only when I hang up that I see Owen’s face, his eyes red with tiredness and drink, and I realise how this will seem to him. My heart sinks.

‘You’re going back to Salten?’ He spits the words out. ‘Again?’

‘Kate needs me.’

‘Fuck Kate!’ He shouts the words so that I flinch, and then he stands and picks up the bowl of risotto, food he’s barely eaten, and throws it into the sink so that the contents splatter across the tiles. Then he speaks again, more softly, a crack in his voice. ‘What about us, Isa? What about me?’

‘This is not about you,’ I say. My hands are shaking as I pick the bowl out of the mess of risotto, run the tap. ‘This is about Kate. She needs me.’

‘I need you!’

‘Her father’s body has been found. She’s in pieces. What do you want me to do?’

‘Her father’s – what? What the hell is this about?’

I put my head in my hands. I can’t face this. I can’t face explaining it all – negotiating between the truths and the lies. And Owen won’t believe me anyway, not in the mood he’s in. He is spoiling for a fight, looking for a way to feel slighted.

‘Look, it’s complicated – but she needs me, that’s the bottom line. I have to go.’

‘This is bullshit! It’s all bullshit. She’s managed without you for seventeen years, Isa. What’s got into you? I don’t understand it – you haven’t seen her for years, and suddenly she clicks her fingers and you come running?’

The words – they’re so close to Luc’s that for a minute I can’t say anything in response, I just stand, gasping, like he’s slapped me. And then I curl my fingers into fists, trying to control myself, and I turn to leave.

‘Goodbye, Owen.’

‘Goodbye?’ He steps towards me, through the slick of risotto still on the floor. ‘What the fuck does that mean?’

‘Whatever you want.’

‘What I want,’ he says, his voice trembling, ‘is for our relationship to be a priority for you. Ever since Freya, I feel like I’ve been last on the fucking list – we never talk any more – and now this!’ And I’m not sure if he means Salten and Luc, or Fatima, Thea and Kate … or even Freya. ‘I’m sick of it, do you hear me? I’m sick of coming last!’

And suddenly, with those words, I am no longer sad and afraid, I am angry. Very, very angry.

‘That’s what this is really about, isn’t it? It’s not about Luc, or Kate, or some stupid packet of fags. It’s about you. It’s about the fact that you can’t bear the fact that you don’t come an automatic first any more.’

‘How dare you say that?’ He is almost incoherent. ‘You lied to me, and you’re trying to make it my fault? I’m trying to talk to you, Isa. Don’t you give a shit about us?’

I do. Of course I do. But right now I am at the limit of what I can deal with. And I cannot deal with this. If Owen pushes me, I am very, very scared that I will tell him the truth.

I shove past him and go upstairs where Freya is sleeping, and I begin stuffing things into a bag with trembling hands. I’m not sure what I’m packing. Nappies. A clutch of underwear and baby vests. Some tops. God knows if I will have anything to wear. Right now I don’t care, I just want to get out.

I pick Freya up, feeling her stir and grumble against me, and slide her into a woollen cardigan, protection against the summer night air. Then I pick up the shoulder bag.

‘Isa!’ Owen is waiting in the hall, his face red with suppressed anguish and fury. ‘Isa, don’t do this!’

‘Owen, I –’ Freya is squirming against my shoulder. The phone in my bag beeps. Thea? Fatima? I can’t think. I can’t think.

‘You’re going to him,’ he bursts out. ‘Kate’s brother. Aren’t you? Is that message from him?’

It’s the last straw.

‘Fuck you,’ I snarl. And I push past him, and slam the flat door behind me, making Freya startle and wail. In the hallway I tuck her kicking legs into the pram with shaking hands, ignoring her increasingly siren shrieks, and then I open the communal front door and bump the pram furiously out of the house and down the steps.

I am barely out of the front garden when I hear the door open and Owen comes out, his face anguished.

‘Isa!’ he cries. But I keep going. ‘Isa! You can’t walk away from this!’

But I can. And I do.

Even though the tears are coursing down my face, and my heart is close to breaking.

I keep walking.

THE WEATHER BREAKS as the train pulls out of Victoria, and by the time we leave the London sprawl behind and the train enters the countryside, it is lashing with rain, and the temperature has dropped from a sultry pre-storm humidity to something closer to autumn.

I sit there, numb and cold, holding Freya to my breast like a living, breathing hot-water bottle, and I’m unable to process what I have done. Have I left Owen?

This is not the first argument we’ve had, not by a long chalk. We’ve had our quarrels and squabbles like any other couple. But this is by far the most serious, and more than that – it’s the first we’ve had since having Freya. When I gave birth to her, something shifted in our relationship – the stakes became higher, we consciously spread our roots, stopped sweating the small stuff, as if realising that we could no longer afford to rock the boat so often for her sake, if not for our own.

And now … now the boat is tipping so perilously, I’m not sure if I can save us both.

It’s the unjustness of his accusations that burns in my throat like acid. An affair. An affair? I’ve barely been out of the house alone since Freya was born. My body is not my own any more – she is glued to me like Velcro, sucking out my energy and my libido along with my milk. I am so exhausted and touched out that just summoning up the desire to fuck Owen is almost more than I can cope with – he knows that, he knows how tired I am, how I feel about my slack, postnatal body. Does he honestly think I tucked Freya under my arm and hauled myself off for a passionate, illicit affair? It’s so ridiculous I could laugh, if it wasn’t so outrageously unfair.

And yet, furious as I am, I’m forced to admit that on some level … he’s right. Not about the affair. But as the train forges south and my anger cools, a kernel of guilt begins to form inside of me. Because the core of what he is saying is this: I have not been true to him. Not in the way that he means – but in other ways, just as important. Ever since the day we met I have been keeping secrets, but now, for the first time in our relationship, I am doing more than that: I am outright lying. And he knows it. He knows that something is wrong, and that I am covering it up. He just doesn’t know what it is.

I wish I could tell him. I wish it like a hunger in the pit of my stomach. And yet … and yet a part of me is relieved that I can’t. It is not my secret, so it’s not my decision to make. But if it were? If it were only me involved? Then … I don’t know.

Because although I don’t want to have to lie to him, I also don’t want him to know the truth. I don’t want him to look at me, and see the person who did this – a person who lied, not just once, but repeatedly. A person who concealed a body, who colluded in a fraud. A person who, perhaps, has helped cover up a murder.