‘I really don’t want to talk about it, Gem.’

‘What was it? Too frightened to commit? Too soon since the divorce? You’re not still hankering after Lara, are you?’

He took a bit of bread and wiped it around some sauce on the plate. He chewed for a minute longer than he needed to. ‘She stole from me.’

‘She what?’

It felt like a trump card, laying it down like that. Upstairs the children were arguing. Ed found himself thinking of Nicky and Tanzie, placing bets in the back seat. If he didn’t tell somebody the truth he might actually explode. So he told her.

Ed’s sister pushed her plate across the table. She leant forwards, her chin resting in her hand, a faint frown bisecting her brow as she listened. He told the tale of the CCTV, how he had pulled out the drawers of the chest to move it across the room, and how there it had been, sitting on some neatly folded blue socks – his own laminated face.

I was going to tell you.

It’s not how it looks. The hand to the mouth.

I mean it is how it looks but, oh, God, oh, God –

‘I thought she was different. I thought she was the greatest thing, this brave, principled, amazing … But, f**k it, she was just like Lara. Just like Deanna. Only interested in what she could get out of me. How could she do that, Gem? Why can’t I spot these women a mile off?’ He finished, leant back in his chair, and waited.

She didn’t speak.

‘What? You’re not going to say anything? About my poor judge of character? About the fact that yet again I’ve let a woman screw me out of what’s mine? About how I’m an idiot on yet another count?’

‘I certainly wasn’t going to say that.’

‘What were you going to say?’

‘I don’t know.’ She sat staring at her plate. She registered no surprise whatsoever. He wondered if ten years of social work did that, whether it was now ingrained in her to appear visibly neutral whatever shocking thing she heard. ‘That I see worse?’

He stared at her. ‘Than stealing from me?’

‘Oh, Ed. You have no idea what it is to be truly desperate.’

‘It doesn’t make it okay to steal someone else’s stuff.’

‘No, it doesn’t. But … um … one of us has just spent the day in court pleading guilty to insider trading. I’m not entirely sure that you’re the greatest moral arbiter around here. Stuff happens. People make mistakes.’ She pushed herself upright and began to clear the plates. ‘Coffee?’

He was still staring at her.

‘I’ll take that as a yes. And while I’m clearing the plates you can tell me a little more about her.’ She moved with a graceful economy around the little kitchen while he talked, never meeting his eye. She had her thinking face on. When he couldn’t think of anything to do other than sit there with a slack jaw, Ed got up and helped her put the plates into the sink.

She pushed a drying-up cloth towards him. ‘So here’s how I see it. She’s desperate, right? Her kids are being bullied. Her son gets his head kicked in. She’s afraid it’ll happen to the little girl next. She finds a wad of notes at the pub or wherever. She takes them.’

‘But she knew they were mine, Gem.’

‘But she didn’t know you.’

‘And that makes a difference?’

His sister shrugged. ‘A nation of insurance fraudsters would say so.’

Before he could protest again, she said, ‘Honestly? I can’t tell you what she thought. But I can tell you that people in tight spots do things that are stupid and impulsive and ill thought-out. I see it every day. They do idiotic things for what they think are the right reasons, and some people get away with it and others don’t.’

When he didn’t reply, she said, ‘Okay, so you never took a ballpoint home from work?’

‘It was five hundred pounds.’

‘You never “forgot” to pay a parking meter and cheered when you got away with it?’

‘That isn’t the same.’

‘You’ve never exceeded the speed limit? Never done a job for cash? Never bounced off someone else’s Wi-Fi?’ She leant forward. ‘Never exaggerated your expenses for the taxman?’

‘That isn’t the same thing at all, Gem.’

‘I’m just pointing out that quite often how you see a crime depends on where you’re standing. And you, my little brother, were a fine example of that today. I’m not saying she wasn’t wrong to do it. I’m just saying maybe that one moment shouldn’t be the whole thing that defines her. Or your relationship with her.’

She finished the washing-up, peeled off the rubber gloves and laid them neatly across the draining board. Then she poured them both a mug of coffee and stood there, leaning against the sink unit. ‘I don’t know. Maybe I just believe in second chances. Maybe if you had the litany of human misery trudging through your working day that I do, you would too.’ She straightened up and looked at him. ‘Maybe if it were me I’d at least want to hear what she had to say.’

He couldn’t think of a reply.

‘Do you miss her?’

Did he miss her? Ed missed her like he would miss a limb. He spent every day trying to evade thoughts of her, running from the direction of his own mind. Trying to dodge the fact that everything he came across – food, cars, bed – reminded him of her. He had a dozen arguments with her before breakfast, and a thousand passionate reconciliations before he went to sleep.