I woke early the next morning and lay, groping my way to consciousness, my eyes trying to focus on the blank spread of the ceiling.

As I hung, for a moment, between sleep and waking, life still seemed normal. Then the memory of the day before, of Matt and his mother and his unspeakable lies, came crashing in like a tidal wave, knocking the air from my chest. I felt sick. I lifted my head from the pillow, twisted to see you. You lay curled on your side, your breaths puffing through parted lips, deep in sleep.

I peered past you to the bedside clock. Already seven. I slid sideways out of bed as stealthily as I could, pulled my dressing gown from the back of the door. Your hair was flung out across the sheet and I bent to smell it, then to touch my lips to your forehead.

The kitchen floor gleamed with shafts of weak morning sunlight. The wine bottle, almost empty now, sat on the table with my dirty glass. I clicked on the kettle, reached for a mug and turned back with it. Screamed. Crash. The mug, slipping from my fingers, exploded like a grenade on the hard floor. Shards and splinters skimmed in all directions.

‘Get out!’ I didn’t recognise my own voice. It was high. Scratched at the air. ‘Get the hell out. How did you—’

‘Jen.’ He rose from the settee, there in the sitting room, arms out, hands extended as if he were calming a storm. ‘Please.’

I put a hand out and grasped the edge of the sink.

‘Any nearer, I’ll call the police.’

‘Really?’ He shook his head. ‘Don’t be like that, Jen. Please. Hear me out.’

I pulled the folds of my dressing gown more firmly round my body, tightened the cord.

He blinked, his eyes heavy and red-rimmed. ‘Let’s talk, Jen. Work it out. Can’t we do that?’ His tone was wheedling. ‘Please, darling. I love you. What else can I say? We’re good together.’

I narrowed my eyes and looked past him to the sitting room windows. The curtain on the right hung crookedly and the lining billowed as a breeze stirred it.

‘Forget about Richard. He and Ella – they aren’t like us, Jen. They don’t love deeply and forever. Not like we do.’

Beyond, out in the street, a car passed. The noise was too loud, too clear. The window was open. He’d forced it, lifted the sash high enough to climb in.

‘What do you want?’

The kettle burbled, shuddered on its stand as it began to boil.

‘I just want to talk. That’s all.’

He came slowly towards me, his arms outstretched, his face pleading, crossing the threshold into the kitchen.

‘Don’t.’ I flinched.

‘For heaven’s sake.’ He stopped and stood there, running his hand through his hair. His skin was grey.

He must have sat down here all night. All the time I was holding you close upstairs, imagining I was keeping you safe, he was here, in our home. He could have come into the bedroom in the darkness. I started. Perhaps he had.

‘I won’t touch you, if you don’t want me to. OK? Jen, please. Don’t do this.’

As he advanced further into the kitchen, I took a step backwards and bumped up against the worktop.

He shuddered. ‘This is ridiculous. Alright, I’ve got some explaining to do. Hands up. I admit it. But I’m the same person, Jen. I’m no different.’ He hesitated, his face tense. ‘I love you so much. You know that. And deep down, you know you feel the same about me.’

He pointed me to a chair. I sat on the far side of the table, putting a barrier between us. The kettle boiled and he took down mugs, made tea. His hands, usually so capable, shook as he poured the water onto the tea bags. I thought about his mother and her teapot, her strainer and knitted tea cosy. I opened my mouth to say something about her and where he really lived, then, uncertain, closed it again.

We sat opposite each other. He hunched forward over his cup, his chin moistened by rising steam. I stared at him, taking in the curve of his cheek, his jaw. I was seized by a strange sense of nothingness, of floating unanchored between two worlds, between reality and illusion. I knew this man, knew him intimately. And yet I didn’t know him at all. All the times. All the times we’d sat at this table, dined on food he’d cooked. Talked through his difficult cases, the small children struggling against infections, against diseases. It was all lies.

‘A doctor.’ I couldn’t stop myself. ‘Why did you say that?’

‘I’m almost a doctor. Alright, not a paediatrician, not at the hospital. I shouldn’t have pretended. I just thought, well, would you have bothered with me if I’d told the truth.’

‘All that stuff about seeing us in the street, wanting to know if we were OK—’

‘I did want to know. I was concerned.’

‘You followed me for weeks. Took photographs of me. Why? You didn’t know anything about me.’

‘Of course I did. I heard what happened. What Ella did to you. Her mother and mine still talk.’ He spread his hands. ‘We’re two of a kind, you and I. She hurt me, just like she hurt you. I admit, that’s what it was about, in the beginning. I wanted to use you to get to her.’ He shrugged, smiled. ‘Then we fell in love. We couldn’t help ourselves. I know you love me too, Jen. Don’t fight it.’

I stared at him. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you say she was your ex? All that stuff about a mysterious girlfriend who took your daughter from you.’

He looked at me, his face calm now. ‘She did.’

‘Matt, I know what happened. She was stillborn, your baby. I’m sorry. That’s awful. But you can’t blame Ella for that.’ I paused, remembering. ‘You encouraged me to think she killed her own baby!’

He shrugged. ‘She did, in a way.’

I thought of Catherine, her tiny eyes closed, lying in Ella’s arms.

‘How can you even say that?’

‘You really want to know?’

I looked down into my cup and the tea swirling there. ‘Not really.’

‘She was reckless. Wild. I liked it when I met her. But then she had a baby to think of, our baby. I told her to calm down, to be careful. She just laughed in my face. I couldn’t bear it. That poor little girl. She was my daughter and I couldn’t protect her.’ He paused, ran his hand down his cheek. ‘Ella fell, you see. In Torcello. We had a fight about her going up that tower and she wouldn’t listen. It was her fault. Her fault our baby died.’

I blinked, thinking of the winding stone slope, the giggling up ahead as I climbed.

‘I don’t believe you.’

He lifted his head, looked me in the eye. ‘That’s up to you.’

‘Why did you take me there?’

‘Why?’ He looked incredulous. ‘I didn’t want to. You wanted to go so badly. You pushed me into it. Remember? All that nonsense about Gracie’s angel. I went for you, Jen. To show you how much you mean to me.’

I lifted my tea. I didn’t want to listen. I just wanted him to go. To leave us alone.

‘And then she walked out on me, Jen. I told her how much I loved her. I said I’d take her back, despite what she did. But she wouldn’t listen. I thought, for a long time, that she’d realise what we had and come back to me. I kept telling her I’d forgive her. We could start again. We were made for each other.’

I shook my head. ‘That’s what you said about us.’

His voice rose. ‘I mean it, Jen. Ella doesn’t matter to me any more. We’ve got each other now. You and me and Gracie. We’re bound together. You can’t leave. We love each other too much.’

He pushed back his chair and got to his feet, made to come round the table to embrace me, his eyes on my face.

‘No, Matt…’ I put my mug down on the table, sloshing tea in a dark ring round the base. ‘I’m sorry. ‘

I got to my feet. Matt’s eyes were brimming with tears and all I wanted was to go back upstairs, crawl into bed and wrap my arms round you. Lie there, lost in your smell and the slow, steady rhythm of your breaths, until you woke.

I took a deep breath. ‘Please go.’

He bit down on his lip. ‘Don’t do this, Jen. Please. I love you.’

I didn’t answer. We both stood there, a few feet from each other, tense. When he spoke again, his tone was sneering.

‘All that stuff about Gracie going to Heaven and meeting the dear departed. I mean, really?’ He shook his head. I thought again how little I knew him. ‘I didn’t argue. I kept my mouth shut. Did I tell you it was nonsense?’

‘Maybe it isn’t nonsense.’ I swallowed. ‘How do you know? None of us do.’ I looked past him, through the house to the shadows in the sitting room. ‘How could she know those things? About the accident. About Catherine.’ And about my father, I thought. The quiet man still taking care of the children as he always did in life.

He shrugged. ‘She heard things. She sensed them. She’s bright. That’s all.’

I hesitated, watching him. ‘It was you, wasn’t it? On the phone to Ella.’

His eyes flicked away from mine, just long enough for me to know I was right. I thought of what you’d said. Auntie Ella had shouted down the phone. Go away. Stop it. Leave me alone. The fury and frustration of a woman whose ex simply wouldn’t stop calling, wouldn’t stop stalking her.

‘It was you.’

He didn’t answer. And that night in the club when I’d come across them arguing so furiously. She hadn’t followed us there at all. He’d gone looking for her.

‘Go.’ I didn’t want to hear any more. I wanted to be rid of him. ‘Go away. And don’t come back. Ever. Don’t phone. Don’t follow me. If you do, I swear, I’ll call the police.’

‘You don’t mean that.’ A look of sudden panic crossed his face. ‘We belong together, Jen. We do. I’ll make it up to you. Just give me a chance.’

He reached across the table for my hand and I snatched it away.

‘Leave me alone.’ My legs, under the table, shook. ‘Don’t you understand? I don’t want to see you again. I mean it. It’s over.’

He didn’t move. He sat, wordless, staring at me. Something in his eyes seemed to fold and crumple and I saw the pain there but couldn’t respond, couldn’t speak. His breathing was short and hard. I sat very still, holding myself separate from him, willing him to recover enough to leave. From above, the drone of an aeroplane’s engine swelled, then faded as it crossed the sky.

Finally, he seemed to regain control of himself. He pulled his eyes from mine and looked down at his lap. His voice became quiet: ‘So that’s it.’

When he looked up again, his expression had changed. Where before his eyes seemed desperate, pleading, now they seemed cold. ‘How very sad.’

‘I’m sorry—’ I stuttered ‘—but you need to go.’

He scraped back his chair. He stood for a moment, looking down, broader and stronger than me.

‘Fine.’ His voice was too calm. ‘I need the bathroom, OK? Then I’ll go.’

I sat there in the silent kitchen, pinned to my chair, listening to his heavy, familiar movements round the house. Up the stairs. The thud of the bathroom door. Later, the rush of the cistern as the toilet flushed, the creak of the banister as he came down again. I didn’t look up, didn’t go through to the hall to watch him go, just listened to the bang of the front door as he left.