Her voice was slightly slurred, its edges frayed with pain.

‘It’s not –’

‘No? Two years I’ve been flat broke. Two years I’ve been protecting him, not adding to his stress, not bothering him about his own children. And all the while he’s been living like that, in his executive home, with his highlights and his designer jeans and his new girlfriend.’ She shook her head in wonder. ‘I didn’t suspect a thing. Not for one minute. And I worked it out, while I was in the bath … that whole “do as you would be done by” thing? Well, it only works if everyone else does it. And nobody does, any more. The world is basically full of people who couldn’t give a shit. They’ll tread all over you if it means they get what they want. Even if it’s their own kids they’re treading on.’

‘Jess …’

He walked around the kitchen units until he was inches from her. He couldn’t think what to say. He wanted to put his arms around her, but something about her held him back. She poured herself another glass of wine, and lifted it towards him.

‘I don’t care about that woman, you know. That’s not it. Me and Marty were over a long time ago. But all that crap about not being able to help his own kids? Refusing to even think about helping Tanze with school fees?’ She took a long gulp of her drink and blinked slowly. ‘Did you see that girl’s top? That designer top? You know how much they cost? Sixty-seven pounds. Sixty-seven pounds for a child’s sweatshirt. I saw the price tag when Druggie Aileen brought one round.’ She wiped angrily at her eyes. ‘You know what he sent Nicky for his birthday in February? A ten-pound voucher. A ten-pound voucher for the computer-games shop. You can’t even buy a computer game for ten pounds. Only second-hand. And they don’t always wipe the second-hand ones so someone else will have got all the points. And the stupid thing is we were all really pleased. We thought it meant that Marty was getting better. I told the kids that ten pounds, when you’re not working, is actually quite a lot of money.’

She started to laugh. An awful, desolate sound. ‘And all the time … all the time he was in that executive home with his immaculate new sofa and his matchy-matchy curtains and his bloody boy-band haircut. And he didn’t even have the balls to tell me.’

‘He’s a coward,’ he said.

‘Yup. But I’m the idiot. I’ve dragged the kids halfway around the country on some wild goose chase because I thought I could somehow better their chances. I’ve put us thousands of pounds into debt. I’ve lost my job at the pub. I’ve pretty much destroyed Tanzie’s self-confidence by putting her through something I should never have made her do. And for what? Because I refused to see the truth.’

‘The truth?’

‘That people like us never get on. We never move upwards. We just rattle around at the bottom, scrabbling over the other people at the bottom like rats in a cellar, everyone trying to keep out of the wet.’

‘That’s not how it is.’

‘What do you know?’ There was no anger in her voice, just confusion. ‘How could you possibly understand? You’re being done for one of the most serious crimes in the City. Strictly speaking, you did do it. You told your girlfriend what shares to buy so that she would make herself a heap of money. But you’ll get off.’

His glass stopped somewhere near his mouth.

‘You will. You’ll get a couple of weeks inside, maybe a suspended sentence even, and a big fine. You’ve got expensive lawyers who will keep you out of any real trouble. You’ve got people who will argue for you, fight for you. You have houses, cars, resources. You don’t really need to worry. How could you possibly understand what it’s like for us?’

‘That’s not fair,’ he said gently.

‘Don’t talk to me about fair,’ she snapped.

She turned away, and inhaled. She inhaled like someone who wanted to actually black out. She pulled on the joint again and again, closing her eyes and exhaling upwards, the sweet smoke drifting towards the ceiling.

Ed sat down beside her and took it from between her fingers. ‘I think maybe that isn’t such a good idea.’

She snatched it back. ‘Don’t tell me what’s a good idea.’

‘I don’t think this is going to help.’

‘I don’t care what you –’

‘I’m not the enemy here, Jess.’

She shot him a look, then turned and stared at the fire. He couldn’t tell if she was waiting for him to get up and leave. Or maybe shout back at her. Just for once, he thought, I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to sit this out.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said eventually, and her voice was stiff, like card.

‘It’s fine.’

‘It’s not fine.’ She sighed. ‘I shouldn’t … I shouldn’t take it out on you.’

‘It’s okay. It’s been a crappy day. Look, I’m going to have a bath, and then I think we should just get some sleep.’

‘I’ll be up when I’ve finished this.’ She inhaled again.

Ed waited for a moment, then left her staring at the fire. It was a mark of how tired he was that he didn’t think any further than the bath.

He must have nodded off in the water. He had run it deep, pouring in whatever unguents and potions he could find on the side without looking to see what they were, and sinking in gratefully, letting the hot water ease out some of the tensions of the day. He tried not to think. Not about Jess, downstairs, staring bleakly into the flames, not about his mother, a couple of hours away, awaiting a son who wouldn’t come. He just needed a few minutes of not having to think about anything. He lowered his head as far as he could into the water while still breathing.

He dozed. But some strange tension seemed to have crept into Ed’s bones: he couldn’t quite relax, even as he closed his eyes. And then he became aware of the sound: a distant revving noise, uneven and dissonant, a whining chainsaw, or a driver learning how to accelerate. He opened an eye, wishing it would just go away. He had thought that this place, of all places, might offer the tiniest bit of peace. Just one night with no noise or drama. Was it really so much to ask?

‘Jess?’ he called, when it became too irritating. He wondered if there was a music system downstairs. Something she could turn on to drown it out.

And then he realized the cause of his vague discomfort. It was his own car he could hear.

He sat there, bolt upright, for a split second, then leapt from the bath, wrapping a towel around his waist. He ran down the stairs two at a time, past the empty sofa, past Norman, who lifted his head quizzically from his spot in front of the fire, and wrestled with the front door until he had it open. A blast of cold air hit him. He was just in time to see his car bunny-hopping its way forward from its place in front of the cabin, and along the curved gravel drive. He leapt off the steps and as he ran he could just make out Jess at the wheel, craning forward to see through the windscreen. She didn’t have any headlights on.

‘Jesus Christ. JESS!’ He sprinted across the grass, still dripping, one hand clutching at the towel around his waist, trying to cross the lawn to block her before she could get round the drive to the road. Her face swivelled briefly towards him, her eyes widening as she saw him. There was an audible crunch as she wrestled with the gears.

‘JESS!’

He was at the car. He threw himself at the bonnet, thumping it, then at the side, wrenching at the driver’s door. It opened before she could fumble for the lock, sending him swinging sideways.

‘What the hell are you doing?’

But she didn’t stop. He was running now, unnaturally long steps, braced against the swinging door, one hand on the wheel, the gravel sharp under his feet. The towel had long since disappeared.

‘Get off!’

‘Stop the car! JESS, STOP THE CAR!’

‘Get off, Ed! You’ll get hurt!’ She batted at his hand, and the car swerved dangerously to the left.

‘What the –’ With a leap he managed to wrestle the keys from the ignition. The car juddered and stalled abruptly. His right shoulder collided hard with the door. Jess’s nose hit the steering-wheel with a crack. The airbag, as if in afterthought, inflated with a whoosh.

‘FUCK.’ Ed landed heavily on his side, his head hitting something hard. ‘FUCK IT.’ He lay on the ground winded, his head spinning. It took a second for his thoughts to clear, and then he scrambled unsteadily to his feet, hauling himself up by the still-open door. He could see, through blurred vision, that they were feet from the lake, its shoreline an inky black near his wheels. Jess’s arms rested against the airbag, her face buried in the gap between them, a faint wisp of smoke curling upwards from its seams. He reached across her and pulled on the handbrake, before she could somehow set the thing in motion again.

‘What the hell were you doing? What were you DOING?’ Adrenalin and pain coursed through him. The woman was a nightmare. She was chaos. What the hell had she been thinking? What the hell had he been thinking, agreeing to any part of this? ‘Jesus, my head. Oh, no. Where’s my towel? Where’s the damn towel?’

Lights were flicking on in the other cabins. He glanced up, and there were silhouettes in windows that he hadn’t known were there, figures looking out at him. He cupped himself as best he could with one hand and half walked, half ran for the towel, which was lying, muddied, halfway along the path, a glowing, crumpled pennant. As he walked, he lifted his other hand towards them as if to say, Nothing to see here (given the cold night air, this had swiftly become true), and a couple of them shut their curtains hurriedly.

She was sitting where he had left her. ‘Do you know how much you’ve drunk tonight?’ he yelled, through the open door. ‘How much dope you’ve smoked? You could have killed yourself. You could have killed us both.’

He wanted to shake her, to show her the madness of what she had just done. ‘Are you really so determined to dig yourself deeper and deeper into more crap? What the hell is wrong with you?’

And then he heard it. She had her head in her hands and she was crying into them, a soft, desolate sound. ‘I’m sorry.’

Ed deflated a little, hitched the towel around his waist. ‘What the hell were you doing, Jess? You must know this is crazy behaviour.’

‘I wanted to get them. I couldn’t leave them there. With him.’

He took a breath, made a fist and released it. ‘But we’ve discussed this. They’re absolutely fine. Nicky said he’d call if there were any problems. And we’re going to get them first thing tomorrow. You know that. So what the hell –’

‘I’m scared, Ed.’

‘Scared? Of what?’

Her nose was bleeding, a dark scarlet trickle winding its way down to her lip, her eyes smudged black with mascara. ‘I’m scared that … I’m scared that they’ll like it at Marty’s.’ Her face crumpled. ‘I’m scared they won’t want to come back.’

And Jess Thomas came to rest, gently, against him, her face buried in his bare chest. And finally Ed put his arms around her and held her close and let her cry.

He had heard religious people talk about having revelatory experiences. Like there was one moment where everything became clear to them and all the crap and ephemera just floated away. It had always seemed pretty unlikely to him. But then Ed Nicholls had one such moment in a log cabin beside a stretch of water that might have been a lake, or might well have been a canal for all he could tell, somewhere near Carlisle. You see, he had once known a woman who had told herself she could do anything – and then decided she could do nothing; a woman who, finding herself at her lowest, did her best to push everyone away. And he realized in that moment that he had to make things right. He felt her injustices more fiercely than he had ever felt anything for himself. He realized, as he held her to him and kissed the top of her head and felt her cling to him, that he would do anything he could to make her happy, and her kids, and to keep them safe and give them a fair chance.

He didn’t ask himself how he could know this after four days. It just seemed clearer to him than anything he had worked out in entire decades before.

And so he told her. He told her, in the quiet tones of someone offloading a confession, that it would be okay. That he would make it okay. Because she was the most amazing woman he had ever met, and it was as simple for him as knowing that he couldn’t not make it okay. And when she lifted her swollen eyes to his, frowning as she tried to make sense of what she was hearing, Ed Nicholls mopped her bleeding nose, and he dropped his lips gently onto hers, and he did what he had wanted to do for the past forty-eight hours, even if he had been initially too dumb to know it. He kissed her. And when she kissed him back – tentatively at first, and then with a fierce, gratifying passion, her hand stealing up to his neck, her eyes closing – he picked her up (he was starting with the broken toe), carried her back to the house, and in the only way he could offer that he was sure wouldn’t be misunderstood, he tried to show her.