They left together, hand in hand. Christo wore red shorts and a stripy shirt. I stared at the congealing food on their plates. I stared at the window, which needed washing. And there was a spider’s web on the light above me. Where was the spider, I wondered.

The doorbell rang and I jumped. It was Stadler, crumpled and sweaty, with stubble on his face. He looked as if he hadn’t gone to bed.

“Can I just ask a couple of questions, Jenny?” He always called me Jenny now, as if we were friends, lovers.

“More questions?”

“One,” he said, with a tired smile.

We walked downstairs, where he turned down offers of coffee and breakfast. He looked around.

“Where’s Lynne?” he asked.

“Sitting outside in her car,” I said. “You must have passed her.”

“Right,” he said dully. He hardly seemed awake.

“You wanted to ask a question?”

“That’s right,” he said. “It’s just a detail. Can you remember where you were on Saturday July seventeenth?”

I made a feeble attempt to recall and gave up.

“You’ve got my appointment book, haven’t you?”

“Yes. All you wrote on that day was ‘Collect fish.’ ”

“Oh, yes, I remember.”

“What were you doing?”

“I was at home. Cooking, preparing things.”

“With your husband?”

“No,” I said. Stadler gave a visible start, then a smile of suppressed triumph. “I don’t see why you need to look surprised. As you know, he’s hardly ever here.”

“Do you know where he was?”

“He had to go out, he told me. Urgent business.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I was cooking a meal for us. He told me in the morning he had to go out.”

I remembered the day clearly. It had been Lena’s day off. Harry and Josh had lounged around and squabbled, before going out with separate friends; Christo had watched television most of the day, and played with his Legos, and gone to bed early, worn out by heat and bad temper, and I had sat in the kitchen with the ruined day behind me and my beautiful meal spread out on the table, long-stemmed wineglasses and flowers from the garden, and he hadn’t come back.

“He was out the whole day then?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Can you be precise about times?”

As I spoke I could hear my own voice, flat, sad.

“He left too early to be able to go to the fishmonger’s. He came back at about midnight. Maybe a bit later. He wasn’t there when I went to sleep.”

“Are you willing to make a statement repeating all that?”

I shrugged.

“If you want. I assume you’re not going to tell me why it matters.”

Stadler startled me by taking hold of my hand and holding it.

“Jenny,” he said softly, his voice like a caress. “All I can tell you is that all of this will soon be over, if that is of any comfort to you.”

I felt myself going red.

“Oh” was all I could manage in response, like some village idiot.

“I’ll be back soon,” he said.

I didn’t want him to go, but I couldn’t say that, of course. I pulled my hands away.

“Good,” I said.

I lay on my bed in a puddle of sunlight. I couldn’t move. My limbs felt weighted down and my brain sluggish, as if I were under water.

I lay in a cool bath and closed my eyes and tried not to think. I wandered from room to room. Why had I ever liked this house? It was ugly, cold-hearted, unsatisfactory. I would move from here, start again.

I wished Josh would call me. I wanted to tell him that he didn’t need to stay there if he hated it so very much. It wasn’t worth the wretchedness; I saw that now.

I went into the boys’ rooms and fingered the clothes in their wardrobes, the trophies on their shelves. We were all so very far from each other. I caught sight of myself in the long mirror in the hall-a thin, middle-aged woman with greasy hair and bony knees, wandering about like a lost thing in a house that was too large for her.

Outside, the sky was hazy with heat and fumes.

Maybe we could move to the country, to a small cottage with roses round the door. We could have a swimming pool and a beech tree the boys could climb.

I opened the fridge and stared inside.

The doorbell rang.

I was unable to speak. It was just not possible. It wasn’t real. I just shook my head as if I could clear the confusion away. Links leaned closer, as if I were short-sighted and deaf as well as mad.

“Did you hear what I said, Mrs. Hintlesham?”

“What?”

“Your husband, Clive Hintlesham,” he said, as if it had to be spelled out, detail by detail. “An hour ago. We charged him with the murder of Zoe Haratounian on the morning of July seventeenth, nineteen ninety-nine.”

“I don’t understand,” I repeated. “This is mad.”

“Mrs. Hintlesham, Jenny…”

“Mad,” I repeated. “Mad.”

“His solicitor is fully involved. He will appear at Saint Steven’s Magistrate’s Court tomorrow morning. They will make a bail application. Which will be refused.”

“Who is this woman, anyway? What’s she got to do with Clive? With me and the letters?”

Links looked uneasy. He took a breath and spoke in a slow, patient voice, quietly, even though there was nobody around to hear.

“I can’t tell you in detail,” he said. “But because of the special circumstances I thought I should prepare you. It seems that your husband was having an affair with her. We believe he gave her your locket. Her photograph was among his possessions.”

I remembered the photograph I had seen last night: an eager, laughing face, a glass in her hand lifted in a toast to the future she didn’t have. I gulped, and a wave of nausea swept over me.

“That doesn’t mean he would kill her.”

“Miss Haratounian also received letters like yours. Written by the same person. We believe that your husband threatened her, and then killed her.”

I gazed at him. A jigsaw was beginning to click together, but the picture that emerged made no sense, it was just a scribble of violent images. A bad dream.

“Are you saying that Clive was the person writing those letters to me?”

“All we are saying at the moment is that your husband is charged with the murder of Miss Haratounian.”

“Tell me what you think.”

“Mrs. Hintlesham…”

“You must tell me. It doesn’t make any kind of sense.”

Links was silent for some time, visibly trying to make up his mind.

“This is very painful,” he said. “I wish you could be spared it. But it is possible that he wanted to rid himself of this woman, for whatever reason. Then, having done that, it seemed that nobody knew that he had met her. For that reason, if you were… well, targeted by the person who did that murder, he wouldn’t be a suspect.” Another long silence. “It’s one way of looking at it,” he said uneasily. “I’m sorry.”

“Could he loathe me that much?”

Links didn’t speak.

“Has he admitted it?”

“He still denies even knowing Miss Haratounian,” Links said dryly. “Which is a bit rich.”

“I want to see him.”

“That’s your right. Are you sure?”

“I want to see him.”

“You don’t believe this, Jenny? Jens. You can’t possibly believe this ludicrous charge?” In his voice I heard a mixture of anger and fear. His face was red and unwashed, his clothes were stained. I gazed at him. My husband. Jowly cheeks, a thickening neck, eyes that were slightly bloodshot.

“Jens,” he said.

“Why shouldn’t I believe it?”

“Jens, it’s me, Clive, your husband. I know things have been shaky recently, but it’s me.”

“Shaky,” I repeated. “Shaky.”

“We’ve been married for fifteen years, Jens. You know me. Tell them it’s ridiculous. I was with you that day. You know I was. Jens.”

A fly settled on his cheek and he brushed it away violently.

“Tell me about Gloria,” I said. “Is it true?”

He flushed and tried to speak and then stopped.