He had been so upset he’d actually cried after he dropped Toby outside his house, parked his car at the end of the road and sobbed like a small boy. Then he’d driven very slowly and carefully back to London.

He got home at midnight, sat down, and got very drunk on whisky, grateful only that Amanda wasn’t there; he felt betrayed not just by Toby but by life itself. It just wasn’t fucking fair.

When Emma phoned two weeks later to tell him that she’d been doing a lot of thinking and she really couldn’t see how they could possibly have a future together, or not one based on making Amanda, whom he obviously still loved so much, deeply unhappy, and not to argue and not to try to see her, he found he was hardly even surprised.

Wretched, wounded, shocked, but not surprised.

“Right,” said Freeman. He tapped the pile of papers on his desk. “Ready to go, I think. Dozens of interviews, hundreds of hours. But none of it warrants going to the CPS, in my opinion. No real charge against anyone here…”

“Not even our friend Mr. Thompson?”

“No chance. Nasty bit of work, and undoubtedly he contributed to the blowout, but you could never charge him.”

“Well, maybe he’ll be a bit more careful in future.”

“Maybe. For a bit. Then it’ll be two fingers to us all and he’ll be off again. I’d like to see him fined, at least. But… I’d say we simply have an inquest situation here.”

Constable Rowe felt quite sorry for him; he looked as if he was about to burst into tears.

Interviewed at a police station, Rick had been defiant, truculent; yes, he’d had a load of wood on board; that was his job. No, he hadn’t been driving dangerously.

“And… this wood, Mr. Thompson. Was it properly stowed in your van?”

“Yes, course it was.”

“And it was new wood, was it?”

“Yeah.”

“It had no nails in it, for instance?”

“Course not.”

“Right. Well, perhaps you could explain why several witnesses saw the back doors of your van tied together with some rope?”

“I might have tied some rope round the handles. Nothing wrong with that, is there? Doesn’t mean it wasn’t properly fastened.”

“So you’re quite sure that some pieces of wood, with nails in them, could not have fallen out of the van onto the road?”

“Yeah, quite sure. I told you, it was new wood.”

The man from the wood yard near Stroud had remembered Rick very clearly.

Particularly his request that he should dispose of the old timber for him, and that he had refused. And that Thompson had then asked for a length of rope to tie the doors together, which had been insufficient to do the job properly.

Rick was told he would be called as a witness at any trial or inquest on the crash.

“Oh, what! I wasn’t anywhere near the bloody crash.”

“People have died, Mr. Thompson,” Freeman said. “Proper explanations for that have to be found. You could certainly be judged to have played a part in the collision that caused it. You’ll be hearing from us in the fullness of time.”

“I think I should move out for a bit,” said Jonathan. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

He had walked into Laura’s studio, where she was struggling to work; it was late; the children were all in bed and asleep.

“What isn’t getting us anywhere?”

“Well… drifting along like this. With you obviously unable to bear the sight of me.”

“Are you surprised by that?”

“No, Laura. But we can’t go on like this for the next forty years or whatever.”

“Believe me, I don’t want to. I’m just… trying to decide what’s best. For all of us.”

“I presume by that you mean the children,” he said, “rather than me and you.”

“Well… me as well. But mainly them, yes.”

“Right. Well, I think rather than go on living in this poisonous atmosphere-”

“I hope you’re not implying I’m creating the poisonous atmosphere?”

“Well… to a degree, you are. Obviously with some justification, but…”

“Jonathan, I can’t believe you said that. I haven’t done anything.

I’m not doing anything. Just trying to… to cope with what you’ve done. You’ve betrayed me totally, Jonathan, lied and lied to me, broken every promise, all your marriage vows.”

“Laura, I’ve said so many times I’m sorry, desperately sorry; I would give everything I have for it not to have happened…”

“Oh, I don’t think so. Your precious career, your doting staff, your adoring patients? And if you’re that desperate about it, why didn’t you realise how wrong it was, what damage you were doing to us and our marriage? No, you must have felt you had some kind of right to it, to her. And in that case, then either you’re rotten through and through, which actually I don’t think you are, or there’s something wanting in our relationship. So don’t try to explain, because I don’t think I could bear it.”

She could see she had shocked him: not by what she had said, but that she had said it at all. This was not the Laura he knew, berating him; this was not his gentle, softly spoken wife. But then, she thought, he was not the Jonathan she had known, not the loving, loyal husband and father, who had the family at the very centre of his being. They were moving far and fast from their old selves, and there was no knowing where and how far apart they would end up.

“Well… in that case, I’ll go,” he said. “There’s no point in my staying. I really can’t see it’s of any benefit to the children. I’ll arrange to see them at weekends and so on. And then we can decide what to do next.”

“Yes. All right.”

She felt sick suddenly.

“I think I’ll go to bed,” she said, and walked over to the door. There was a scuffle on the stairs; she looked up and saw Charlie staring down at her, his face white, with two brilliant spots of colour forming on his cheeks. He had obviously heard every word.

Georgia was still slightly surprised to find herself living with a friend of Merlin’s… well, not actually living with him, obviously, but in a room in his house in Paddington. She had imagined herself living in a flat with a load of girls, or men and girls, sharing everything, eating together, going around together, not virtually on her own, having to budget and cook for herself and get herself up and out in the morning. It had all been a bit of a shock at first. But there simply hadn’t been an option.

It had all begun with a row with Linda, with whom she’d been staying; Linda was being really odd. Far less interested in Georgia than she used to be, demanding, critical, making a fuss about stupid things like a couple of cups left unwashed, or music being played too loudly, and nagging endlessly about finding a place of her own.

She’d looked at about a hundred-well, at least ten-room- and flat-shares one Monday morning, and they were all horrible. She’d just never expected it to be so hard. And then she’d gone in to work in the afternoon and Bryn Merrick had actually shouted at her when she kept getting a scene wrong, and she’d half run out of the hall at six and arrived back at Linda’s flat in floods of tears. To find Linda not there; she’d spent a miserable evening on her own until Linda came in at nine o’clock in a foul mood, all because some contract had been cancelled and she’d been with lawyers all evening.

Georgia managed to express sympathy, and to make Linda a cup of tea; but then once Linda had settled on the sofa and reached for the TV remote, she said, “Linda, I need to talk to you.”