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I go to the corner of the conservatory that Tara uses as her home office, and I open up the lid of her laptop.

I’m not sure what I’m looking for. Tara will have something squirrelled away somewhere, and I know for a fact that she has a good life insurance policy because she took her husband’s name off it when we got married and added me.

Unfortunately, there is only one way for me to access the money in that policy and, well, clearly that is not going to happen. What do you take me for?

I go into Tara’s bank account and type in her password.

It says it has not been recognized, so I tap it in again, switching on the small eye icon to check I don’t mistype it, but it still doesn’t recognize the code.

I feel a blast of fury pass through me at the realization that Tara has changed her password.

I spin round in her office chair to the filing cabinet behind me.

It usually has a key hanging from the lock, but I notice that it’s gone.

I flinch as I grasp the fact that in the two days since I left, my wife has changed the password to her bank account, cleaned the house to within an inch of its life, and taken away the keys to her filing cabinet.

Black rage starts to build at the base of my spine and I reflexively lock out my finger joints, lacing them together and pulling them apart.

The feel of the bones cracking restores me to calm.

Now is not the time to get angry. No time is the time to get angry; that is another thing I’ve learned.

Anger is a derailer. It never solves anything, ever.

I sigh and run my hands through my hair and then I stiffen at the sound of a key in the door. I quietly close the lid of Tara’s laptop and step toward the hallway.

It’s Emma, Tara’s daughter. I see her put the key she used to let herself into the house into her pocket, and then slowly take off her coat.

I back into the conservatory, my breathing silent.

Then I notice my raincoat hanging on one of the hooks by the back door in the kitchen and I walk quickly toward it.

By the time Emma comes upon me in the kitchen, I have it in my hand and my face is arranged into a pleasant smile, my other hand clutching my chest in a slightly fey Ooh, you gave me a start gesture.

“Emma!” I say. “What are you doing here?”

She eyes me inscrutably. “I thought you were going away for a week.”

“Yes. I am. I’m staying with a friend, in London. I just came back to get my raincoat. Weather forecast looks horrible.”

“You came all the way to Reading to get a raincoat?” Her hand goes absent-mindedly to her pregnant belly as she speaks, a gesture that inexplicably annoys me. Something about the superiority of it.

“Yes. And a few other things. I packed in a hurry, I wasn’t really thinking.” I pause for a moment and then I say again, “What are you doing here?”

“Mum said she saw something on the Ring app. Asked me to come and check.”

I know this is a lie. I deactivated the app before I arrived. It occurs to me that Emma has been charged with “keeping an eye on the place.”

“Oh, right, well, that would be me, then.” I shrug and grin, all Hugh Grant, affable and unthreatening, but I don’t see even a chink in her demeanor.

“Have you got everything?” she says, glancing at my raincoat.

“Yes,” I say. “I have. Are you going to escort me off the premises?” I ask this with humor, but also in the knowledge that that is exactly what she wants to do.

“No,” she says, “but it’s probably best if you leave.”

“You do realize I still live here, Emma. I’ve only moved out temporarily.”

“Yes. I do. And you do realize that this house is in my mother’s name and that legally you have no right to be here.”

There. There it is. This is the open face of the secret conversations that have been playing out here during the days when I’ve been at work. It’s oozing through the cracks now for me to see.

I keep my face neutral. “Oh yes, Emma, I am well aware of that. Your mother has been very careful to ensure that I never forget that fact.” I sound bitter, and I am bitter.

Whilst Tara has always shown me full trust (hence me having access to her bank account), she has always kept something back from me, and it’s only now that I feel the full force of that reserve.

“I think you should go.”

She has a hard face, Emma, she’s not feminine like her mother.

She looks like her dad. I want to punch that face, just once, dead center.

Bang . I’ve wanted to punch her face since pretty much the first time I met her four years ago.

It’s her fault that Tara has held back from me; she put doubt into her head from the very beginning.

Questioned my motivations. Googled me. Told her mother she thought I was “dodgy.”

As far as I was concerned, Emma had been watching too many stupid documentaries.

There is nothing dodgy about me. What you see is what you get.

I can be a good man, a good husband, a good person.

I can give women exactly what they want.

But I do have to be creative with my finances, yes.

I just don’t have that thing that some people have, that ability to streamline and think ahead and get my ducks in a row.

It’s just a bit haphazard, that’s all, but the women in my life have benefited from this just as much as they may have suffered as a consequence, because when I do have money, I am generous to a fault.

There is always champagne, luxury travel, there is always silk and satin and caviar and the sorts of truffles that are placed in boxes one by one with silver tongs.

So, nobody is a loser, not really. And the women in my life know that.

Or at least they do until people around them start planting these stupid doubts in their heads.

“You know,” I say carefully to Emma, “your mother adores me. I make her happy. So, I don’t know why you are so keen for her to cut me out of her life. It makes no sense. I can only assume, Emma, that you are jealous of me somehow. Jealous of the bond I have with your mother.”

The minute the words are out, I regret them. I have just given her the key to the door.

I see her face contort. “Are you serious? You think I’m jealous of you?

Jonathan—I am nearly thirty years old. I left home ten years ago.

I have a husband and a home and a job and a baby on the way.

All I want in the whole world is for my mother to have a bond with a man.

All I want is to go to bed at night knowing that my mother is safe and loved.

That I don’t need to worry about her. But all I have done, Jonathan, for the last four years is worry about her.

I worry about her from the minute I wake up till the minute I go to sleep.

I worry about her finances, her mental health, her physical health.

I think you’re a psychopath, Jonathan, I actually do. I’m sorry, but that’s just the truth.”

Her cheeks are flushed and I can tell her body is pumping volumes of industrial-strength adrenaline through her system and that, I assume, of her unborn child. I can’t imagine that it’s very good for either of them.

I arrange my face into the softest shape I can make it into and say, “Emma, you know I have always loved you, from the minute I first met you. As if you were my own. You know that having never had children of my own, I always hoped I’d meet someone who was a mother, and it’s always made me sad that neither you nor your brother had any interest in having that kind of bond with me.

But I get it. I really do. I don’t trust men either.

You know about my father. You know the kind of man he was, how abusive he was, and I know that men can be awful, so I see why you want to protect your mother from me—well, not just me but any man.

But, Emma, honestly, you have to just trust me when I say I’m one of the good guys, seriously.

” I turn my hands palms up and make a small, sad sighing sound.

But she appears unmoved by my appeal. I see her face contort and her eyes flash.

“It was me,” she says triumphantly. “It was me who told the girl on the neighborhood app about you. I saw that footage and I messaged that woman, and I told her your name and your address. And I do not know how you got away with it, truly I don’t, because it was so obviously you.

And not only that, but it was so obviously the sort of thing that you would do.

I have waited all these years for my mum to finally wake up to you and your bullshit, and then she did.

Because she knows it was you as well as you do, whatever crap you told the police.

There is literally nothing now that is going to make her want to be with you. She’s over you, Jonathan. It’s done.”

The big mental fist in my head smashes into Emma’s unpretty face over and over and over as she talks.

In my mind’s eye, I see her face turn to pulp.

But my expression remains impassive. I sigh the small, sad sigh again and say, “I’m sorry it’s ended like this.

Truly. But you are wrong about the girl on the street, and you are wrong about me.

All I ever wanted was to be accepted by you.

All I ever wanted was this…” I gesture around the soulless new-build house that I have come to hate so much.

Her face is a picture of disdain. “Christ, Jonathan. You are such a bullshitter. Literally every word that comes out of your mouth is a lie.”

I simply smile, sadly, and head for the front door.

As I pass Emma at the threshold, she faces me; she is so close to me that her pregnant bump brushes slightly against my body and I shudder with revulsion.

Her face is inches from mine as she says, “It’s over, Jonathan.

OK? You’re not coming back. And, Jonathan, if anything bad ever happens to my mum, anything at all, I will be going straight to the police.

I won’t even wait one minute. Do you understand? ”

I hold her gaze as coolly as I can and then I nod, just once, before picking up the key for the Tesla by the front door and slowly leaving the house.