‘Oh really? What did she say today?’ I asked as, despite my very best intentions, my mind started to wander to the contents of my handbag underneath the table.

On the drive to the restaurant, I had deliberated if there was any safer place I could stash the blade after we got home.

But after much internal back and forth, I had realised that the safest place was still deep at the bottom of the bag.

I had no excuse or reasoning planned if someone spotted it, but Gareth had never taken the initiative to look through my bag in seven-odd years, so I was hoping the trend would continue.

I couldn’t help but wonder whether, after three cycles of 70-degree intensive washes in the dishwasher and multiple baths in boiling hot water, all the traces of O’Neill’s optical and brain matter had been removed from the blade, or if there was still some of him lurking onto the metal.

I forced myself to tune back in.

‘…I mean, she wasn’t a massive fan of me taking the lead on it at first, but I asked her politely, stated my case, and feel like I may have stood up for myself a little bit, maybe. Then she just told me to go for it.’

‘That’s amazing, my love, just what we like to hear,’ I said, somewhat muffled, as my mouth was stuffed with bread.

Gareth, though remarkably good at his job, had always been a little bit of a people pleaser when it came to his colleagues.

It was always nice to hear stories about him sticking up for himself a little more, especially against people like Vivian.

Just a shame it wasn’t Isla – or his friend Cecilia, or Cis, as she preferred to be called.

I was not Cecilia’s biggest fan, nor was she mine.

There had always been something scheming about her that I’d never quite trusted.

Like there was always something ticking away in her brain.

‘What case is it, though? Anything interesting?’ I said, switching my tone to a voice-level whisper.

‘Oh, just a missing persons case, nothing particularly exciting,’ Gareth said as his doppelganger returned with a bottle of wine.

A cold shiver gently tingled up my spine.

A missing person case? Could it be O’Neill?

No, surely not. If Gareth was investigating the disappearance of our next-door neighbour, he would definitely have mentioned it to me.

This was the man who could never resist telling me what my birthday gift was each year.

I took another deep breath, letting the thought slip from my mind as quickly as it had entered.

‘And you? How was your day today? Anything thrilling happen at social services?’ Gareth asked.

‘Not really. But I did get those super-strong bin bags you like that don’t leak on my lunch break, though. Found a Morrisons that sells them, so small victories, right?’

‘Oh, now that is exciting. We can toast to that,’ Gareth said, as the waiter finished off pouring our glasses. ‘Did you speak to Angus today?’

‘No, not today. I think he’s having one of his bad mental health days, so he let me know he was all right, but nothing more than that.’

I obviously couldn’t delve into the lengthy diatribes Angus had been subjecting me to every time I’d called over the past few days.

All he’d done was rant to me about how foolish it had been for me to kill O’Neill, and state that – despite having scarcely left his flat for the past decade or so – he wouldn’t help me clean up the mess.

Because of course, he was just so helpful last time.

‘Ah, that makes sense. He’s still taking his meds though, right?’

‘To the best of my knowledge, he is. I think he has a lifelong prescription for paroxetine.’ I grabbed my glass and took a sip of wine, realising I really needed to send Angus another message before the end of the day to ask him if he was still taking his meds.

‘And anything from Beryl today?’

‘I mean, today she was talking about how she can already feel her boobs getting bigger.’

‘What?’ Gareth exclaimed, his mouth agape, aghast.

‘No, no, not neighbour Beryl, colleague Beryl – the one who’s just got pregnant.’

‘Oh, I see,’ Gareth said, shaking his head and giving a quick, relieved wheeze. He composed himself and then grinned at me, a huge full-tooth smile that I’d always loved, but which he never liked to show in photos, for some reason. ‘I had so many questions.’

‘God, I’m going to have to say goodbye to so many bras when we get there,’ I moaned, taking another swig of wine, realising that I had unconsciously drunk my entire glass.

‘Don’t say the Lord’s name in vain,’ Gareth said with a smirk. ‘But what about neighbour Beryl? Did you speak to her today? She still looking into our window every chance she gets?’

It was true; Beryl was an exceptionally nosy neighbour.

Gareth was convinced she had been spying on us.

With her house being opposite us and situated higher on the street’s incline, he swore he’d seen her peering down into our kitchen on more than one occasion.

The fact that she could lip-read due to her hearing loss didn’t ease Gareth’s paranoia either.

‘Not to my knowledge,’ I said. ‘I’m still walking that dog though, which is a joy. Though Beryl says that she’s feeling better now, so hopefully it won’t be too much more of me having to walk Mussolini reincarnate.’

I could see Gareth thinking about something as he scrunched his face up, wondering if he should say it.

‘What about grumpy, creepy neighbour? Have you seen him recently?’

I wasn’t quite sure why he had hesitated. He had probably clocked on to my revulsion towards O’Neill. No matter how much I’d tried to hide and suppress it, unfortunately, it seemed like my husband knew me too well.

‘No, not since I helped him with his shopping. When was it? Saturday, I think, but haven’t seen him since. Saw the light was on in his bathroom today.’

Gareth seemed satisfied by that answer, nodding as he reached across the table to grab another piece of the rapidly dwindling pile of bread.

‘I do feel we have joined a nice little community here, which is good. You feeling a bit better about the house now? A bit more at home?’ Gareth asked, taking a redundant glance at the menu that he had definitely already studied online.

‘I do. It’s just…moving is just strange, isn’t it?

You go from knowing about every nook and cranny in your old place to suddenly being somewhere completely new.

Like, who’s in our old apartment now? Is it a younger, sexier couple than us, who get up to wild stuff and have loads of parties and have shower sex? ’

‘Have you been thinking about this a lot, Fran?’ Gareth asked with a comforting chuckle, reaching his hand across the table to clench mine.

‘No, I haven’t, because shower sex is actually really hard and wet and cramped and it takes a lot of awkward positioning, but I do think it’s a bit bad that we haven’t done it in our new place yet.’

‘Do you want to have shower sex?’ Gareth asked, furrowing his brow.

‘Yes, I do want to. And I realise it’s been a while since we’ve had any sex other than normal, standard sex, but I want to,’ I said, my lips curving into a precocious pout as I laid out my expectations.

Gareth nodded, as if receiving a directive from his commanding officer. ‘Very well, shower sex tonight,’ he proclaimed, giving the table a gentle thump with his fist.

The waiter came over to take our orders and already I knew exactly what Gareth was going to get.

He ordered the ribeye steak, and I could see his lips mouthing my words as I asked for the cured trout.

The waiter didn’t carry a notebook. When I’d once asked Gareth why he thought waiters did that, he’d given a very intuitive, detective-style response.

‘That way, there’s no evidence that they got your order wrong. ’

Just as Gareth asked for some tap water for the table, I watched the waiter’s eyes suddenly shift to my handbag beneath the table.

I noticed a small glint of light had flickered and landed onto his face, reflecting the bright restaurant lights directly above us.

The clasp must have come undone and the bag had sagged open.

My heart clambered a little further up my chest. Had he seen the knife?

As the waiter’s eyes flicked upwards to mine, I just smiled as warmly as I could in response.

It took him a moment, but after an excruciatingly long beat, he politely nodded and walked away.

‘Hey, Gareth,’ I began as I tried to quietly breathe yet another inconspicuous sigh of relief, ‘what will we do if I, or if we, can’t have children?’

Gareth exhaled, pushing his hands across his knees. He had thought about this too. I knew he had, but didn’t every couple at some point? I watched him begin to say his prepared answer that he must have run through his head a dozen times.

‘There are so many options, you know that, right?’

‘That’s the bullshit answer, you know that, right?’ I snapped at him, with probably a lot more bitterness than was needed. Gareth just nodded silently, taking it on the chin. After seven years together, he knew how to deal with my small fits of anger.

‘What scares you about not being able to have children?’ Gareth asked calmly. ‘It’s not set, not every couple needs to have children; it doesn’t make them any more or any less of a family. Mum and Dad weren’t even sure about having me before I blessed their lives unexpectedly.’

‘I know, and I agree, but it’s always been the plan, hasn’t it? You, me, two boys, two girls, two dogs, and Mep, a picture of domestic bliss.’

‘Yeah, and if that’s what you – we – still really want, let’s keep trying.

We can try IVF or surrogacy, or we can even adopt.

And if we don’t want to do that, maybe it’s just not meant to happen, and that’s okay.

That’s just what life has in store for us.

Maybe we’d hate having kids. Maybe they’d be little arseholes. ’

‘But you’ve always wanted kids,’ I said, wondering if part of me was testing him to make sure he wasn’t just saying this to make me feel better about not being pregnant yet.

‘I mean, don’t get me wrong: being a dad scares the shit out of me. But I want a life with you, Fran, kids or no kids.’

I fake-retched, and Gareth’s sincere stoicism cracked into a genuine chuckle.

I knew Gareth’s feelings about becoming a dad were more complex since his own father had passed away last year, but I couldn’t help but melt a little into a smile as he reached out across the table and interlocked his fingers with mine again.

‘I love you, my beautiful girl,’ he said.

I killed O’Neill. I killed our neighbour next door. You have to believe me when I tell you that he deserved everything that I did to him. But I am terrified I am going to get caught, go to prison for the rest of my life, and lose you and our idea of our perfect life and our perfect family.

I wanted to say that all to Gareth. I wanted to tell him everything, to share every nervous thought in my brain with him.

But I knew Gareth wouldn’t be up for the old Bonnie and Clyde routine.

And I wouldn’t make him choose between his dutiful police heart and me.

Partly because I wasn’t certain what he would choose.

‘I just wish my dad and your parents were around to see what a great mum you’ll be,’ Gareth said lovingly.

I tried to smile. It was sweet of him to say, but I wanted to promptly change the subject from my parents.

‘Yeah. Me too,’ I said. I remembered that a lack of eye contact was a common trait of liars or those who felt uneasy, so I attempted to gaze longingly into my husband’s eyes as he softly stroked my hand.

‘I need a wee,’ he said lovingly.

‘Ew, gross.’ I snatched my hand away. Gareth got up, took his jacket off, and had just begun walking to the bathroom when a random woman on another table outstretched her arm to him and he turned to speak with her. I saw his face drop into a grimace, and I could just about hear his exasperated cry.

‘I don’t work here!’

As Gareth made a beeline for the loos, my gaze suddenly locked onto the waiter who had served us.

He was at the far side of the restaurant, quietly chatting to a man who I guessed was the manager, occasionally glancing in my direction.

I pretended not to notice, instead grabbing the last piece of bread in the basket, tearing it off, and dropping it into my mouth.

As discreetly as possible, I glanced down at my handbag again, checking that the blade was still hidden.

Even though the bag had been open I thought it was unlikely he could have seen it – the black handle camouflaged nicely against the dark faux leather of my handbag – but what if he had spotted it?

What if they wanted to check my bag? Trying to make my facade seem as casual and calm as possible, I snatched up my bag and strolled casually to the loo, quickly analysing my options for hiding the knife.

The sanitary bin? No, that wouldn’t work; it would be extremely visible against the transparent liner when someone came to remove it.

The loo itself? No, surely it would just get clogged up there when I tried to flush.

The Nesmuk knife was many things, flushable it was not.

I pushed through the heavy toilet door, realising I yet again needed some sort of last-minute plan.

My eyes flicked around, searching for a vent or duct where I could stash the knife.

Just as I was observing a small parting that lay in the ceiling tiles, the door behind me began to squeak open, so I hastily slipped into one of the cubicles and jammed the lock across the door.

Out of ideas, I quietly lifted up the cistern lid and placed the knife next to the valve.

Jabbing my finger into the flush, I watched as the knife rose with the water level before settling back down between the gasket and the valve with an almost inaudible metallic chime.

Carefully, I placed the lid back, the heavy, hollow clunk of porcelain reverberating around the cubicle.

I pulled back the lock and emerged from the cubicle, smiling at the lady at the sink as I began to wash my hands, fully aware that she had no idea she was washing her hands next to a murderer who had just hidden their weapon of choice.

But as I dried my hands, it dawned on me that perhaps my actions were maybe a stroke of hidden genius.

After all, when was the last time anyone had checked their toilet cistern?