And in my head, thoughts go round and round and round.

I feel like I’m suffocating.

When did this house become so bloody small? When did my life become so boring? Is this really what I wanted? I can’t remember. All I know is that a few months ago I was feeling better, and now I can’t think and I can’t sleep and I can’t draw and the urge to run is becoming overwhelming. At night when I lie awake I can hear it, quiet but unrelenting, undeniable: a whisper in my head, Slip away. When I close my eyes, my head is filled with images of past and future lives, the things I dreamed I wanted, the things I had and threw away. I can’t get comfortable, because every way I turn I run into dead ends: the closed gallery, the houses on this road, the stifling attentions of the tedious Pilates women, the track at the end of the garden with its trains, always taking someone else to somewhere else, reminding me over and over and over, a dozen times a day, that I’m staying put.

I feel as though I’m going mad.

And yet just a few months ago, I was feeling better, I was getting better. I was fine. I was sleeping. I didn’t live in fear of the nightmares. I could breathe. Yes, I still wanted to run away. Sometimes. But not every day.

Talking to Kamal helped me, there’s no denying that. I liked it. I liked him. He made me happier. And now all that feels so unfinished—I never got to the crux of it. That’s my fault, of course, because I behaved stupidly, like a child, because I didn’t like feeling rejected. I need to learn to lose a little better. I’m embarrassed now, ashamed. My face goes hot at the thought of it. I don’t want that to be his final impression of me. I want him to see me again, to see me better. And I do feel that if I went to him, he would help. He’s like that.

I need to get to the end of the story. I need to tell someone, just once. Say the words out loud. If it doesn’t come out of me, it’ll eat me up. The hole inside me, the one they left, it’ll just get bigger and bigger until it consumes me.

I’m going to have to swallow my pride and my shame and go to him. He’s going to have to listen. I’ll make him.

EVENING

Scott thinks I’m at the cinema with Tara. I’ve been outside Kamal’s flat for fifteen minutes, psyching myself up to knock on the door. I’m so afraid of the way he’s going to look at me, after last time. I have to show him that I’m sorry, so I’ve dressed the part: plain and simple, jeans and T-shirt, hardly any makeup. This is not about seduction, he has to see that.

I can feel my heart starting to race as I step up to his front door and press the bell. No one comes. The lights are on, but no one comes. Perhaps he has seen me outside, lurking; perhaps he’s upstairs, just hoping that if he ignores me I’ll go away. I won’t. He doesn’t know how determined I can be. Once I’ve made my mind up, I’m a force to be reckoned with.

I ring again, and then a third time, and finally I hear footsteps on the stairs and the door opens. He’s wearing tracksuit bottoms and a white T-shirt. He’s barefoot, wet-haired, his face flushed.

“Megan.” Surprised, but not angry, which is a good start. “Are you all right? Is everything all right?”

“I’m sorry,” I say, and he steps back to let me in. I feel a rush of gratitude so strong, it feels almost like love.

He shows me into the kitchen. It’s a mess: washing up piled on the counter and in the sink, empty takeaway cartons spilling out of the bin. I wonder if he’s depressed. I stand in the doorway; he leans against the counter opposite me, his arms folded across his chest.

“What can I do for you?” he asks. His face is arranged into a perfectly neutral expression, his therapist face. It makes me want to pinch him, just to make him smile.

“I have to tell you . . .” I start, and then I stop because I can’t just plunge straight into it, I need a preamble. So I change tack. “I wanted to apologize,” I say, “for what happened. Last time.”

“That’s OK,” he says. “Don’t worry about that. If you need to talk to someone, I can refer you to someone else, but I can’t—”

“Please, Kamal.”

“Megan, I can’t counsel you any longer.”

“I know. I know that. But I can’t start over with someone else. I can’t. We got so far. We were so close. I just have to tell you. Just once. And then I’ll be gone, I promise. I won’t ever bother you again.”

He cocks his head to one side. He doesn’t believe me, I can tell. He thinks that if he lets me back in now, he’ll never be rid of me.

“Hear me out, please. This isn’t going to go on forever, I just need someone to listen.”

“Your husband?” he asks, and I shake my head.

“I can’t—I can’t tell him. Not after all this time. He wouldn’t . . . He wouldn’t be able to see me as me any longer. I’d be someone else to him. He wouldn’t know how to forgive me. Please, Kamal. If I don’t spit out the poison, I feel like I’ll never sleep. As a friend, not a therapist, please listen.”

His shoulders drop a little as he turns away, and I think it’s over. My heart sinks. Then he opens a cupboard and pulls out two tumblers.

“As a friend, then. Would you like some wine?”

He shows me into the living room. Dimly lit by standing lamps, it has the same air of domestic neglect as the kitchen. We sit down on opposite sides of a glass table piled high with papers, magazines and takeaway menus. My hands are locked around my glass. I take a sip. It’s red but cold, dusty. I swallow, take another sip. He’s waiting for me to start, but it’s hard, harder than I thought it was going to be. I’ve kept this secret for so long—a decade, more than a third of my life. It’s not that easy, letting go of it. I just know that I have to start talking. If I don’t do it now, I might never have the courage to say the words out loud, I might lose them altogether, they might stick in my throat and choke me in my sleep.

“After I left Ipswich, I moved in with Mac, into his cottage outside Holkham at the end of the lane. I told you that, didn’t I? It was very isolated, a couple of miles to the nearest neighbour, a couple more to the nearest shops. At the beginning, we had lots of parties, there were always a few people crashed out in the living room or sleeping in the hammock outside in the summer. But we got tired of that, and Mac fell out with everyone eventually, so people stopped coming, and it was the two of us. Days used to go by and we wouldn’t see anyone. We’d do our grocery shopping at the petrol station. It’s odd, thinking back on it, but I needed it then, after everything—after Ipswich and all those men, all the things I did. I liked it, just Mac and me and the old railway tracks and the grass and the dunes and the restless grey sea.”

Kamal tilts his head to one side, gives me half a smile. I feel my insides flip. “It sounds nice. But do you think you are romanticizing? ‘The restless grey sea’?”

“Never mind that,” I say, waving him away. “And no, in any case. Have you been to north Norfolk? It’s not the Adriatic. It is restless and relentlessly grey.”

He holds his hands up, smiling. “OK.”

I feel instantly better, the tension leaching out of my neck and shoulders. I take another sip of the wine; it tastes less bitter now.

“I was happy with Mac. I know it doesn’t sound like the sort of place I’d like, the sort of life I’d like, but then, after Ben’s death and everything that came after, it was. Mac saved me. He took me in, he loved me, he kept me safe. And he wasn’t boring. And to be perfectly honest, we were taking a lot of drugs, and it’s difficult to get bored when you’re off your face all the time. I was happy. I was really happy.”

Kamal nods. “I understand, although I’m not sure that sounds like a very real kind of happiness,” he says. “Not the sort of happiness that can endure, that can sustain you.”