He sounds panicky, his breath short. His voice comes to me in snatches. “I can’t go home,” he says. “There are cameras everywhere.”

“Scott?”

“I know this is . . . this is really weird, but I just need to go somewhere, somewhere they won’t be waiting for me. I can’t go to my mother’s, my friends’. I’m just . . . driving around. I’ve been driving around since I left the police station . . .” There’s a catch in his voice. “I just need an hour or two. To sit, to think. Without them, without the police, without people asking me fucking questions. I’m sorry, but could I come to your house?”

I say yes, of course. Not just because he sounds panicked, desperate, but because I want to see him. I want to help him. I give him the address and he says he’ll be here in fifteen minutes.

The doorbell rings ten minutes later: short, sharp, urgent bursts.

“I’m sorry to do this,” he says as I open the front door. “I didn’t know where to go.” He has a hunted look to him: he’s shaken, pale, his skin slick with sweat.

“It’s all right,” I say, stepping aside to allow him to pass me. I show him into the living room, tell him to sit down. I fetch him a glass of water from the kitchen. He drinks it, almost in one gulp, then sits, bent over, forearms on his knees, head hanging down.

I hover, unsure whether to speak or to hold my tongue. I fetch his glass and refill it, saying nothing. Eventually, he starts to speak.

“You think the worst has happened,” he says quietly. “I mean, you would think that, wouldn’t you?” He looks up at me. “My wife is dead, and the police think that I killed her. What could be worse than that?”

He’s talking about the news, about the things they’re saying about her. This tabloid story, supposedly leaked by someone in the police, about Megan’s involvement in the death of a child. Murky, speculative stuff, a smear campaign on a dead woman. It’s despicable.

“It isn’t true, though,” I say to him. “It can’t be.”

His expression is blank, uncomprehending. “Detective Riley told me this morning,” he says. He coughs, clears his throat. “The news I always wanted to hear. You can’t imagine,” he goes on, his voice barely more than a whisper, “how I’ve longed for it. I used to daydream about it, imagine how she’d look, how she’d smile at me, shy and knowing, how she’d take my hand and press it to her lips . . .” He’s lost, he’s dreaming, I have no idea what he’s talking about. “Today,” he says, “today I got the news that Megan was pregnant.”

He starts to cry, and I am choking, too, crying for an infant who never existed, the child of a woman I never knew. But the horror of it is almost too much to bear. I cannot understand how Scott is still breathing. It should have killed him, should have sucked the life right out of him. Somehow, though, he is still here.

I can’t speak, can’t move. The living room is hot, airless despite the open windows. I can hear noises from the street below: a police siren, young girls shouting and laughing, bass booming from a passing car. Normal life. But in here, the world is ending. For Scott, the world is ending, and I can’t speak. I stand there, mute, helpless, useless.

Until I hear footfalls on the steps outside, the familiar jangle of Cathy fishing around in her huge handbag for her house keys. It jolts me to life. I have to do something: I grab Scott’s hand and he looks up at me, alarmed.

“Come with me,” I say, pulling him to his feet. He lets me drag him into the hallway and up the stairs before Cathy unlocks the door. I close the bedroom door behind us.

“My flatmate,” I say by way of explanation. “She’d . . . she might ask questions. I know that’s not what you want at the moment.”

He nods. He looks around my tiny room, taking in the unmade bed, the clothes, both clean and dirty, piled on my desk chair, the blank walls, the cheap furniture. I am embarrassed. This is my life: messy, shabby, small. Unenviable. As I’m thinking this, I think how ridiculous I am to imagine that Scott could possibly care about the state of my life at this moment.

I motion for him to sit down on the bed. He obeys, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. He breathes out heavily.

“Can I get you something?” I ask him.

“A beer?”

“I don’t keep alcohol in the house,” I say, and I can feel myself going red as I say it. Scott doesn’t notice, though, he doesn’t even look up. “I can make you a cup of tea?” He nods again. “Lie down,” I say. “Rest.” He does as he’s told, kicking off his shoes and lying back on the bed, docile as a sick child.

Downstairs, while I boil the kettle I make small talk with Cathy, listening to her going on about the new place in Northcote she’s discovered for lunch (“really good salads”) and how annoying the new woman at work is. I smile and nod, but I’m only half hearing her. My body is braced: I’m listening out for him, for creaks or footsteps. It feels unreal to have him here, in my bed, upstairs. It makes me dizzy to think about it, as though I’m dreaming.

Cathy stops talking eventually and looks at me, her brow furrowed. “Are you all right?” she asks. “You look . . . kind of out of it.”

“I’m just a bit tired,” I tell her. “I’m not feeling very well. I think I’ll go to bed.”

She gives me a look. She knows I’ve not been drinking (she can always tell), but she probably assumes I’m about to start. I don’t care, I can’t think about it now; I pick up the cup of tea for Scott and tell her I’ll see her in the morning.

I stop outside my bedroom door and listen. It’s quiet. Carefully, I twist the doorknob and push the door open. He’s lying there, in exactly the same position I left him, his hands at his sides, his eyes shut. I can hear his breathing, soft and ragged. His bulk takes up half the bed, but I’m tempted to lie down in the space next to him, to put my arm across his chest, to comfort him. Instead, I give a little cough and hold out the cup of tea.

He sits up. “Thank you,” he says gruffly, taking the mug from me. “Thank you for . . . giving me sanctuary. It’s been . . . I can’t describe how it’s been, since that story came out.”

“The one about what happened years ago?”

“Yeah, that one.”

How the tabloids got hold of that story is hotly disputed. The speculation has been rife, fingers pointed at the police, at Kamal Abdic, at Scott.

“It’s a lie,” I say to him. “Isn’t it?”

“Of course it is, but it gives someone a motive, doesn’t it? That’s what they’re saying: Megan killed her baby, which would give someone—the father of the child, presumably—a motive to kill her. Years and years later.”

“It’s ridiculous.”

“But you know what everyone’s saying. That I made this story up, not just to make her look like a bad person, but to shift suspicion away from me, onto some unknown person. Some guy from her past that no one even knows about.”

I sit down next to him on the bed. Our thighs almost touch.

“What are the police saying about it?”

He shrugs. “Nothing really. They asked me what I knew about it. Did I know she’d had a child before? Did I know what happened? Did I know who the father was? I said no, it was all bullshit, she’d never been pregnant . . .” His voice catches again. He stops, takes a sip of the tea. “I asked them where the story came from, how it made it into the newspapers. They said they couldn’t tell me. It’s from him, I assume. Abdic.” He gives a long, shuddering sigh. “I don’t understand why. I don’t understand why he would say things like that about her. I don’t know what he’s trying to do. He’s obviously fucking disturbed.”

I think of the man I met the other day: the calm demeanour, the soft voice, the warmth in the eyes. As far from disturbed as it’s possible to get. That smile, though. “It’s outrageous that this has been printed. There should be rules . . .”

“Can’t libel the dead,” he says. He falls silent for a moment, then says, “They’ve assured me that they won’t release the information about this . . . about her pregnancy. Not yet. Perhaps not at all. But certainly not until they know for sure.”