Lee barely spoke to me all the way home.

He’d stopped and bought a bag of chips from the takeaway in Prospect Street. They were sitting unopened on my dining table, the smell of them making my mouth water, despite the fact that I’d entirely lost my appetite. We were on my sofa, in the dark. He’d sat down and pulled me onto his lap. I was rigid and frowning like a petulant child. I couldn’t even remember what exactly it was I was so angry about any more.

‘We need to talk about this,’ he said gently. He had his arms around me, his face into my neck.

‘We should have talked about it a long time ago.’

‘You’re right. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry for all that crap tonight.’

‘Who was he? The man with the bag?’

‘He’s one of our targets. I’ve been following him for weeks. I had no idea he was using that pub as a meeting venue, obviously, otherwise I’d never have taken you there.’

‘So you’re a police officer?’

He nodded.

‘Why couldn’t you just have told me that before?’

There was a pause. Despite myself I was starting to soften. He was playing with my hand, threading his fingers through mine, bringing my hand up to his mouth so he could kiss the tips of my fingers. ‘I wasn’t expecting this to happen,’ he said. ‘I don’t do this. I don’t fall for women. I don’t spend long enough with anyone to have to tell them anything. It’s not an easy job to talk about, you know. I’m working undercover a lot of the time. It’s easier to do that sort of thing on your own.’

‘It looks dangerous,’ I said.

‘It probably looked worse than it was. I’m used to it.’

‘That’s what you were doing that first night, the night you came here covered in blood? I thought you’d been in a fight.’

‘Yes. That one wasn’t quite so straightforward. But that sort of thing doesn’t happen often. Most of the time I’m just sitting in a car waiting for something to happen, or having briefings in some stuffy room with no windows, or catching up on three hundred emails.’ He moved then, reaching behind his back. ‘I’m sitting on some kind of brick here – what is this thing?’

It was my organiser. I’d thrown it on the sofa with my bag when we’d come in.

I disentangled myself and got up. ‘I’ll get the chips,’ I said. ‘Do you want anything with them? Or a drink?’

‘No,’ I heard him say.

I put the kettle on. If there was something I needed right now it was a cup of tea.

‘Mind if I have a look?’ he called.

I brought the mugs of tea through a few minutes later and he’d turned the lights on. My organiser was open in his lap and he was turning the pages.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I was curious. Who are all these people?’

The back of my organiser was full of business cards in a clear wallet. ‘Just people I’ve met at conferences, things like that,’ I said. ‘You shouldn’t be looking in there.’

‘Why not?’ he asked, but he closed it and handed it back to me.

‘I’m a personnel manager, Lee. There’s stuff in there about members of staff. Disciplinary meetings, things like that.’

He grinned.

‘Okay. Are those chips still hot? I’m starving.’