**Internal planning completed.

I let it ring twice.

Then I answered.

"Ruth." His voice was different than it had been with Marcus.

Tighter.

The warmth was still there but it was working harder now, the way a smile works harder when it's covering something.

"I'm glad you picked up.

I wasn't sure you would."

"Hello, Daniel," I said.

Frank was beside me.

I put the call on speaker and set the phone on the kitchen table between us.

I had a notepad open.

I wrote the time at the top: 9:04 pm.

"I think there's been a misunderstanding," Daniel said.

"A serious one.

And I think you're the person I should be talking to, because you're sensible and you know me and you know what Marcus is like when he gets an idea in his head."

"What idea is that?" I said.

"That I've done something wrong." A pause.

"Ruth, Nadia and I had a relationship.

It ended badly — these things do.

She was upset, I was upset.

There were some messages I'm not proud of.

But what she's describing — what she's apparently told some solicitor — that's not what happened.

She's rewriting history."

"Is she," I said.

"I've known Marcus since university.

Eleven years.

Does that count for nothing?"

"I've read the messages, Daniel," I said.

Silence.

"All three hundred and forty of them," I said.

"I read them the night she showed us.

I read the one where you described what her colleagues would think if they received certain photographs.

I read the one where you told her that if she married my son you'd find a way to end it.

I read the one you sent from your home address while we were on the beach."

Nothing from his end.

Not even breathing.

"I also spoke to Grace Alderton," I said.

"Who tells me you're not the first."

When he spoke again, the warmth was gone entirely.

"You have no idea what you're involved in," he said.

"This will damage Marcus.

It will damage your family.

If this goes further, if this becomes a public matter, the things that come out will not only be about me.

Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

"I understand perfectly," I said.

"You're threatening me."

"I'm warning you."

"You're threatening a sixty-three-year-old woman on behalf of yourself," I said.

"And I want you to know that I am writing down the time and the exact words of this conversation, and it will be with Grace Alderton by nine-fifteen tonight."

A long pause.

"Ruth—"

"Don't," I said.

"Don't use my name like we're still friends.

We are not friends.

We have not been friends since the night my future daughter-in-law sat on a beach and shook because a four-year-old accidentally showed me what you did to her.

You do not get to call me Ruth."

The line was quiet for a moment.

Then he said, very quietly, "She told me she still had feelings for me.

As recently as February."

"Then you'll be able to prove that," I said.

"In court."

He hung up.

Frank and I sat at the kitchen table.

The notepad was between us.

I had written everything down — every sentence, the pauses, the shift in his voice when the warmth ran out.

Frank put his hand over mine on the table.

"Nine-fifteen," he said quietly.