I married a man in prison for money. Three years later his conviction was overturned — and eight days after he came home he put a black box on the kitchen table and said, “Now it’s my turn.”

Including the first four, which I wrote because I was being paid to and which are the worst things I have ever put on paper.

He took the notebook out first and put it on the table between us and did not open it.

It is a ledger.

His handwriting. In pencil, in ruled columns he had drawn himself with a straight edge, running from the January of 2019 to the October of 2021.

Eleven terms, down the page.

Four names down the left-hand side. Four children.

And one of those four names is Theo Kovac.

I want to set out exactly what that ledger is.

Because the version that went round this town afterward is wrong, and it is wrong in both directions, and I have had to correct four people to their faces about it.

The Marrowfield Trust ran an after-school program.

Four afternoons a week out of a hall on Belgrave Road, from 2011. Homework at one end, a hot meal at half past four, and an adult in the room until six o’clock.