I want to be honest about how that felt, because it was not the clean triumph I’d imagined in the first cold hours.

There is a moment, when you hand a case like that to the authorities, where you feel the thing leave your hands — and it is a relief and a grief at the same time.

A relief, because I was so tired of being the only one who knew, of carrying the whole weight of the truth alone in hotel rooms at three in the morning.

And a grief, because handing it over meant admitting that the man I had married was now, officially and on paper, a defendant — that eleven years of my life would be summarized in a charging document written by a stranger.

The financial-crimes investigator who took my statement was a plain, methodical man who had clearly heard a hundred versions of this story, and he did not perform sympathy, which I found I preferred.

He asked precise questions.