I strode into the lounge area and sat down on the armchair opposite him.

‘You look amazing, Jemma,’ he said.

‘Yes, well, I was out on a date when I got Tiff’s call.’

He looked pretty devastated. Good. ‘You’re seeing someone else?’

It was so tempting to keep it up, but I wasn’t a liar like him. I sighed. ‘No. I think you’ll find it’s you who’s seeing someone else, not me. Do you really think I could move on that quickly? This happens to be what I wore to work today and I was at the cinema with Leah just now.’

He nodded, a clear expression of relief on his face.

Silence.

I stared at him, an eyebrow raised slightly in question. I wasn’t going to make this easy for him.

He gulped. ‘How’s your mum? I was so sorry to hear about the Parkinson’s.’

‘Not good, but shit happens. And speaking of shit happening, why are you here?’ I sounded more confident than I felt. My stomach was in knots.

He visibly squirmed. ‘I’ve made a huge mistake.’

‘Just the one?’

‘No. Loads of them. I don’t know what I was thinking.’

‘Neither do I. I’m so tempted to kick you out of here, but the part of me that needs to know why you did what you did won’t let me. Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? You’re married. Tell me about that. The truth this time.’

He nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I’m married. Her name’s Fiona and we were mates at school.’

‘And? You need to give me a bit more than that. Not too detailed, though. I don’t want to hear the graphic stuff.’

‘I wouldn’t do that to you.’

‘Yeah, well, I thought you wouldn’t cheat on me but life’s full of surprises, isn’t it?’

He shrugged. ‘I guess so. So, Fi and I hung out at school. Just as friends. When she was eighteen, she moved in with this really rough bloke, Begsey, who didn’t believe that men and women could be friends and kept accusing me of trying it on with his woman. My girlfriend at the time was jealous of Fi too so we drifted apart to save our relationships. A couple of years later, I bumped into Fi. She’d lost weight, she had a black eye, and she looked awful. She told me she’d walked into a kitchen cupboard she’d left open, but I wasn’t buying it. She’d never been a good liar.’

‘Unlike you.’ I couldn’t help myself.

He stared at me for a moment then nodded. ‘I deserved that but I promise what I’m telling you tonight is the absolute truth.’

‘We’ll see. Go on…’