Jenny caught a breath and for a second I thought she was going to snap at me again, but then her spine sagged and she slumped back against the pillows.

She said quietly, “No. By then I knew. I knew there was nothing there. If there had been, how come I never heard anything? All those cameras, how come we never once saw anything? I tried to tell myself it could still maybe be real, but I knew. But by then it was too late. Our house bashed to bits, me and Pat hardly talking any more; I couldn’t remember the last time we’d even kissed, like properly kissed. The kids keyed up all the time, hyper, even if they didn’t understand why.”

Her head moved from side to side, blindly. “I knew I should do something, stop the whole thing—I’m not thick, I’m not insane; I did know that, by that stage. But I didn’t know what to do. There’s no self-help book for this; there’s no internet group. They didn’t tell us what to do about this on our marriage guidance course.”

I said, “You didn’t consider talking to anyone?”

That flash of steel. “No. No way. Are you joking?”

“It was a difficult situation. A lot of people might have felt that talking to someone would help.”

“Talking to who?”

“Your sister, maybe.”

“Fiona …” A wry twist of Jenny’s mouth. “Um, I don’t think so. I love Fi, but like I said before, there’s stuff she just doesn’t get. And anyway, she was always … I mean, sisters get jealous. Fi always felt like I had things easy; like stuff just fell into my lap, while she was working her arse off for everything. If I’d said something to her, part of her would’ve had to be like, Ha-ha, now you know how it feels. She wouldn’t’ve said it, but I’d’ve known. How would that have helped anything?”

“What about friends?”

“I don’t have those kind of friends, not any more. And, like, what would I say? Hi, Pat’s hallucinating some animal that lives in our walls, I think he’s going loop-the-loop? Yeah, right. I’m not stupid. Once you tell one person, it gets out. I told you, no way was I going to have people laughing at us—or, even worse, feeling sorry for us.” The thought had her chin out, ready for a fight. “I kept thinking about this girl Shona, we used to hang out when we were kids—she’s turned into a total bitch now. We’re not in touch any more, but if she’d heard about this, she’d have been on the phone to me like a shot. Whenever I got tempted to say something to Fi or whoever, that’s what I’d hear: Shona. Jenny! Hi! Oh my God, I heard Pat’s totally lost it, like he’s seeing pink elephants on the ceiling? Everyone’s just like, wow, who would’ve guessed? I remember we all thought you guys were the perfect couple, Mr. and Mrs. Boring, happy ever after … Like, how wrong were we? Gotta go, time for my hot stone massage, just had to say sooo sorry it all went tits-up for you! Byeee!”