I got out of bed and walked to the en suite to freshen up, switching on the light. I was just pulling my dressing gown from the back of the door, when I heard him say my name. I turned and looked at him, there in the half-light. He’d rolled onto his side, facing me, his right arm slung over the covers.

‘I love you, Rachel,’ he said.

I would have answered him, but I couldn’t speak. The vivid red scratches on his right upper arm had caught my attention.

I walked into the bathroom and closed the door, stood with my back to it. I felt sick. Those scratches: three red-raw vivid lines from his shoulder down to his bicep looked like the kind of scratches fingernails might make.

I knew I hadn’t been responsible for them. There wasn’t a whiff of raw passion about what had just happened in our bed. I sat on the toilet, cold despite the heat in the room. Maybe it was ridiculous to feel a pull of betrayal in the pit of my stomach. In fact, I knew it was both ridiculous and hypocritical, but I felt it all the same. Those scratches, the way he’d been acting lately. Even the way he’d looked at me earlier. How he’d insisted on spending more and more time in Belfast – staying there during the week instead of doing the daily commute.

‘It makes more sense,’ he’d said. ‘I can work late and when I come home on Thursdays or Fridays, you and the girls’ll have me all to yourself all weekend.’

Except it had never quite worked out like that. I’d strayed; it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that he could have strayed, too. I sat there, wondering if he’d fall asleep if I waited long enough. Knowing the alternative now was either to go back out there and pretend everything was normal, or open a can of worms I wasn’t sure either of us wanted open.

I felt it like a punch to my stomach, the thought of him with another woman. The throes of passion so intense that she’d dig her nails into his flesh and mark him as hers.

What other logical explanation could there have been?

I felt something twist inside me. Something about the way he’d always looked at Clare. Something about the whispered conversations they’d had. Something from the pit of my stomach that had wondered if he really had been working late all those nights he said he was. If, indeed, he had been in Belfast. He could have been anywhere.

An echo from earlier:

‘The person who did this would have sustained some injuries during the attack. There’s evidence that Ms Taylor tried to defend herself …’

Saturday, 9 June

Chapter Fifteen

Elizabeth