Stride listened to the monotone in her voice and didn’t like it. ‘You make this confrontation sound pretty bloodless, Dr. Snow. I find that hard to believe. I would have expected a much more volatile argument with your husband over something like this. Particularly given what he thought about Nathan Skinner.’

‘I think Jay was saving his anger for Nathan,’ Janine replied.

Stride heard the emphasis in her voice. ‘You think Jay confronted Nathan about the affair?’

‘I have no idea, but Jay didn’t take humiliations lightly.’

It was a convenient story. Impossible to prove. Easy to deny. It laid the groundwork for an explosive fight between two men who already hated each other. Jay found out about the affair. Nathan was in love with Janine and didn’t want to let her go. Situations like that had a way of ending with a man dead on the floor.

‘You said that you and Jay were struggling in your relationship,’ Stride reminded her. ‘Did you want a divorce?’

‘I don’t think that topic is part of this conversation—’ Gale began, but Janine reached over and put a hand on her attorney’s sleeve.

‘It’s all right, Archie. What’s the point in denying it? Yes, Jonathan, I wanted a divorce. Jay and I were a mistake from the beginning. It hurts to say that now, but it’s true. When we met, there was this electricity between us. I’ll be the first to acknowledge it was extremely physical. We got swept up in each other, and we got married before we came off the high. But we fell far and fast. The things that attracted us became the things we hated about each other. Jay was a person who wore his emotions on his sleeve. I’m not. He became more and more desperate to draw me out, to get a reaction.’

‘Sleeping with Nathan Skinner sounds like a reaction,’ Stride said.

‘I suppose you’re right.’

‘You also cut off Jay’s credit cards without telling him last July. That sounds like a reaction, too.’

‘Okay, yes, I was being a bitch.’

‘You turned the money back on not long after. Why?’

‘I decided it was childish. We were playing tit-for-tat games. That wasn’t a way to solve our problems. The way to resolve it was to end our relationship.’ She added quickly: ‘By divorce.’

‘Jay’s brother Clyde says Jay didn’t want a divorce.’

‘Originally, yes, that’s true,’ Janine acknowledged. ‘Jay enjoyed playing the game. Frankly, I think he liked making me miserable. But eventually, he got tired of all the fighting. He wanted out, too.’

‘If the two of you divorced, Jay would have gotten nothing. Wasn’t it in his interest to stay married to you?’