Inside are hundreds more emails, excruciating details of his more niche fetishes, the ones he has never divulged to me, his wife. Do I know this version of my husband at all? I blush at the thought of doing the things he wanted Leah to do to him.

Jesus—I swallow audibly at the final one on his list he had entitled “my dirty little secrets.” I want to vomit. She had replied with a single line: Might need a few Mai Tais for that ;-)

Mai Tais? I can almost taste the burn of rum at the back of my throat and the cloying sweetness of the grenadine on my tongue. It was the second time we’d visited that hotel and I’d been so excited to go back after our anniversary trip. It had been a disaster. I can picture the earnest-looking waiter assuring me this was what I’d drunk last time as he placed the orangey-red cocktail in front of me with a flourish. Chris at my elbow telling me I’d loved the Mai Tais before and not to make a scene.

Had Leah and Chris been laughing at me behind my back? Giggling together about how I couldn’t remember my previous visit to that place, taking the mickey as I worried I was losing my mind?

Or had she been part of it? Setting me up somehow?

Chapter Four

Leah has some kind of password manager thing set up on her laptop. It allows me to access every password just by using face ID. She is a fool—even I don’t use this kind of thing, it’s a security disaster—but I am thankful. Her bank accounts are a revelation. My sister is rich. Not just I-sold-an-exposé-and-bought-a-nice-house-and-can-live-fairly-comfortably rich. But proper-serious-piles-of-money rich. I already knew she’d paid cash for the house, and assumed similar for the cabin, but there are also two flats in Soho she rents for an eye-watering sum. I find a portfolio of shares carefully diversified to minimize risk exposure, plus a more volatile series of investments with small entrepreneur hubs that have enjoyed astronomical growth for the past two years. There are bonds and receipts for precious metals futures—there is a lot of gold with her name on it. And cash. Cash in savings accounts. Cash in current accounts. A hoard of foreign currencies sitting in accounts all over the place. I would estimate that her liquid assets are worth somewhere around five million pounds. Factor in her property and you could double that to get to her net worth.

She has been fiscally savvy and very lucky. She took the exposé money and used it to seed a series of other investments, really hammering that mantra of “it takes money to make money.” Such a contrast to my own finances and the huge mortgage on the home Chris and I bought that makes me sweat just thinking about it. A millstone around the neck of our marriage. Would I jump if it weren’t there to drag me down? I have ten thousand pounds in premium bonds, the sole trophy of my ten-year career and a rather damning indictment given that up until a few years ago I was working as a chartered accountant. Every year I would earn more, and every year I would fail to add more than a few hundred pounds to my meager savings. Funny how your expenditure always grows to match your income and how you never feel any richer. The extra income spent on more expensive clothes needed to ensure you look the part and that in turn cost more to maintain; that need dry-cleaning or a special little comb for the bobbles. Or more money spent on food that is quicker and easier to cook, but that still must be balanced because you can’t afford not to look the part, remember. And then the cost of haircuts, nail appointments. All of it, all the time. Chris is even worse; money runs through his fingers like water; as soon as he gets a bonus he’s off buying stupid shit we don’t need.