“What?” I ask with faux innocence. Can she see it on my face? What I have done? We’ve been friends for six years now. Could she tell?

“Megan. Louise. Hardcastle.” She enunciates every syllable carefully, dragging out my name. “Well, well, well.”

“What?” My voice sounds too high in my ears, shrill; my palms are sweating.

“You don’t have to tell me.” She leans in closer. “But I promise not to tell another living soul.” She holds up her right hand in the Brownie salute, three fingers pointing upward. Her eyes are large and round, expectant.

“What?” The whole “my heart was in my mouth” is such a cliché. But at that moment, with my friend searching my face, silently begging me to dish the juicy gossip I was obviously hiding, I could feel my pulse in my tongue.

“OK, OK.” She puts both palms up and sits back. “I won’t pry. Just give me one blink for yes and two for no. That he’s hot and funny and smart and makes you feel like a million dollars and is a gentleman, and all the other things you deserve?”

She is talking about Tom. It is not murder she sees etched into the lines of my face, but a post-coital glow. Shit, I hope Chris can’t see it too. A cold shiver runs through me, but I try to push it away. I don’t want to think what he’d do if he found out. Even if he did cheat first.

I blink once. Slowly, so she can be under no illusions. God, I want to tell her about him. But I can’t. You’re a thirty-four-year-old married woman, I tell myself. Not a teenager gossiping in the lunch queue.

She beams back and gives me a slow-motion wink before clinking her glass against mine. I realize that she mustn’t think much of my husband.

Then her eyes darken and she looks around her furtively. “Promise me you’ll be careful, Megs.” She clutches my left hand and grips it tightly. “Don’t let him find out.” There is something in her voice that makes the hair on the back of my neck bristle. I can’t quite think of the word for it.

I’ve never talked about him to Hannah properly, what he’s really like. I don’t know why not—she’s my closest friend. It just never felt like the kind of thing you shared, like articulating the concern might make it all real somehow. But even though she doesn’t know the truth, she’s never been a cheerleader of Chris’s. Which is pretty unusual, because generally the world loves him; he is lovely and charming and affable and self-deprecating. He will always make sure he maintains eye contact when he talks to you and is first to the bar for every round. He knows a little about everything, enough to engage you in conversation but not so much that he would show you up or make you feel small. I have always assumed it is just Hannah being Hannah. Never has a woman been so picky, so quick to discard a man because of a minor infraction. “Why settle?” she will say with a shrug of her shoulders every time she finishes with one guy and moves on to the next.