I answer: Yep: will tell all tomorrow when you get home. Now go and have fun with the boys

I can see him now, with his stupid friends, the jock ones who take their wedding rings off for their boys’ nights. He used to promise me he wasn’t like that. And I, like the good wife I was, would kiss him and tell him that of course I knew that, and I didn’t mind if he went to a strip club. I have genuinely never minded if he went to a strip club; the girls aren’t actually interested in the guys that come barging through the club doors. I do mind that he’s been fucking Leah. And I mind a whole lot more that it’s been going on so long, and that he messages her more than he messages me, and it was obviously not just a sex thing. Leah never wanted to just steal my stuff for a little while. She wanted to own it, control it, dominate it. Then she would make sure to destroy it so I could never have it again.

Chapter Nine

Chris finally makes it back from his weekend away at six on Sunday evening. The window for a roast dinner in the fabulous pub on the riverfront closed three hours ago and I’m pissed off at him. I had spent all morning picturing the look on his face when I told him that Leah had called me and we might meet up this week. That she had told me there was something I should know. How enigmatic, I would say to him, how intriguing. All the while watching him squirm and availing myself of slow-cooked lamb and homemade Yorkshire puddings.

In the end, I ate cheese from the back of the fridge melted on to freezer-burned toast and waited.

He is practically green when he stumbles through the door. Layering day drinking on to a hangover when you’re almost forty is not a good idea. He falls over the little case I have already packed for my return to London and swears at me.

“Guess I’m not going to get to spend time with my wife, then,” he says as he rubs his bruised shin.

“I waited all day, Chris. You said you’d be back for lunch.”

“Do you always have to be such a nag?”

“I’m not nagging, Chris.” I sound tired and resigned. We don’t often argue like this. Actually, we just don’t often argue. But I had decided by about four that I just wanted to be back in London, have a bath in Leah’s tub, and give myself some time to prepare for the week ahead. I need an excuse and him being a pig-headed shit is perfect. “I’m just disappointed.”

“Just disappointed.” He mocks my tone. “We agreed it was OK for me to go this weekend.”

“It was OK. Don’t you dare make me out to be one of those wives. But you promised me lunch and I’ve sat here waiting.”