Later that evening we went to the restaurant for dinner.

“What would she order?” Leah asked.

“Probably mussels to start and then steak for main.”

The waiter asked if Leah would like the steak done medium-well like last time. She smiled sweetly and placed her hand on his arm. “Last time, I ordered it rare. You just had it cooked medium-well.” The waiter had blushed and apologized. Her steak was still bleeding when it was brought to the table. “Perfect,” she told him. She left a huge tip at the end of the meal.

The whole thing worked a treat. When I took Megan to the hotel a few weeks later, the staff treated her like an old friend. A Mai Tai was presented with a flourish as we headed to the bar that afternoon. Blood from her steak was seeping into her dauphinoise potatoes as it was served.

That first night, back upstairs in our room, Megan was angry.

“Are they messing with me? I don’t drink rum,” she said, “you know that.”

“That’s what I told you last time we were here. You ordered the Mai Tai because you’d seen the name in a book you were reading or something. I warned you it was rum. You said you wanted one anyway.” I’d shrugged then, like the hard done-by spouse I was. “Then you tasted it and said it was divine. You kept ordering them all night.”

“But the steak?”

“Meggie, sweetie. The waiter is a kid, he probably doesn’t remember what he ate for his own breakfast, never mind how you like your steak cooked. These posh hotels want you to think they understand service, but do they really?” I had wrapped my arms round her in an expression of solidarity. “And you could have sent it back.”

Of course, she had eaten it, her face twisting in disgust as she chewed the raw meat. She would never send a meal back; she didn’t like to get the staff into trouble.

The next morning, a copy of The Times was slid under the door. Megan reads the Guardian. Of course she does. A carafe of strong French coffee was delivered to the suite, “like last time.” Last time, Megan had lain in bed while I went for a swim, reading the paper and sipping her way through a huge pot of Darjeeling tea. She had been particularly taken by the tea cozy they had sent up to keep it warm. This time I didn’t go for a swim; instead I watched her scroll through her photos from the last visit. She had taken a picture of said tea cozy. I had deleted it a few days ago. I enjoyed the moment of panic as it crossed her face.

The final piece of my plan was the knock on the door from the laundry service. “You left this last time you were here with us, Mrs. Hardcastle. I had it laundered.” A small box was handed over. Inside was a rather plain black silk negligee. Megan is not one for fancy colors, or too much frilliness. It looked exactly like the kind of thing she might have picked for a naughty weekend away. On Megan’s phone was a picture of the same item. I had messed around with her system settings so it looked like it was date-stamped three days before we had come the last time. Date-stamped four days later was a photo of her wearing it, a selfie taken in the marble bathroom of our suite, an awkward over-the-shoulder photo taken to make sure it looked OK from all angles. It wasn’t really Megan, but I’d softened the edges of the photo just in case she looked too closely. Leah had left the negligee thrown across the seat of the dressing table when we checked out.