For a second I almost changed my mind. I didn’t want to find evidence that my wife might still lying to me, but at the same time I had to know. To find out if my instincts could be right about what had happened tonight. To be right about something, for once. It had to be better than the feeling of slowly going mad, inch by paranoid inch.

It is better to know than not know.

Mel’s lightweight black jacket had four pockets. A packet of chewing gum, some tissues, a lip balm, but nothing that was the right size for a mobile phone. I draped it back over the banister and unzipped her handbag, my pulse starting to throb as if I was shoplifting and about to get caught. The handbag was soft brown leather, expensive, smooth to the touch. My son and my wife were talking in low voices in his bedroom. He would be trying to convince her that he was too tired to clean his teeth, but I prayed that she would stick to the rules on that subject, tonight of all nights. It would buy me another minute or two while he brushed.

The bag was full of pockets and zips and flaps, and I went through them as fast as I dared, pulling out and putting back three lipsticks, another lip balm, her purse, a make-up compact, a folding mirror, a small packet of sanitary pads, her keys, a key ring-sized torch, a rape alarm, a hairbrush and assorted hairbands, three biros, half a packet of Polos, her small diary. Standard twenty-first century woman’s handbag.

No good. I checked the outside zip pocket. More of the same. Nothing hidden, no phone.

And yet, there was something. Extra weight that should not have been there, a solid shape that didn’t correspond with any of the contents I’d found. Using both hands, I pressed the leather sides of the bag together. There it was again. A shape: small, flat, about the size of a packet of playing cards, but thinner. I checked the bag again, trying to trace the location of the shape from the inside. My fingers traced the bottom seam of the bag.

There was a slit in the lining about six inches long, hidden by the folded leather seam. Straight and deliberate, a cut rather than a rip.

I reached in, feeling the sweat under my shirt.