Mel picked up my phone and switched it off, then slipped the back off it and took the battery out, putting it into her pocket. She went to stand next to Beth, giving her a handful of pink shotgun cartridges before kissing her on the cheek.

I stared at them. Knowing, finally.

I’d got so spun around these last eight days it had taken me all that time to work out the truth. To arrive at the only conclusion that made sense. But I still didn’t want to believe the evidence of my own eyes.

‘You and her,’ I said to Mel. ‘The two of you, all this time?’

She nodded, a tiny movement.

‘All this time.’

Chapter 80

80

Icy sweat traced a line down my ribcage.

I was the rat and this was the trap. I had followed the bait, all the way in, and now the trap was about to close.

Beth said: ‘Do you know what misdirection is, Joe?’

‘It’s what a magician does.’

‘Exactly. The magician’s flourish with his right hand – while his left hand is flipping open the secret compartment. Misdirection. You keep the audience looking at the wrong thing. We made sure you kept looking in the wrong place while we stacked the deck against you, and made sure the police kept looking in the wrong place too: looking at you. We pushed your buttons and off you went, swallowing everything we sent your way. Everything.’

I stared at them. Too many questions.

‘The social media,’ I said, ‘the messages from David Bramley, posts on his Facebook profile, the texts, the message on my computer screen on Monday. It was all you?’

‘Both of us,’ my wife said.

Beth said: ‘It turns out that misdirection and improvisation will take you a long way in today’s world. People put their trust in the strangest things – things they can’t actually see with their own eyes – and then refuse to believe what’s right in front of them.’

I shook my head, amazed at my own stupidity.

‘You handed us the situation,’ Beth continued, ‘and we improvised like a couple of Oscar winners. We had our share of luck as well, but improv is like anything else, really – the more you do it, the more it comes naturally. And I realised, we’re really good at it.’

‘Good at lying,’ I said. ‘Congratulations.’

‘Not lying,’ she said. ‘Acting.’

‘Your degree, at university. You did drama, didn’t you?’

‘Well remembered! Ben never let me finish my degree, never let me become an actress. He never let me do what I loved. And he never realised that I had actually been acting for years – acting like the faithful housewife, perfect and calm and satisfied, always happy in hubby’s shadow. But this week has been the performance of a lifetime, don’t you think? And you played along so well without even realising what you were doing!’