‘On the other hand, you made the perfect patsy – you’re so predictable. Combine that with an app that turns your mobile into a little tracking, spying device, and we knew exactly what you were doing from one minute to the next. We could switch on the phone’s cameras and microphone remotely without you knowing, record video, audio, take pictures, access your texts and web browser, check your location via GPS, see what you were searching for on Google.’

‘Like a hotel in Sunderland.’

‘Yes! Or that awful casino. Or train times from King’s Cross, or Fryent Country Park, or my little trail of breadcrumbs to lead you to Steven Beecham – even though we couldn’t figure out what the hell you were looking up STEB for at first! But yes, every single search. Sometimes it was like you couldn’t even make a cup of tea without googling exactly how, when and where you were going to do it. Even when you found out about the app, we knew that too – because you did a search on it.’

I realised something else, another piece slotting into place.

‘You had it installed on Ben’s phone as well, didn’t you?’

She smiled.

‘For months. So we knew exactly what he was planning.’

Chapter 82

82

‘What was he planning?’ I said.

‘A renegotiation of our relationship.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘Two options. One – complete and utter humiliation, admit my guilt, capitulate and grovel for another chance. Or two – divorce. But not amicable, nothing civilised for the sake of the child. That wasn’t Ben’s way at all.’

‘Not enough for him to win – everyone else had to lose, right?’

‘Exactly. He was going to screw me over completely, either way – it made it worse for him that it was another woman, rather than a man. I would have been left with barely a fraction of what should have been mine. Scorched earth, he called it. All the sacrifices I’d made for him: my degree, my body, my freedom, my career. My life. All those sacrifices, to get screwed again at the end of it. But this way, my way, we get everything.’

‘He found you out, didn’t he? He found out about the two of you.’

‘He was way ahead of you, Joe.’

‘It seems like most people are,’ I said, mostly to myself.

Mel added: ‘He asked to meet me that Thursday night supposedly for some off-the-books HR advice. But when I got there he just showed me a picture of me and Beth together, said he knew everything, and gave me an ultimatum.’

‘Which was?’

‘End it. End the affair and admit in writing to everything that had gone on. Apologise in person and in writing, to him and to you, apologise to his daughter, to his mother. Like Bee said, complete humiliation.’

Beth cut in.