Another lie. William had been fine last night.

‘She didn’t stay?’

‘No. Why?’

‘She didn’t get home till gone midnight. She was out more than two hours, maybe more. I went to bed before she came back so it might have been longer. But there’s at least a couple of missing hours there.’

Beth looked at me, and I could see the same desolation I felt reflected back at me in her eyes. All the fight had gone out of her.

‘You think they met up?’ she said in a quiet voice.

‘Where else can she have been?’

‘But that means –’

‘Ben must be fairly close by.’

22

We drove home in stony silence, my knuckles white on the steering wheel. I felt sick with anger and couldn’t bear to look at Mel, let alone talk to her. She sat and sniffed and dabbed at her eyes with a balled-up tissue, occasionally sneaking a glance at me to see if I would meet her eye. William sat tearful and subdued in the back. What I hated most of all was that he had been a witness to Beth’s revelation in the pub. He sat silently in his car seat, eyes lowered, the corners of his little mouth turned down in an expression that just about broke my heart all over again.

I should have felt vindicated, justified. My instinct on Thursday evening had been spot on after all. But the vindication was hollow. I would have been much happier to be wrong, to have never seen those pictures of Mel meant for another man. Here’s your marriage certificate, a decade of your life. Now watch the match, watch it flame.

None of us had eaten more than a few mouthfuls of lunch at the pub before we’d made a quick exit, so Mel made William spaghetti hoops on toast and sat him down in the lounge in front of a DVD. When she returned to the kitchen she had her head down, arms crossed, and wouldn’t look at me.

‘Bedroom,’ I said, and she followed me.

We went upstairs and I shut the door behind her so that William wouldn’t hear anything. I moved away, to the window, so I wasn’t anywhere near her. I had so many things I wanted to ask her, say to her, shout at her, my head was fit to burst.

Anger. Disbelief. Heartbreak. Just sheer, wrenching heartbreak.

‘So is it true?’ They were the first words I’d been able to say to her since our lunch had been interrupted an hour ago. I fought to keep my voice level, to stop it cracking.

She looked at me, eyes wide and full of tears, pleading, remorseful, and I almost stopped right there. Almost went to her and folded her in my arms like I always did when she was upset. Almost, but not quite. She was standing by the full-length mirror, and I realised with a jolt of recognition that she had taken some of the naked pictures right there in the same spot, in front of that mirror. In our bedroom. The pictures sent to Ben.