I stood my ground by the window.

‘Is it true?’ I repeated.

She nodded, but wouldn’t look at me.

‘You slept with him?’

Hesitation, then she nodded again.

I felt dizzy, unsteady on my feet.

Everything you know is a lie.

There was a stranger in my house, and I was married to her.

It was impossible to imagine my life without Mel, life as a single man again. That wasn’t me. It wasn’t my life. I turned my back on her and stared out of the window, a lump in my throat. Sunday afternoon. The leaves starting to fall. A couple pushing a toddler in a pushchair. Teenage boys cycling side by side up the middle of the road.

How did we go so wrong? It was like finding a trapdoor under the rug in your lounge, and you lift it up and there’s a whole other world down there right beneath your feet, hidden wheels and cogs and gears all moving, shifting your life one way or another without you even realising it.

I let the silence stretch out, waiting until the dizziness passed. Took a deep breath.

Save the weakness for later. At this moment I need to stay strong, and clear, and focused.

‘What happens now?’ she said finally, in a small voice.

‘Now? I’m going to ask you some questions.’ I reached under our bed and pulled out two empty suitcases that were stored there. I laid them on the bed, unzipped them both and flipped them open.

She hesitated, looking at me nervously.

‘OK.’

‘And if you lie a single time, I’ll put you out on the street with whatever you can fit in these suitcases.’ My heart wasn’t in it, but I pressed on, hoping she wouldn’t call my bluff. ‘And good luck seeing your son again, because I’ll go for full custody and fight you every inch of the way, and you’ll lose.’

She sniffled and swallowed a sob. She looked beaten.

‘So you’re saying that maybe –’ Her breath caught in another sob. ‘We might be OK again? The two of us?’

I closed my eyes, trying to imagine anything worse than my family being shattered into pieces. Nothing could compete.

‘Do you want us to be OK again?’ I said.

‘Yes.’ She covered her face with her hands. ‘Of course.’

‘No more lies.’

‘No lies,’ she repeated.

And so she told me.

23

It had started five months earlier, in the spring, at a barbecue in the Delaneys’ extensive garden. I remembered the way she talked to him, smiling and laughing at his jokes as I tried to think of things to talk to Beth about. How Mel looked at him, ready to laugh, eager to please. That was where it all began.

Ben had texted her to say thank you for bringing a particularly good bottle of red to the barbecue, and it just went on from there. She gave him some helpful advice on employment law, he sent a bottle of Château Mouton Rothschild ’99 to her office as a thank you. Ben joined the tennis club and started having lessons so he could see her more often. Then they bumped into each other at a corporate awards do on Park Lane where both were guests on different tables. I thought it was kind of like fate, us meeting like that, she said. It seemed like fate brought us together. They shared a bottle of champagne, and another, stayed till the end of the night and ended up sharing a taxi. Then sharing the bed in Ben’s hotel room – the Presidential Suite (of course). That was the first time they’d spent the night together. June, four months ago. It just happened, she said. It wasn’t planned out or deliberate. I was flattered, she said. He paid attention to me, he was confident and funny, he had his big house and these fancy cars and his own company and he was still interested in me.