‘It’s not a competition, Mel. You’re his mother. Every boy needs his mother.’

‘But it seems like sometimes you two would be better off without me. And I hate myself for thinking that.’

‘That’s not true. And even if it was, it’s no excuse for what you did.’

‘I didn’t go looking for it. Things just happened.’

She started crying again.

I was so upset that I could barely see straight. Things just happened. The bedroom felt alien to me and too small for the two of us. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. There had been the team ‘meetings’ that ran on well into the evening. Phone calls at home, quickly ended when I turned my key in the front door. And the email, her Hotmail account, how she always minimised it or switched screens in a hurry when I got close.

She said the naked pictures she sent him had started off as a joke between them when she had taken a picture of him in the hotel room after their first night together as he stood naked at the sink brushing his teeth. She had texted it to him, just for laughs. He had insisted that she send one of herself as well, so they were even. And then it had just become a running joke that he would expect his daily selfie of her.

‘What about the story you told me yesterday, about kissing him at that wedding? Was that all bullshit too? Or did it actually happen?’

‘It happened. And he wouldn’t leave it alone, like I told you. He wanted more but I kept him at bay for a long time. He wouldn’t get the message, he kept going, and going, and going. It was an obsession for him. And then in July we met again at that awards do on Park Lane, and my resistance was worn down, and . . . I already told you what happened that night.’

I felt like I was standing in someone else’s clothes, in someone else’s house, living someone else’s life. This wasn’t me. It wasn’t us.

Think.

‘So the meeting on Thursday at the hotel, that wasn’t you telling him to stop stalking you and pestering you. And it wasn’t about work either.’

‘No.’

‘The story you told me and Beth yesterday, about some programmer at his firm stealing code, that was all lies?’

‘That was made up for her benefit. I couldn’t exactly tell her the truth, could I?’

‘So you had sex with him at that hotel?’

She shook her head.

‘I asked you a question,’ I said. ‘Did you have sex with him on Thursday afternoon?’

‘No.’

‘I don’t believe you. What were you doing there?’

‘Talking.’

‘About what?’

‘About us. He told me he was in love with me like he’d never loved anyone before. That he’d do anything for me, anything I wanted – leave Beth, leave Alice. Sell the company. Sell the house. Move away. Leave everything behind so we could be together.’