You fucked them in our bed. Somehow I didn’t think it could get any worse. I look at the date on the photograph and my head’s spinning. Two days before your twenty-eighth birthday five years ago. Two days before we went out to the Yang Sing and then came home and made love in that bed. You must have been thinking about her all the time. Laughing at me. I quickly scan the picture and finish the rest of the pages. I pull the flash drive out of the machine and push in my staff key to reset the counter to zero. As I walk away from the university, ‘Shout Out to my Ex’ is playing in my head and a High Fidelity cheating bastard playlist is forming – but this time it’s revenge instead of apologies.

Back in the car a flutter of excitement flows through me and I look at Christine Taylor, née Dearden’s profile again. At least I have the advantage of knowing exactly what she looks like. Like you, she seems to be unable to keep anything secret. Apart from the things about her that her husband doesn’t know. Maybe she’s still doing it? Sleeping with other people’s husbands? Well. We’ll soon see, won’t we?

Chapter Four

It was difficult to sleep in that room, knowing what you’d done in there. I haven’t changed a thing and now I wish I had. All I could imagine was your laughter and her touching my things.

But I need to start from the beginning if I’m going to do this right. With Christine. Because I couldn’t sleep, I had a chance to think about where I could get free Wi-Fi. The university, obviously, but that was too obvious. Too me. Monica Bradley with her high-powered job in computer science wouldn’t hang out there. I need somewhere that couldn’t place me, or at least place me in the wrong location. About 3 a.m. it came to me. Wasn’t there Wi-Fi on the trams now? And the buses. I could run Monica Bradley’s life on public transport.

So after I have my coffee I go down the garden to the hole. It’s a misty morning and at least I don’t feel hung over. But I do feel that you must pay for what you’ve done. You’ve ruined my life. I lay awake reasoning with myself that I could move away, start again. But it’s an overwhelming task. I’d have to sell our house and move all the things I had bought. Besides, I couldn’t leave. My life stopped a year ago, but that doesn’t mean that someday things can’t just turn around. All I need to do is show everyone that I was right and you were wrong and then I’ll have a chance of getting Charlie and Laura back.