Connie began to cry. ‘I can’t, Lynne. I honestly can’t tell him. Can you imagine? Devan would hate me for ever …’ The thought froze her tears.

‘How was the stout?’ Connie had been on tenterhooks all day. Devan did not appear until gone seven and hadn’t answered any of her texts asking where he was. Mad scenarios had built in her mind as the hours passed. When he finally arrived home, she searched his face for signs of stress. And found none.

‘Foul. As you so rightly pointed out, I still loathe the stuff. But Torsten was a hoot. Looked like a cross between an overweight Viking and a computer nerd. I think he’d been sampling too much of his brew because he kept bursting out laughing at nothing at all. Jed said they were friends, but Torsten didn’t seem to know him that well. Kept calling him Mr Temple …’

‘And … Jed?’ She only just stopped herself calling him Jared.

‘Yeah, interesting man. He’s been literally everywhere, Con. Seems to have spent his whole life travelling. Although he’s also run a successful kitchen-design business, which he just sold for a great deal of money, apparently.’ Devan bent to drop a kiss on her forehead as she sat at the kitchen table. ‘He’s good company. I said we’d have him over for supper one night next week. I’ll cook, if you like. I’ll make him my sausage pasta.’

22

Connie was sleeping so badly. She would fall asleep, then wake soon after as if to a loud noise, her heart beating like a drum. There was no actual noise: Devan was snoring peacefully beside her. What woke her was Jared’s face, looming at her, wanting something, desperate. Wanting her? Then she would lie there, rigid with tension, unable to fall back to sleep.

What’s he playing at? The question plagued her. Is he waiting for me to see the light and leave Devan? Is he waiting for the right moment to destroy our marriage, so he can step in? She knew it was pointless to ask. He never answered her questions straight. Maybe her sister was right: he’d tire of the game. But, meanwhile, it looked as if she would just have to accept him into her circle of friends … her life. It was like living with an explosive device strapped to her chest.

That morning she lay flat on her back on her yoga mat in the village hall. It was the first class she’d been to in ages, and she was stiff from illness and immobility, her joints aching as she attempted to keep up with poses in which she had previously been quite fluent. Nothing felt right, these days. She had even been worried Jared would take up yoga and be there on a mat beside her.