He sat up straighter. ‘Don’t evade the question again, Connie. I need to know what was so bloody special that you’d go to these lengths – break up a lifelong marriage, humiliate me, destroy –’ He gulped noisily and didn’t finish the sentence.

She inwardly recoiled. ‘I’m not going to,’ she said flatly.

He raised a cynical eyebrow. ‘I see. That good, eh?’

To her horror, she found herself blushing. Hot, shameful waves of guilt pulsing across her cheeks. But her eyes seemed glued to Devan’s. Looking into them, he could surely see her naked body, Jared’s, too, hear her cries, feel the sweat, the lust, the tangled sheets, like the playing out of a tawdry porn movie.

He jumped to his feet. ‘Christ, Connie. You make me sick.’ Picking up his coffee mug, he hurled it at the wall – on which was hanging a framed photograph of them both, kissing in front of the extraordinary façade of Gaudí’s Sagrada Família in Barcelona. She remembered asking a couple of backpacking Japanese teenagers to take the picture. The mug shattered. Coffee sprayed on the white walls. The photograph wobbled but was unharmed.

Devan was breathing hard. He looked as shocked by what he had done as Connie did. Neither spoke as they regarded the mess.

He turned tearful eyes to meet hers.

‘I rang Neil last night.’

She waited.

‘He said not to be too harsh on you. It was just a stupid mistake – a low point in our marriage and you were vulnerable.’ He gave a sardonic laugh, then levelled his gaze at her. ‘Are you in love with him?’ His tone grated on her strung-out nerves.

Connie shook her head firmly. Love has never come into it, she thought. Obsession, yes. Intense, inexplicable lust, definitely. But never love – not for either of them, she had been sure, until that night she’d collapsed and, blinded by fever, reached out to Jared … incomprehensibly altering the story for him.

Yet, in Devan’s eyes, falling in love might be a more plausible excuse for her unfaithfulness. Casual carnal lust seemed almost obscene at her age. Although maybe her age had made her more susceptible. ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I was never in love with Jared. Not for a single minute.’

Her husband’s raised eyebrow told Connie he didn’t believe her. But she stared him down.

‘Doesn’t change much,’ he said sullenly, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘God. My wife and my new friend …’ He held his linked hands to the back of his head and pulled his head down, letting out an anguished moan. ‘Go away, Connie,’ he said, with weary bitterness. ‘Just go away. I can’t stand the sight of you.’