Unlike Neil, Devan didn’t ask where she was going. He merely nodded, his gaze flickering to her case. Leaning back against the cushions, he pressed his palms briefly against his eyes, then dropped them to rest on his knees. ‘Jared’s gone.’

Connie stared. ‘How do you know?’

‘I sat outside his house for hours last night. Banged on the door. There’s no one there – you can tell. And his car’s gone.’ His smile was cynical, knowing. ‘I suppose you tipped him off.’

She didn’t bother to refute the accusation.

‘Cowardly little shit,’ Devan added.

Connie didn’t know what to say, except ‘Sorry’ for the umpteenth time. But she knew Devan was too hurt to hear. The unwelcome thought sprang to mind that she need never have confessed to her husband. Just telling Jared she intended to might have been enough to see him off. But she knew it wasn’t as simple as that.

Devan didn’t get up at the sound of Neil’s knock. ‘Bye,’ she said softly, reluctant to walk away from all that she held dear, but feeling she had no choice … for the time being, certainly. At least, she hoped it was for the time being. The thought that it might be permanent was unacceptable, too horrible even to contemplate.

26

When Connie woke the next morning in a strange hotel room and to the muted roar of traffic, she thought for a moment she was on one of her tours.

The room was the cheapest she could find, last minute – although not what she would have called cheap – in a Bayswater tourist hotel near Lancaster Gate. It looked as if it hadn’t been redecorated since the eighties, the walls covered with varnished pine planks, twin bracket lights with singed pink shades, a patterned carpet in sickly browns and beige, the duvet cover and sheet a washed-out flesh colour. Even in Connie’s distressed state, she’d shuddered as she got into bed the night before, smelling the flat, synthetic pillow with distaste and trying not to think of all the heads that had lain there before hers.

It was not yet daylight outside, the orange sodium glow piercing the thin cotton curtains coming not from the sun but from numerous city street lamps. She lay listening to the intermittent beep, beep, beep, beep of the pedestrian crossing immediately beneath her window, which had also lulled her to sleep. At least she had slept, so worn out by emotional turmoil that her brain had shut down and refused to function for another second.

Her phone said six fifteen. But clearly there were plenty of people already out and about, crossing the road outside with monotonous regularity. Now what? She was aware of the loo flushing in the next room, the banging of doors, the chatter of other hotel guests passing her door.