I hesitated. I couldn’t give my own name. I didn’t know what she knew. “Jenny Leonard,” I said then. Jenny was one of my sister’s school friends. I’ve no idea where her name came from right then.

“Just a second, Jenny,” she said. “I’ll call him.” Then I heard her shouting, “Harry? Phone call!”

At the sound of her yelling, I realized that he must be at home. Nobody at work would answer the phone like that. Nobody would shout his name. That must be his wife! Emma. My stomach churned and I thought I was going to be sick. I didn’t want to talk to him now. Not with her there.

Then she was back on the phone. “He won’t be a minute.”

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I’ll have to ring back. Another call’s coming through on my phone. So sorry.”

“I’ll tell him,” she said. “Can he call you back?”

“Thanks,” I said, pretending I hadn’t heard what she said at the end, and hastily switched the phone off.

My hands were wet with perspiration. What if he’d answered and she was standing next to him? What would he have said? My phone rang then—it was from a local landline number I didn’t recognize and my heart leaped.

“Harry?”

“Sorry, darling,” a man said. “It’s Danny here. Can you fit me in tonight at seven?” And then he told me exactly why he wanted to visit me. I could tell from his voice that he was calling from his house, trying not to be overheard by his wife.

He wasn’t Harry but I realized he could have been. If Harry had answered the phone while Emma was in the house, he would’ve spoken just like that man, in a low, deceitful voice, desperate not to be overheard, but desperate, too, to speak illicitly. Privately. I shuddered. This was the reality. There was little difference in the end, when you boiled it right down, between this tosser who was calling strange women and asking to meet up for sex, and Harry, the man I thought I’d loved. Both were liars and cheats and bastards.

I reached into my bag and brought out the whistle I’d bought. I blew it as loudly as I could, right next to the mouthpiece.

Probably not the answer he was expecting, but hey, you can’t always get what you want.

CHAPTER 39

Emma

It was the hesitation that did it. Who hesitates when they’re saying their own name? Harry was in the shower when she called; he was about to drive down to Birmingham for a meeting and I was working from home. When I returned to the phone and realized the caller was in such a hurry to end the call, my sixth sense was on high alert.