My stomach had tightened with nerves as I said, “Yes. Yes, of course!”

“Promise?”

“Yes! I promise.”

He’d beamed at me and entered his card details. “Me, too,” he’d said, and then he’d kissed me.

•   •   •

I was deep in thought as I drove from the letting agency to my new flat. I couldn’t stop thinking about that Friday evening when I left work, believing that Harry and I would be together that night. It tormented me. He’d grinned at me as I left. Who would do that to someone they were going to let down? He knew I was going to leave my marriage for him and he knew he wouldn’t be there for me. I couldn’t forgive him. And I thought of Emma, at home with her pregnancy, knowing nothing of this, not realizing the man she’d chosen to be the father of her child was promising to move out to be with another woman. How had we both got it so wrong?

I managed to find a parking space outside my new home. Seeing it afresh didn’t exactly make my heart sing. It was scruffier than I’d remembered, with peeling paint and bare wooden window frames. Inside, the hallway floor was littered with junk mail. I picked it up and separated out a couple of bills for the previous tenant. There was nothing for me, of course.

I jammed the front door open and carried everything from my car into the empty hallway, then made several long slow journeys up to my flat, dragging my bags and boxes with me. The first thing I did was to open all the windows. I could hear the sound of customers chatting on the sidewalk below. It was comforting, somehow. As though I had company. I planned to go down to the florist’s later to introduce myself and buy some flowers for my living room. It had been so long since I’d had to consider close neighbors; my house with Tom was detached and although Oliver lived only a short distance from us, we never had to worry about disturbing him. It would be different here, I knew.

Looking around the flat, I realized I should have brought more things with me. But Harry and I had decided on a new life together. We’d said we wanted to choose everything together, to start again, without reminders from our previous lives. I could see now how stupid that had been, as though a lamp or a bookcase would remind us of our spouses, when our own thoughts didn’t.