In the bathroom I looked around furtively, trying to get a sense of the woman who had attracted my husband. Everything looked clean and freshly painted, but there was nothing personal there. No photos, no cosmetics, just soap and hand cream and a mirror on the wall. I took one glance at myself, at my face, flushed pink with alcohol, my hair awry, and thought of Ruby standing there every day, looking at herself, standing just where I stood right now. I thought of her looking pleased with herself, smug with her double life. I shuddered and quickly left the room.

Tom passed me another glass of wine.

“Are you absolutely sure about them? You couldn’t be imagining things?”

“No. I’ve wondered about it, whether something was going on, but now I know there is. I saw them at the airport just now.” I’d already told him that; I guessed it was taking a while for it to sink in.

He flinched. “I took her there this evening. Dropped her off. I thought there would be a few of them there. That’s what she told me.”

I shook my head. “The other guys went yesterday. It was just Ruby and Harry today.”

“When you say ‘guys,’ are you including women, too?”

“She’s the only woman going,” I said.

His mouth tightened and I guessed then that Ruby had been economical with the truth about this visit. There was a long silence where we sat without looking at each other, clutching our glasses for comfort.

“They’ll be arriving now,” he said.

We both looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was nine thirty here, ten thirty in Paris. I thought of them walking through the airport, hand in hand. They’d get a taxi to the hotel and sit for a while, ordering drinks in the hotel bar. Maybe they’d have dinner. After a while they’d say it was time to call it a night, knowing, knowing what would happen. Then not long after they’d find themselves in the elevator, crushed together with a party of people, aware of each other’s bodies, deliberately not looking at each other. I remembered that feeling from when I first met Harry and felt a stab of jealousy that he was experiencing it again with someone new.

I wondered who would turn to whom, who would be the first to suggest that they have a nightcap in one of their rooms. Would it be her? It’s so easy to blame the other woman, but the picture Harry had painted of her when she started working for him was hardly one of a confident woman. Yet there she was, on a little trip with my husband. Confident enough for that.