My horror mounting, I race back upstairs and into the spare room, pull open the bottom drawer. I pick up the cap and examine it once again. It must be pretty old, because the cotton is soft and worn. I turn it inside out and my heart misses a beat. Panic explodes in my mind. The label is small and soft as silk, frayed at the edges. Whatever was printed on it has long since faded, but two small marks remain. The capital letters R and M, written in black biro.

I dry-retch over the open drawer.

Ross Murray.

—

Back in the study, my mind gibbers with theories. Perhaps Catherine gave him a lift somewhere, something to do with work, and he left it in her car. Maybe it was the same night she accompanied him on that home visit. That’s where they could have eaten their takeaway. I don’t expect Catherine would mind a few stray chips in her messy Peugeot.

But then, why would Ross have been wearing a baseball cap to do a home visit? A cap I’ve never seen. And why wouldn’t she have given it back to him? Why would she hold on to it like this, unless…unless it means something to her.

Maybe Ross did know Catherine before she started working at the surgery. Maybe they went out together once and that’s why she has it. It would still mean he’s been lying to me, that both of them have been lying to me. But that’s a hundred times better than him knowing her since he was a child, living next door to her. I don’t even want to think about the implications of that.

There’s only one way to find out whether the nightmarish scenario unfolding in my mind can possibly be true, and that’s to find the paperwork relating to the sale of his aunt’s house. I never questioned him at the time. Why would I? It was already in progress when we first got together. The money came through a few months later. It was Ross’s money. Ross’s inheritance. I had no reason to disbelieve him when he told me her house was in Sittingbourne, that that’s where he’d lived with her as a child.

Each drawer contains foolscap suspension files, meticulously organized with clear plastic tabs labeled in Ross’s neat capital letters. I think of the R and M on the label inside the baseball cap and my mind spins. My hands are shaking as I flip the files toward me, one after another, scanning each label. I can’t afford to break down. Not yet. I need to focus on the task in hand. Only then will I be able to reject this strange and frightening story taking shape in my mind. The story that can’t possibly be true.