JULIANNE QUENTIN HAD never loved her husband. She was a pragmatic woman, and she judged relationships in the same way she judged everything else in her life: with good sense, a strong belief in right and wrong, and an acute understanding of the practical realities of the world.

She believed in partnership, though. She believed in respect. She believed in treating people with decency and equality and receiving the same in return. James had seemed like such an honest man, when she first met him. So nervous, with that stammer and his habit of pushing his glasses higher up on his nose all the time, so nervous that she couldn’t imagine him having the ability to lie at all. And he had been clever. He’d got the internship at FullLife and the competition was fierce. His intelligence was an interesting counterpoint to her own common sense; he’d never made her feel anxious. She couldn’t have spent her life with one of those men who need to control others, and she’d known a few of them, when she was younger. The ones who insist carrying the children is their job, because they’re the man. The ones who put their hand on the small of your back to guide you across the road, as though without their guidance you might inexplicably leap in front of a car. Sometimes she wondered if there was some kind of basic male instinct at play – though she had to admit things were better, now. The pouch had evened the playing field.

But James had never been like that. He’d never – not once – expected her to look to him for the answers to her own questions. And in return, she had never tried to tell him the answers to his. They had given each other independence. So really, what in heaven’s name did he think he was doing?

He’d shut the door quietly when he left, first thing this morning. Creeping out before dawn without waking her. She had no idea where he’d gone. And it was none of her business anyway – he was a grown man and would make his own decisions. Just like she’d make hers. But still, this was totally out of character. Had he lost faith in his work so completely he was on some kind of crusade? He’d signed a contract, though, and he had a duty to keep the details secure for the parents, the children … They were a medical facility, of course their data was confidential.

Suddenly everything that her husband had said and done the previous night seemed absurd. He was not someone who leaked information to the press and went around acting like a misguided hero. He didn’t have affairs or harbour unfulfilled love for some woman he knew when he was a student. Their life was not that kind of story, and she wanted no part of it.