It would be torture to play happy families for a week in the knowledge that Sean had betrayed me with one of my best friends, when in reality my marriage was a car crash happening in slow motion. But I had to know. Observing him, seeing him, I felt sure I would know which one he had picked over me. I spent every working day with evidence, one way or another. Collecting, recording, examining, putting all the pieces together: it was what I did for a living. All I had to do was find the evidence of my husband’s infidelity and follow it to the source.

I’m going to smoke you out, find out which one of you has betrayed me, which one of you is trying to break my family apart.

If I could find out exactly what was going on, maybe I could stop it before it was too late. I had a week to find out the truth, to find out what was going on with my marriage and whether it could be saved – with a string of messages between us like an invisible fault line just beneath the surface, waiting to crack wide open and leave me on one side, Sean on the other. Deep within me was a sick, self-destructive urge to know, to know everything, every sordid last detail. To see for myself, with my own eyes. Until then, I was going to have to act as if nothing was wrong. Try to act normal – or as close to normal as I could get.

I turned the shower off, feeling more alone than I ever had before, as if I was standing on a ledge, about to step out onto a tightrope into the darkness – a tightrope between my old life, the life I thought I knew, and what came next. What was at the other end? Grief and heartbreak, most likely. But it was a journey I had to take, for my own sanity, for my own self-respect. I would get dressed, paint on a smile and get ready for our week together. And I would find out the truth.

A knock on the bathroom door. Then another.

‘Mummy?’ Daniel’s voice, high and excitable. ‘Are you in there?’

‘Yes. Just getting ready.’

‘Rowan said to tell you that she’s had a text. Jennifer’s nearly here.’

Chapter 6

6

I dressed quickly in a simple floral print dress and sandals. Listening to Jennifer’s arrival downstairs – Rowan’s greeting typically loud and exuberant – I sat down at the dressing table to rapidly reapply my make-up in an effort to disguise eyes puffy from crying. Tried to marshal my thoughts.

Act normal.