She thumped impatiently at the button on the elevator, at a loss what to do first. She really needed Julie’s advice before tracking down her husband. Julie would know what to do; she always did.

The lift pinged, and Paula froze as the doors swished open to reveal Anna. There was a terrible moment of nothingness, both women standing stock still. Then the doors began to close, and Anna put an arm out to stop them. At the sudden movement, Paula flinched. Anna stepped out of the lift, and as Paula slipped inside, the other woman turned around and smiled at her. As the doors closed, the last thing Paula saw was Anna’s face, shining and happy and satisfied.

By the time the elevator opened on to the restaurant, Paula had abandoned the idea of locating an internet café and of finding her husband. The encounter with Anna had been chilling, awful – and, if she was honest, frightening. What sort of woman laughed when she came face to face with the wife of the man she was screwing?

Not screwing, not yet, Paula mentally corrected herself. Just flirting, for now anyway.

Semantics; the details were neither here nor there. The intention was the problem, and Tommy’s acceptance.

She stepped out of the elevator, turning towards the heavy door that led to the winding staircase. She pulled at the neck of her coat, feeling as though it was strangling her as the sweat pricked her underarms and beaded her forehead. There had been women before, names mentioned at home a little too frequently, lustful glances at Christmas parties, lingering hands on arms. All easily dealt with when they recurred a little too incessantly. A horror story that she’d heard and passed on to Tommy about a man who had messed around with a colleague and whose standing in both his firm and society had suffered. He’d half listened, but knowing him so well and for so long, she’d been aware that it had sunk in. The message that risking everything for a bit of skirt wasn’t worth it. The texts had stopped, and the meaningful glances, and the names had been casually dropped from conversation before anything happened.

And Paula had accepted this, because wasn’t that just how men worked? All men, but especially those who had a lot to offer in the way of money, status and career. But something else was happening here, something that she had never encountered before. Anna wasn’t a silly, wide-eyed young thing. She was something else.

Something frightening.

When Paula had been afraid before, she had gone to Tommy. He had talked her down, protected her, like that time she had thought someone was watching their house and he’d had all those fancy alarms fitted. He was practical in his fixing of things. Only this time, the problem was him.