I reach for her hand. ‘I’ll come and see you later? Okay?’

She nods, her lips pressed tightly together and stands up.

She leaves the kitchen, deliberately taking a wide arc around Mark. He barely registers her departure. His eyes are fixed on me as he sits down stiffly at the table, hugging his laptop to his chest. ‘Is he here?’

‘Jake? No, but Kira’s upstairs.’

‘Right.’ He looks from the hallway to the kitchen window. ‘We can’t talk here. Let’s go to the garage.’

I am so stunned, so wrong-footed by the look on his face, that I do as I am told and follow him out of the house and into the garage. He turns on the light and then sits down on Jake’s weight bench. He pats the space beside him and waits for me to sit down. He looks surprised when I shake my head.

‘Claire –’ he places the laptop bag on his knees and presses down on it with the heels of his hands – ‘I don’t know how to tell you this.’

‘You’re having an affair.’ The words sound ridiculous as they come out of my mouth. I feel as though I’m playing the role of the wronged wife in a soap opera.

‘What?’

‘With Edie Christian.’

‘Edie Chr—’ He tips back his head and laughs.

Irritation bubbles inside me. ‘Mark, I know. Stephen told me. Billy saw you kissing her in a pub last year.’

Mark’s laughter stops as quickly as it started. ‘What?’

‘Billy was there. He was outside, waiting for Alfie. He saw you, he heard your phone conversation with your boss outside, he saw the kiss.’

‘He …’

‘He was hiding behind a skip. He heard and saw everything. That’s why he defaced all the photos of you in the album. I checked the dates on the calendar. It happened last summer.’

Mark doesn’t say a word. He stares at me dumbly, his bottom lip wet with spittle. He blinks several times, then looks down at the laptop on his knee.

‘Mark?’

His Adam’s apple bobs up and down as he swallows. ‘I can’t … I can’t take it in. I came home to talk to you about something else. I wasn’t expecting this.’

‘When did the affair start?’

‘Affair?’ He frowns. ‘I haven’t had an affair.’

‘There’s no point denying it. I’ll ask her.’

‘Ask who?’

‘Edie Christian.’

‘Oh God.’ He runs a hand over his hair. ‘Claire, I’m not having an affair with Edie Christian, or anyone else for that matter.’

‘So you’re denying that you kissed her? You’re saying Billy was lying.’

‘No. He wasn’t. But he didn’t see what he thought he saw.’

‘So tell me what happened then?’

‘Oh God, Claire. It wasn’t … it wasn’t as bad as it sounds.’

‘You kissed another woman.’

‘I tried to.’