I wondered if Rochelle was the one texting in the middle of the night.

If he was going to betray our marriage vows and cheat on me, it had better be with someone worth it. One of those human rights lawyers he sometimes came across at work. An intense, worthy sort, who he fell deeply in love with because she was saving children in Syria.

That I could take. And kind of understand. But Rochelle? A simpering busybody in wedge trainers? Fuck no. He didn’t get to screw up our life for someone like that.

It was useful to know that there were different levels of how angry I could get if he was cheating, dependent upon how good a woman his mistress was.

I watched him continue to scroll.

Had things got so bad I would be setting Special Projects on him as soon as Platform Eight were off lockdown? Instruct them to do a deep dive through all his emails, texts, WhatsApp messages? I had always resisted the temptation to use the many avenues available to me as a government operative. If I didn’t trust him, what was the point?

Will’s phone pinged as a text message came in. He smiled as he read it and then slipped his phone into his pocket.

The point was I would know for sure.

And knowledge was power.

If I was fighting for my marriage I needed to know what I was up against.

*

After a coffee morning where I heard the words ‘are these gluten-free?’ as often as ‘they look amazing but I won’t, thank you’, I came home and slept for two hours. Enough to reset and feel vaguely ready for what would be another long day.

I woke to an urgent email with the title: ‘HOT CHICKS AVAILABLE NOW$$!!’. I tapped in my authorisation code and the X-rated content merged into a request from Hattie that I go to a church in Putney where Dionne had taken Peppa’s daughter Bella. My mission was to retrieve a bag that was currently in the base of the pram.

On Robin’s morning round of collecting the audio from the receivers at the three Pigs’ houses, he’d seen Peppa and her daughter rush into a café down the road from her house and then reappear five minutes later, clutching a very small bag bearing a green logo. She had put it in the base of the pram and, despite meeting Dionne on the corner and saying goodbye to her daughter in her buggy, she did not take the bag with her. Considering we had nearly ruled out Daddy Pig, the Snake was now either Peppa or George. Hattie considered this a big enough lead that whatever was in there could be anything from a security pass to a USB stick of intel for the Coyote.