Luckily, I’d reminded him of the baby. He touched me at last, on the stomach, leaning around the table. ‘Causing trouble for Mummy already, little one?’ There was real tenderness in his voice, and as so often in marriage, we came to an unspoken truce.

For a moment, I thought about telling him. Dropping the load of guilt I’d been carrying, laying it down at his feet. We had loved each other, not so long ago. Maybe we could again. ‘Nick . . .’

He got up. ‘I’ll make you some green tea. It’s good for the baby.’

I really hated green tea.

‘Lovely,’ I said, putting aside all thoughts of telling him; that was clearly madness. Instead, I needed a plan. And soon.

Elle

Elle

She stood by the window, listening to the clock tick slowly on, eating away at her life. When he was with her, it was easy to believe he was working all these nights – he was a doctor, of course he did long hours. She missed him, but couldn’t take him away from his important work, the lives he saved.

Alone, it was harder. He thought she was suspicious, always finding fault, but in fact the opposite was true. She did her best to blind herself, as long as possible. But on these long nights, just her and the house where not a speck of dust stirred, with only the TV and a wine bottle for company, sometimes she failed. Little voices began to whisper at her: Where is he really? Is there someone else?

Her treacherous mind would add up the evidence. Coming home late, hiding his phone, slipping it under the sofa cushions when she walked into the room. Sometimes at night she’d wake to find him gone from bed, and she’d wait till he came back, and he’d slide in saying he just got up to go to the bathroom or for water, but she knew he’d been gone for ten minutes, more. All so subtle. She could have been imagining it – it might not have crossed her mind if she’d been busy, if she’d had a job or other things in her life. If she still played the piano, instead of only dusting it each week. If she’d had a child. Where would he have met a woman even? Some pretty nurse, a drugs rep, a girl from the shop where he bought his coffee? She thought of the conference he’d been on a few months ago, an overnight stay in a hotel near Heathrow. So boring, he’d told her. Not worth discussing. Who is she? Is she pretty is she young is she nice? How did it begin? How long? They had started again, the litany of thoughts. However much she tried to banish them by alphabetising the books or cleaning out the cupboards or polishing the silver, they wouldn’t go away.