You stupid girl. It’s all your fault.

Was it just in her head? That was it, the possibility she could never discount. The fact that she could not trust her own mind. It whispered things, it distorted the facts. It was not reliable.

As she stood, lights swung on to the driveway, tyres crunching on gravel. He was home, but her heart did not lighten as usual. She watched him sit in his car, doing something on his phone. A smile lit up his face, one she never saw any more. Playful, sexy. Engaged. He never engaged with her now – she was like a cat he stroked in passing, absent-minded. He looked up, saw her watching, and waved. She forced herself to wave back. Had a flicker of guilt crossed his face? Or had she just imagined it?

He walked to the door and came in, and she breathed in the lemon of his aftershave. Such a handsome man, with his dark-rimmed glasses, his expensive shirt hugging a chest that was honed and muscled, even at forty. How lucky she was. ‘Are you alright?’

‘I just . . .’ The chirpy denials wouldn’t come to her tonight. ‘You’re so late. You’re always late.’

He breathed out a long sigh, heaving his satchel on to the chair. ‘Oh Elle. Not again.’

‘Please, if you’re – if there’s someone, just promise you won’t leave me?’

He grasped her arms, looked deep into her eyes. ‘There’s no one. Why can’t you see that? I’m just so busy. These cuts, they mean we all have to work harder.’

Guilt washed over her. Complaining about her own trivial feelings, when he grappled with life and death. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Are you taking those pills?’

She squirmed. ‘They make me fuzzy.’

‘It’s for your own good, darling. We don’t want another episode, do we?’

She looked away, and it took her a long time to be able to say, ‘No. You’re right. Are you hungry?’

The terrible thing was, she’d love him no less if it was true. As she drifted off that night, in the beautiful bedroom under the thick duvet and the smooth cotton sheets, she thought about the woman, who might not exist at all. She wondered about her name, what she looked like. If she was married too. If he might end it with her now that Elle suspected, if he’d bother to have that conversation, or simply stop getting in touch. ‘Ghosting’, it was called. She’d learned that term from a teen drama she’d watched on one of the nights he wasn’t home. Disappearing from someone’s life like the dead, with no apologies or explanations. She could see there might be a certain appeal in that.