‘You wouldn’t have enjoyed it,’ he says. ‘There and back in a day, wall-to-wall meetings. No time for play. We’ll go when there’s more time, I promise. Right now, things are kicking off in the London office with the IPO. Sometimes it feels like I’m in two places at once. What were you doing watching French TV anyway?’

‘I couldn’t sleep.’

Sometimes it feels like I’m in two places at once.

Is he mocking her? Mocking her paranoia?

‘You should have called,’ he says, sounding distracted. She can tell when he’s started to do something else on the phone. Reading emails, checking his products’ rankings in the App Store.

‘It was late,’ she says, thinking back to the explicit sex she stumbled across. Should she ask him about that as well? It was shocking, so unlike Rob. God, she’s suddenly behaving like the jealous wife, questioning her husband’s business trips, porn habits.

She stays silent, listening as Rob tells her that she can always call him, day or night. He’s worried she’s tired, pushing herself too hard. She closes her eyes, soothed by Rob’s voice. When she can’t see his face, life is so simple. Why can’t she just relax and appreciate that she’s a right lucky bugger, as Bex would say? She’s with a kind and caring man, her life has started anew.

And then she thinks of the news again. She needs to ask him, challenge him. Find some daylight between the Rob she knows and loves – the man who is talking to her now – and the impostor who might have replaced him.

‘Rob?’

‘Yes?’

She closes her eyes. ‘You were speaking in French on the TV. Good French.’

‘You heard that?’ he asks, casually. ‘Not bad, eh? They got me to do it in English and French. Had to practise for ages. You know what I’m like. Maybe you could be my translator next time, when you come with me to Brittany.’

Kate doesn’t know what to think. She should be relieved but she isn’t.

‘That would be nice,’ she manages to say.

‘You OK?’ he asks.

She’s not OK. Not OK at all. It’s a while before she speaks. ‘There’s something I need to ask you.’ She pauses again, struggling to get the words out. ‘Remember when you told me…’

She can’t do this, can’t bring herself to ask him about his double. She hangs up.

24

Jake