A few passers-by gave him odd looks. Scott ignored them and walked around the tree several times. He couldn’t see anything. He ran his hands over the bark, thinking maybe he could feel some faint indentations.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to find anything.

There was a fact he’d been ignoring ever since he found the note: if Natalie had addressed a note to somebody else, she may have been having an affair.

Scott couldn’t imagine that.

Can’t you? Fucking idiot?

Natalie had been happy with their life. She had a well-paying job as a manager at a car insurance company. She was following her passion for writing on the side, attending classes, writing short stories and working on longer pieces. They had as much romance in their relationship as any other couple, Scott thought; they did their best.

Her suicide had hit him violently, suddenly, without warning.

As he circled the tree another time, he thought about Natalie coming here with her lover. It must’ve been so exciting for them, rushing through the park, their hands all over each other. Maybe they’d even had sex up against this tree. Maybe Scott was standing on the very spot his wife had betrayed him.

It was no use. There was nothing.

He leaned against the tree, hands in his pockets, muttering the note’s words. “Down by the hangman’s broken tree…”

By the tree. She hadn’t said she’d carved it on the tree.

He studied the nearby trees, the railing, and finally came to the stone wall that separated the park from the houses. It was just about tall enough so he couldn’t see into their gardens, but not by much.

He walked up and down the wall.

And there it was.

“Jesus.”

He ran his thumb over his wife’s name.

Natalie and–

Somebody had destroyed the other name, scratching at the stone until it was a mess, the word lost beneath it: rubbing with such force that the name was more than obliterated, a large chunk taken out of the flimsy brickwork. Perhaps it was Natalie’s lover, and they’d had a fight before Natalie’s death.

Scott warned himself to slow down; he didn’t know anything yet.

But it wasn’t looking good.

Natalie and who?

Scott realised a truth. He’d known it for a long time. Tucked away. Roared out of existence. Where it could be easily ignored.

His first wife was as much of a stranger as his second.

11

SCOTT

He knew this was probably going to lead nowhere. But he didn’t want to return to Bristol without learning something concrete. He walked up the pathway; this garden was far less neat than Harvey’s, with two children’s bikes lying on the grass, a football net that had come loose from the frame, tangled up in the corner. The grass was overgrown and there was a drawing in the window, a smiling rainbow.

It was the house which overlooked the hangman’s broken tree: which overlooked the place Natalie might have met her lover. If it was a lover. Perhaps it had been a friend. Or was that wishful thinking? He needed to find out.