‘What?’ I’m incredulous. Nothing like that happens around here. ‘What’s happened to it?’

‘The fucking tyres have been slashed.’ Andrew’s face is white with fury. ‘I’ll have to take yours.’

I frown, wondering when it happened, how none of us heard anything. ‘You should tell the police.’ As his eyes search the kitchen, I reach for my keys before he sees them. ‘You’re not helping yourself to my car, Andrew. I have plans.’

‘You can change your so-called plans,’ he says nastily. ‘You have a day off, don’t you? Whereas I don’t. I have a job to go to, patients waiting to see me. I’d say that’s far more important than anything you might be doing today.’

His arrogance renders me speechless. He has absolutely no idea what I’m doing. And I wouldn’t mind betting it isn’t his patients on his mind, more the so-called meeting he has after work, probably with her.

‘No.’ My fingers close around my keys.

‘For Christ’s sake, Elise.’

As he glares at me, I realise I wouldn’t put it past him not to grab my arm and twist the keys from my fingers. ‘Call a taxi, Andrew.’ Slipping them into the pocket of my pyjamas, I try to ignore the churning in the pit of my stomach as I turn around and go upstairs.

Chapter Four

Elise

I could have offered to run Andrew into work, or arranged for someone to come here and fit new tyres, so as to save him the trouble, but I don’t. Nor do I give in to his demands. In a marriage based on infidelity and lies, there is no kindness. Instead, as I change into running clothes, I hear a taxi arrive to take him to his medical practice.

It’s another chilly February morning as I set off down the drive, pausing beside clumps of pinprick green shoots pushing up through the grass. They’re the first snowdrops, their subtle green and white a prelude to the soft yellow of the wild daffodils that have colonised under the oldest trees. A sudden desire to fill the house with flowers grips me. I want beauty, colour, and fragrance to neutralise the odour of my marriage. Breaking into a jog, I think of the small florist shop in the next village.

As my body loosens up, I run harder, heading along the narrow strip of pavement remaining where the grass verge has yet to encroach, passing the first of the footpaths to the church before turning up Furze Lane. Half a mile along, I take a path that leads into an area of woodland and for several minutes I run hard, my feet cushioned by fallen leaves, slowing down to take the rough downhill steps hewn into the earth before the path slopes uphill again and the woods open out on the furthest side of the churchyard.