The passengers disembark and I make my way on the bus to the crew room, then onto another bus that takes me to the staff car park, my face impassive for the journey. Only when I’m alone in my car do I let my feelings show. As I leave the airport perimeter road, I open the window and breathe in the cold air, suspending my reality for as long as I can: of the neighbours who think they know me, my cheating husband, Andrew, whose patients think he’s God, my changeling daughter who lives in her own world … How tenuously our family life is held together.

Abingworth is a thirty-minute drive from the airport and as I turn off the main road, my eyes narrow when I think of Andrew, wondering who she is this time. As far as I know, this is his fourth, though I’ve no reason to believe there haven’t been more. This latest one’s been discreet so far and I’m grateful for that small mercy. The humiliation of not being enough for your husband is multiplied a hundredfold when everyone else knows.

Reaching the village, I slow down as I pass the sign reading ‘Abingworth’. We moved here seventeen years ago, after I discovered Andrew was having an affair for the first time. Wanting to believe his assurances that it was over and that he’d made a terrible mistake, I’d let him persuade me to view a large country house here, with a tacit agreement that this was a chance for a new start. After moving in, naïvely, I’d believed it possible. But not for long. My husband is a serial adulterer, our home no longer somewhere I want to be. The only reason I stay is for our daughter.

Now, as I drive, I try to remember how I had felt back then. My hope for a new life tainted with mistrust; my jaded anger with Andrew. My overriding need to protect my family – that took precedence over anything else.

I turn into our lane, then again a little further on, through the tall gateposts flanking our driveway, my tension easing slightly when I notice the empty space where Andrew normally parks. The garden is surrounded by flint walls, the cedar trees in front of the house giving it seclusion, privacy. My relief that I’m alone is instantly squashed by the thought that’s never far from my mind. He could be with her.