The sky threatens rain as I slip the back door key into a zip pocket, pulling up my collar and walking briskly down the drive onto the lane. Breaking into a run as I reach the main road, I feel the cold clinging to my hands, my cheeks; it’s only as I run harder that the slow spread of heat through my body begins thawing them.

I see no-one through the village. Windows are closed and dark, drives are empty, gardens damp. Only as I pass Ida Jones’s house are there signs of life: the warm glow of light from her downstairs windows, wood smoke spiralling from her chimney. A thought comes to me suddenly: Ida’s lived in the heart of this village most of her life. She knows everyone and I wouldn’t mind betting she knows what goes on. Maybe she even knows who she is.

I could ask her, but I’d rather not admit to what’s going on under my nose. I carry on past the last houses without stopping, taking a footpath that slopes down through woods and across a stream. Under the trees, the path is dark and muddy, fallen leaves making it slippery underfoot, and I pick my way carefully over the narrow bridge, then up the other side before coming out of the trees into the churchyard.

Here, among the dead, I stop, looking at the graves that have become familiar to me. My eyes pass over their inscriptions as I walk between them, always pausing in the same place to read words I know by heart about a life that ended too soon. Never forgotten.

Most days, I find a quiet sense of peace here, but today I’m thinking of the magazine statistic again. Only ten per cent of people are good. The rest are like Andrew. They charm, captivate and seduce, but eventually you see the truth about them – that they do what they want, whatever it takes to sate blind ambition, perpetuate arrogance, slake lust.

As I stand there, a desperate sense of hopelessness washes over me, as instead of fighting my tears, I let them stream down my cheeks. The woman I was when I married Andrew had hopes and dreams. But nothing has worked out as I’d imagined it would. Instead, I was foolish enough to be taken in by the charming doctor, a man who consistently cheats, while the only thing keeping me going is my daughter. In my pointless world, Niamh is the only person who’s important to me.

Niamh

I live on a road to nowhere in a village of tall trees and stone walls; a place of cold hearts and secrets. As I get off the school bus, cold air rustles the leaves and I feel the first spots of rain. My stop is the last and I’m the only teenager from my village who goes to my private school. No-one gets off with me.