Every penny of that money had been hard earned. Ten years of tips stashed away in a post office account waiting for the day I would have enough to put a deposit on a small space. Sally’s Styles. I had everything picked. The layout, the colours, the brochures. I’d sourced the suppliers, planned the advertising and designed the logo. When the right premises came on to the market at the right price, I’d be ready to pounce.

There will be no pouncing. Tom took it all. Convinced me we’d be mad to let the opportunity pass. Himself and two of his hair-gel buddies had secured a portfolio of apartments in countries whose names were unfamiliar to me. The only way the value could possibly go was up. I would have my thirteen thousand euros back, accompanied by a further thirteen thousand euros at the end of one year. I felt pressurised, told it would set the family up for life. ‘It’s a no brainer,’ he said. Turns out, they were the ones missing the brains.

Looking out the kitchen window, I sip my coffee and notice the last of the leaves have surrendered to the winds. The trees at the bottom of the garden are finally bare. I’m not sweeping them up. Tom can. My time will be better spent trying to figure out if there’s any truth in what I thought I saw in the photograph.

Confusion is circling my brain. I take the laptop off the counter top and open it. I’ll check his email account first. Tom and I have never had separate passwords. Never had a need to hide anything. I thought.

Bogstandard.

‘Nothing we’ll find difficult to remember, just something bog-standard,’ Tom had said, when I asked him what we should use as the password.

Flicking down the emails, I see nothing to alarm me. There are the usual advertisements: Hotels.com, Amazon, a few bill reminders and of course golf updates. No ‘Your loving son, Kenny’.

I’m about to make my way up the stairs to have another poke around when the doorbell rings. Who the hell is that?

‘Hi, hun.’ Donna steps into the hallway without waiting for an invitation. ‘Hope I’m not disturbing anything saucy.’ She giggles. ‘I’m just here to pick up my navy cardigan that I left behind yesterday.’

‘Nothing saucy going on here,’ I say. ‘Tom’s not even here, he’s gone to work.’

‘Ooh. What makes you think I was talking about Tom?’

Donna walks past me into the hallway and I follow. I’m confused by her comment and trying to pull my hair into some kind of shape. Donna is groomed to perfection, red hair tied up in a loose bun on the top of her happy head. Diamond earrings, dangling at both sides of her flawlessly made up face. YSL Opium, blazing a trail as she walks into the kitchen.