‘It crossed my mind at the time, but not enough for me to accuse him. There was nothing specific, and then shortly before he died everything seemed to right itself. Stupidly, I thought I’d got my old Jason back,’ April said, blinking away tears. ‘And I’m glad I didn’t say anything. He would have died believing I didn’t trust him.’

‘And if he was having an affair, chances are he would have denied it anyway,’ Faith replied.

‘Exactly, but now that he’s not around to challenge, my nagging doubt has become a full-blown obsession. Am I being paranoid? Is this some cruel side effect of grief?’ April asked. She continued to look at Faith: she would pull no punches.

‘We’re blessed with natural instincts for a reason,’ Faith said. ‘Only people with something to hide, or something to hide from, dismiss it as paranoia. Have you checked his messages? His emails?’

‘Yes, and I hated doing it, but I hated myself more when I couldn’t find anything more incriminating than Snapchat on his phone.’

‘Sorry for being a techno-phobe, but why would that mean anything?’ asked Tara.

‘Messages are time-limited. You don’t have to go to the trouble of deleting them and you don’t run the risk of leaving an audit trail behind if something unexpected happens to you,’ April said, mashing her cake with the fork. ‘As far as I was aware, Jason never used it, so why was it on his phone?’

‘And that’s one of the questions you’ve been left with that Jason can’t answer,’ Tara said, recalling April’s lament to the group.

‘It hasn’t stopped me looking,’ April said. ‘I was finally given online access to his bank accounts last month and I’ve been going through his statements line by line. I’m not sure, but I might have found what I was looking for. There were some biggish cash withdrawals before and after Christmas, and I know for a fact Jason hated using cash. I can only presume it was to avoid any record of his purchases.’

Faith leant over the table and took the fork and plate from April before she pebble-dashed them with ganache. ‘Was it enough to buy a hotel room?’

April shrugged, misery etched on her face.

‘I’m sure there are lots of other explanations,’ Tara suggested. She wondered if Jason might have been into drugs, although this theory was only marginally better than the possibility of an affair.

‘Do you have any idea who he might have been seeing?’ asked Faith, having already reached a judgement.