‘I don’t know if I can get past this,’ she said. ‘Even if I could forgive you, which right now I can’t even imagine doing, I don’t think I can ever trust you again.’

‘I will never do it again. Never.’

‘But how do I know that?’

‘You have to believe me, Sophie.’

She laughed in his face. ‘Do you know why I married you? Even though you were so different to all the men I had been out with in the past? Because I thought that you would never hurt me. That I’d be safe with you.’

He looked crestfallen, but he said nothing. He tried to take her hand but she moved it away. ‘I don’t know where we go from here,’ she said.

‘I don’t know either. But I’ll do whatever it takes, Sophie. Whatever it takes.’

They looked at each other from across the table, tired, upset and afraid, and knew that whatever the future held for them, it wasn’t going to be decided then and there. Eventually Sophie took herself to bed and Alan went to sleep in Tom’s room. She lay there for the rest of the night, staring up at the ceiling, too shocked to cry, and wondered how she would ever get over the fact that the two people she thought would always have her back were the ones who had let her down in the worst possible way. For the first time since she had married Alan, since she had thought she had a partner for life, she had never felt more alone.

Jack brought the kids round first thing when Sophie was downstairs in her dressing gown putting the kettle on. She had been awake all night and was absolutely shattered. Tom and Katie had faces like thunder because they hadn’t been allowed to stay at the Taylors’ for breakfast.

‘I don’t understand why we had to come home so early,’ Tom said in his sulky voice.

‘Go upstairs and get dressed,’ Sophie instructed the children firmly. When they were gone, she turned to Jack who looked like he hadn’t slept either.

‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

‘Not really, how about you?’

‘Not really.’

‘Did you have any idea at all?’

‘No,’ Sophie said. ‘Now I know why Angie’s been giving me the cold shoulder. But Alan? I can’t believe he acted so normally all this time, as if nothing was wrong. That’s what gets me.’

‘I knew something was up with Angie but I thought it was burn out from taking too much on, trying to do too much. When she’s stressed, she turns in on herself and withdraws from everyone else. I just assumed it was that.’

‘Do you know, I actually though that Angie was upset with me? I was trying to work out what I’d done wrong. I even got paranoid that she suspected you and me of something, which I know is ludicrous.’

‘She did.’

‘What?’

‘She did suspect us. Not just you though. Everyone. It seems she suspected me of cheating with everyone.’