She had loved the swings when she was a little girl. She used to beg her parents to keep pushing her, wailing so hard whenever they stopped that they would immediately start up again just to avoid the drama. She could have stayed on them for hours, soaring through the sky, feeling weightless and free. But her childhood was over now, she realised. She could never take her life back to the way it was after seeing what she had just seen.

The soothing to and fro movement of the swing calmed her down a bit and she considered her options. She could send a text now, revealing what she had just seen, and it would all be out in the open. But something was stopping her. It was too easy; they’d be let off too lightly. She was apoplectic with rage and she would never, ever, ever forgive them for this. She wanted revenge. But the question was, what was she going to do? She wasn’t sure yet, but she knew one thing for sure. They were going to pay for what they’d done. She would make damn sure of it.

The problem was, once she’d opened the can of worms it was impossible to close it again. After years of blindly trusting that Jack would never cheat on her, an idea had come to Angie and planted itself in her mind. Perhaps she’d got it wrong this whole time. And once she’d allowed that single, solitary thought to become a possibility, it opened the floodgates for more.

Was this paranoia or realisation? She didn’t know anymore.

She suspected everyone – a pretty girl from Jack’s work, who had never been anything but lovely to Angie, suddenly became enemy number one when she called the house asking to speak to him. The waitress in the coffee shop where they went for brunch on weekends, whose face always lit up whenever she saw Jack (‘It’s because I’m a good tipper,’ he said), Angie now saw in a different light. All the mums who asked where Jack was when she took Ellie and Freddy to school were now suspects in a crime of passion. At least she’d cleared Sophie of any wrongdoing: that was one step too far, even for Angie.

Still, she had never felt so out of control in her life. It was like she was going mad. One minute she was unravelling, imagining implausible scenarios in her head, the next she was talking herself off the ledge, reminding herself that she had no proof of any of this, that it might all be in her head. She considered confronting Jack, having it all out with him once and for all, but she was worried he would think she was crazy. She had always been so cool, so measured, she couldn’t let Jack see what was happening to her: it was shameful.

No, she decided, she couldn’t talk to Jack until she had some evidence. She had started covertly checking his phone and emails whenever she could, but she hadn’t found anything suspicious yet. Each time she checked and found nothing, she felt a wave of relief but it never lasted longer than a few hours before she was working herself up into a state again. Day by day she was oscillating between suspicion and disbelief and she was exhausted.