We all listened to the drone of a motor: the air conditioning or heating somewhere, a PC with a broken fan; the ambient clatter that rattles through all bureaucratic buildings.

And then they were asked to face each other, confirm their names and repeat after me.

Andrew was in a navy-blue suit and open-neck shirt, a white flower in his lapel. Emily in a red dress that cinched at her waist and made me remember what it had felt like to hold her there while she sang to me. She was shaking. She was scared. The stiletto of the heel trembled as she repeated those old adverbial phrases, as he repeated his in turn, as they smiled with great concentration at each other while the other said their lines. Was Sophie touched by this? Was her mind changed? Did she think that I was surrendering to soppiness as I used my hand to tell her that I was there, close to her, available if she wanted me?

She shivered slightly to push my hand away and I put my hand down by my side again. She looked at me with her mouth shut and back again at Andrew and Emily. A breeze through the window stirred the leaves of the plants that decorated the ledges of the room.

Emily would not meet my eyes, but Andrew made sure to turn to me and grin.

It didn’t look like a very passionate kiss when they kissed.

*

I had no intention of giving Andrew the card into which I had folded the printouts of Emily’s texts with the married man she met up with in Blackpool, the man she took back, I can only presume, to my mother’s house, to have sex with in my bedroom, or on the living-room carpet I had never walked on while wearing shoes. Most of the time the gun on the wall is just for show, just the owner’s substitute for personality. I didn’t want to be a destroyer, just to know that I could be a destroyer, for my fantasies to carry a credible weight. I wanted to know that what was in my pocket was sitting there, so that when Andrew grinned at me like that, like I knew he would, and made it clear to me how powerless he thought I was, I could put my hand inside my jacket and feel the grain of the paper, imagine the blade of an old-fashioned letter-knife slicing through it.

I had something in the other envelope too. Chloe and I had spent much longer together than the time it takes to drink a coffee. And though our dignity demanded that we spoke like we were only pretending, she had sent me just the evidence I had asked her for.

*