‘Yeah,’ said Bailey, squirming a little self-consciously on the chair.

Wendy eyed Bailey’s facial scar in the mirror and pursed her large lips thoughtfully.

‘I’ll leave that bit how it is, but I’ll trim the ends a little. How does that sound?’

‘Sounds good to me.’

‘So who’s the lucky fella?’ asked Wendy as she snipped delicately at Bailey’s hair.

‘Oh… just someone I knew from a while ago who’s kind of come back into my life.’

Bailey deliberately kept it a little vague as she wasn’t keen on giving away too much information about her private life to someone like Wendy who had connections to her undercover operation.

‘How romantic! Where’s he taking you?’

‘I think it’s some trendy restaurant. It’s had good reviews apparently.’

‘So long as he’s the one paying.’

They both laughed. Bailey decided to ease onto the subject of Rick.

‘So… does Rick take you out much?’

Wendy’s face darkened. ‘Yeah… he does. But…’ Her mouth tightened and she suddenly looked troubled.

Bailey sensed that something was wrong. She decided to explore this possible chink in their relationship.

‘Is everything okay?’ She injected a sympathetic tone into her voice.

The strained expression on Wendy’s face grew more pronounced. Her good cheer had all but evaporated.

‘You… you won’t mention anything to him…’ she said.

‘Of course not.’

Wendy swallowed, her voice coming out in a whisper. ‘I think he might be seeing someone else.’

Bailey sighed inside. That wasn’t quite what she’d been hoping to hear. She hadn’t come here to be the sounding board for Wendy’s marital strife. But she couldn’t back out now. In for a penny, in for a pound. She smiled gently.

‘Well, you don’t know for sure, do you…?’

Wendy shook her head in disagreement. ‘I overheard him talking to one of his mates on the phone when he thought I wasn’t listening,’ she said, her voice wobbling at the edges. ‘Often he goes out to the garden when he’s talking business. But he didn’t notice me when I was outside one time. I heard the tail end of his conversation. Her name’s Kaia. He was talking about how he was off to see her in Torquay.’

It did sound kind of incriminating, Bailey had to admit.

Wendy glanced at the surrounding customers and staff, lowering the volume of her voice to try and maintain a modicum of professionalism. ‘So I checked his diary secretly when he was in the shower,’ she continued, the words tumbling out in an emotional stream. ‘And there it was! Plain as day. Friday the eighth of March. He’s taking her to Torquay for a dirty weekend. Torquay! The same place we went on a little romantic getaway when we first met.’

She snipped away briskly at Bailey’s hair as she spoke.

‘He likes Torquay, you see. It’s like a childhood nostalgia thing with him. His mum used to take the family there a lot when they were kids. And so he took me there when we first got together. Not Paris. Not Rome. But Torquay.’ She sighed wistfully.