‘I don’t know.’ The truth made her sob.

‘And not once, in the whole of our marriage, did you think to tell me?’ He looked hurt, his eyes brimming.

‘I was so used to not telling anyone that I didn’t know how to break that cycle. It made me so ashamed, Mario – at first because I had had her at all and then later because I had kept her secret, and the longer I kept her a secret, the harder it felt to tell a soul, especially you. How could I, after all the time that had passed? I couldn’t tell anyone.’

‘Apart from Philip?’

‘I had no one else, but we paid the price for keeping the secret, Philip and me. That’s why he stays away – it’s too big a thing to know and keep swallowed. It put a wedge between us. It put a wedge between him and our parents. And it’s all my fault.’

‘Christ, Bess, what a bloody mess.’

‘It is a bloody mess!’ She cried into the front of his T-shirt, the scent of him warm and familiar. They sat locked together until their breathing found its rhythm and tiredness pawed at them.

‘Come on.’ Mario eased her from his arms and pulled back the duvet, gently shoving Chutney to his spot at the bottom of the bed.

‘I was going to sleep in Natalie’s bed tonight.’

‘Not tonight. You shouldn’t be on your own tonight.’ He lay down in the spot that had been his for the whole of their marriage. Bess walked around to her side of the bed. Glancing briefly up to the gap at the left-hand side of the blind, she saw the bedroom light go off in Helen Maxwell’s bedroom and her jaw tensed, thinking of Andrew in that grotty hotel room, hiding.

Pulling back her side of the duvet, she slid into the familiar dip where her hip nestled and felt the creep of Mario’s hand across the mattress until he found hers, and then there they lay, staring up at the three-arm chandelier, which had cost more money than they had had, their arms forming a bridge across the bed.

‘Thank you for telling me, Bess. I know that wasn’t easy.’

She nodded.

‘We have a lot to think about and a lot to talk about,’ he confirmed.

‘Yes, we do.’

‘I can’t take it in. I’ve got so many questions . . .’

‘I’ll answer them as well as I can, but not tonight.’

‘No, not tonight,’ he agreed.

There was a pulse of silence.

‘We are very different people, aren’t we, to the ones who waltzed up the aisle together all those years ago?’

‘We are. I’m sorry, Mario.’

‘I’m sorry too.’