She flicks off her headlights, coasting at little over ten miles per hour as she sees him pull into a car park ahead. Street lights hover overhead, casting an amber glow like giant fireflies, dim, but enough to make out three men waiting for Alexander as he gets out. She recognises two of them as men who work for her husband. One is the brute that Natasha had a thing with a few months back. The other has a mean face that only a mother could love. The third man is a mystery. He looks nervous, fidgeting, shifting from foot to foot. She doubts that she could hear what they are saying even if she got out of the car, and is deciding what to do next when she sees the big man pop the boot open, stoop down, straighten up with something over his shoulder.

It looks like a roll of carpet, kink in the middle, draped over front and back. Then she sees it. The hair. There’s somebody in there. A woman. Not quite the rendezvous she thought she would be gatecrashing. There’s something familiar about the hair, even in this pale yellow light. Long coils of it spill out like oil slicks, bouncing against his back as he turns towards the woods. It can’t be, can it? Flashes of family photos in her mind. Hair, spread like raven’s wings on her stepdaughter’s shoulders. She curses her overactive imagination. Tells herself she needs to turn round and drive home the first opportunity she gets.

Up ahead, she sees her husband put an arm around the mystery man’s shoulder, steering him towards the pub a little way back down the road. The other two men have faded into the treeline. She stares into the shadows, willing them to take form, to let her see where they’re going. She has to know. Is it her? Was she hurt? A glance back to the pub confirms Alexander has disappeared inside, and before she can convince herself it’s a stupid thing to do, she’s out of the car and moving towards the trees. Every stone she kicks, every twig she steps on, seems to echo like a gunshot. The path ahead fades to black after a hundred yards, and the men ahead are shapeless lumps of black, just out of reach. Just a little further, she tells herself. Repeats it over and over like a mantra.

She steps carefully, lifting her feet now to avoid scuffing against anything. She has gotten her wish. There isn’t anyone else. No matter who that is up ahead, she wishes now more than ever that life was simple, and that her husband was having an affair. That she could deal with. But this? This is something else entirely.

GEORGE – APRIL 1983