As she spoke, her eyes never left her husband. The light was intentionally dim over in this corner, but she thought she saw the colour drain from his face like sand through an egg timer. His pouring hand wobbled slightly, causing the wine to flow off-centre and splash against the side of the glass. He put the bottle down carefully without raising his eyes to her, and then slowly lifted his glass to his lips and took in the wine’s bouquet. Satisfied, he took a drink, letting the wine circulate around his mouth, and then put his glass down.

Finally, he spoke.

‘Oh yes. I meant to talk to you about that,’ he said, his tone carefully calculated, it seemed to Grace, to sit somewhere between casual and interested. ‘What did you tell him?’

‘I said I didn’t know anything about a house in Whitley Bay, at which point he suggested that he spoke to you instead.’

Charles raised his eyebrows and nodded as if this was all making perfect sense to him, but offered no explanation. Grace, remembering her conversation with the patronising bank manager, began to grow irritated.

‘Well?’ she said. ‘Do we own a house that I know nothing about, and if so, why?’

She eyed Charles closely, feeling unsure of her ground. She had never considered her husband to be a secret-keeper. She shared everything with him and until now, she had thought that this was a reciprocal arrangement; but what if she had been wrong? Well, she had kept the occasional secret from Charles – his birthday presents, for instance, that weekend away to Paris that she had arranged when they were first married, the pool table in the den that she had bought him on a whim. But a house?

‘I’m so sorry, Grace,’ Charles said, and Grace felt her throat constrict. What did he have to be sorry about? What was going on here?

‘I should have told you,’ he continued, ‘but first I was away and then what with little Clio surprising us like she did it just slipped my mind. I never intended for you to find out like this.’

‘Find out what?’ Grace asked, both exasperated by his prevaricating and now more than a little unnerved. ‘What haven’t you told me, Charles? Why have you bought a house?’ Then a terrible thought occurred to her. She was dismissing it even as it streaked across her mind, but it escaped from her mouth before she could stop it. ‘You’re not going to leave me, are you?’

But even as she heard the words uttered, she knew it couldn’t be true. Charles adored her. She knew this with all her heart and it wasn’t something you could fake. His love for her was real and deep and not an imitation, or something that might pass for love if you avoided examining it too closely.