I want Adam to want me all to himself the way King Edward did.

Whoever he is.

“Nicki, I care. OK? If you’re asking if I’m angry . . . what would be the point?” Adam indicates left. “It was a shock, I’m not denying that, but . . .” He sighs. “We’ve been together for twenty years. It’d be too much to expect that you’d never be tempted by anyone else.” After a pause, he adds quietly, “I have been.”

“Really?” I hope I don’t sound too eager. “Tell me. Who? Did anything happen?” I’d give anything for it to turn out that Adam’s as bad as me. I would forgive him anything.

“Nothing’s ever happened, no,” he says decisively. So decisively it makes me wonder. I don’t think he’d lie, but . . . how tempted was he? How many times?

I’d forgive you. Whatever you’d done. Words I say to Sophie and Ethan often. Words no one has ever said to me.

That must be real love, mustn’t it? Knowing you want to share the rest of your life with someone whatever they’ve done, knowing they’re perfect for you whatever mistakes they’ve made. I hope that’s how Adam feels about me.

“And nothing happened between you and this Gavin guy, did it?” he asks.

“If nothing had happened, I wouldn’t be on my way to the police station to humiliate myself,” I say, nearly gagging as I contemplate the ordeal that lies ahead.

“I mean nothing physical.”

“No. Nothing physical.”

“Good. If you’d slept with him twice a week for the last six months, that I’d find harder to forgive, but you said yourself—when you think about it now, it seems like a kind of madness came over you.”

“Yes.”

“I can understand that. I’m not saying I’m thrilled it happened, but . . . I don’t know, maybe it’s unrealistic to expect no obstacles ever in a marriage.”

“Maybe,” I say, wondering what exactly Melissa told Lee. She doesn’t know about Gavin or King Edward, thank God, but she does know about two one-night stands I had when Adam and I were first married, two incidents that now seem so trivial and far away it’s as if they happened to someone else—or perhaps they didn’t happen at all. The case for their being real is no more persuasive than an episode of some old soap opera I watched decades ago.

I have to hope that if Melissa or any member of the Redgate family says anything to Adam, it will be in general terms.

So Nicki’s told you, has she?

Yeah, she’s told me.

My mother would be talking about the two one-night stands, and Adam would be talking about Gavin. No one would be indelicate enough to go into detail, surely.