I glance at Adam. How must he feel, hearing all this a second time, in front of a stranger?

“I’m OK,” he says. “You can tell her. Don’t worry about me.” He turns to Sergeant Zailer. “I love my wife and I’m not going to let a brief stupid lapse turn me against her.”

Really? How about a brief stupid lapse of nearly half a century—my entire life, in fact?

“Your relationship’s none of my business, Mr. Clements. Go on, Nicki.”

I can’t. I can’t say the difficult part. Maybe if I start earlier in the story, it’ll be easier. “Gavin put an ad on a website called Intimate Links. Do you know it?”

“I’ve heard of it,” Sergeant Zailer says.

“If you’ve never looked at Intimate Links, this might sound a bit strange, but a lot of people advertise for very specific things. Particular fetishes, for example. There’s a lot of dom-sub stuff: foot worship, guys wanting mother-baby role-play, doctor-patient fantasies . . . When I used to look regularly, there was a man who posted the same ad every day asking for a woman who would make insulting remarks about his wife while having sex with him. I always wondered about that one—I mean, why specifically that? Anyway, sorry, that’s irrelevant. These ads often have particular physical requirements: this or that type of body—skinny, obese, shaved, unshaved. A lot of the adverts are very direct. Gavin’s was. He specified certain . . . physical things, things that applied to me. Blond, petite and . . . other more intimate things. His advert read as if he was describing me.”

Because he was. He was King Edward, using a different name to reel you in.

Adam reaches for my hand. I understand him less now than I ever have.

I say, “I’m sure this sounds very sordid, and maybe it is, but there’s also something liberating about being able to abandon social niceties and read what people really want. And to read an ad written by a man who tells you in advance that he will be completely transfixed by your body when he hasn’t seen it yet . . . To write back and say, ‘That’s me you’re describing,’ and to get a reply within ten seconds that says, ‘Then I want you’ . . . There’s something refreshing about that, believe it or not.”

“I can believe it,” says Sergeant Zailer. “Nicki, there’s no need to be defensive. I’m not judgmental about other people’s sex lives. Really. Mine would probably shock you more than yours shocks me. To be honest, if I’m shocked by anything, it’s the resilience of your marriage. I think it’s great that you and Adam are sitting here holding hands while you’re telling me all this.”

“I know Nicki loves me,” says Adam. “She didn’t love this Gavin person. That’s why I can get past it.”