He was the one people rang when a car would not start at midnight.
Four years together. Engaged fourteen months.
No dramatic break-ups. No scandals. No shouting in restaurants.
Our worst arguments were about wet towels on the bathroom floor and my habit of over-planning holidays.
I thought boring was beautiful. I thought safe was beautiful.
The night.
The reception finished at about eleven. My feet were destroyed. There was icing on the hem of my dress from where he had kissed me after the cake.
We were not flying out until the Monday, so we drove back to the townhouse.
And ten minutes after we came through the door, his phone started.
He looked at the screen and something moved across his face.
“Who is it?”
“Nobody.”
He rejected it. Thirty seconds later it went again, and this time he took it into the kitchen.
I got fragments. Why are you here. And: No, you can’t do this tonight. And: I said I’d talk to you.
I was standing in the hall in my wedding dress.
He came back looking grey.
“There’s something I have to deal with.”
I laughed, because I thought it was a joke. “Tonight?”
“I’ll come back.”
“You’re leaving.”
“Just for a bit.”
“We got married today.”
“I know.”
“Who called you?”
He looked at the window rather than at me.
“Verity.”
Verity Cobb. His first serious girlfriend. Nineteen to twenty-five, almost six years, a flat in Tarrow, and — according to him — an ending where they simply wanted different lives.
She lives four hours away. She is engaged. They barely speak.
All of which, I now know, is true, and none of which is the point.
What I did at three in the morning.
He left at 2:13. I watched from the landing window.
And then I did what any woman would do, and I am not going to pretend I did something more dignified.
I went through his things.
His laptop was on the desk in the spare room. His password is my birthday, which I have thought about a great deal since.
I was looking for an affair. I want that clear. I was looking for messages and photographs and a hotel booking. I had the whole thing built in my head by the time the machine woke up.
