It occurred to Thandie that eating a full roast lunch with wine was not the best idea just before taking her first yoga class in weeks. Nor, probably, was getting hugely upset, though possibly the yoga might help with that. More likely she would end up sobbing through her sun salutations. She loitered in the lobby of the yoga studio, sipping something called a Karma Revive Soyccino that cost twice as much as a coffee and tasted half as good. Soft music was playing, vaguely oriental instruments wafting over a pulsing beat, occasionally punctuated with whale song. It was doing a great job of making her feel more tense, if that was the intention. She could also have done without the smell of incense in the air, which always reminded her of snogging long-haired poets at university. And look where that had led. She should probably go into the class. If she didn’t, she knew it would be several weeks more before she gathered enough willpower to return. But then again, she’d eaten about half of the chicken, even though she’d deliberately left it too long in the oven, out of spite. That chicken was not going to be at all forgiving of her downward-facing dog.
The door from outside opened with, inevitably, the jangling of celestial chimes, and a young man came in, wearing cycling shorts and a loose T-shirt with a picture of the Buddha on it. She observed him for slightly longer than she might have done elsewhere, just because men at the yoga studio were still a rarity, and she was surprised to find him staring back at her. Did she really look so out of place? Yoga wasn’t invented by skinny white women, you know! But the man continued to stare. Thandie pretended to pay close attention to her soyccino. Could it be that he was eyeing her up? Surely not. He was very good looking but much younger than her, and probably gay.
Eventually, after a few moments of visible indecision, the man came over to her.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘are you Thandie Evans? Bill’s wife?’
Relief washed over Thandie – this was obviously some friend of Bill’s, probably an actor. It wasn’t particularly unusual to run into people they knew here, as this was the only yoga studio in town.
‘Yes, that’s me. I’m sorry, I don’t recall when we met.’ Which was just about the worst thing that you could say to an actor, but after years of tiptoeing around thespian feelings, Thandie no longer cared.
‘Oh, it was only once, very briefly,’ said the young man. He paused – dramatically, thought Thandie. ‘I’m Anthony.’ He watched her closely to see her reaction.
‘Well, it’s nice to meet you again, Anthony.’
Anthony hesitated, seeming to weigh up something in his mind, and then said, ‘Would you mind if I had a word with you, in private?’
Thandie glanced up at the clock. Five minutes until the class began. If she started a conversation with this Anthony now, there was no way that she was going to make it. But the kid was looking at her with pleading eyes – argh, I really am a soft touch, she thought.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘There’s a little garden out the back, we can sit there.’
They went outside to a small patio decorated with coloured-glass lanterns and stone statues of Indian gods, and sat at a wrought-iron table that wobbled when Thandie put her soyccino down. A feeling of foreboding began to take hold of her.
Anthony took a breath. ‘Bill and I have been, ah, friends, for five months, ever since I was in a production of A Moment of Madness in May. I played the spirit who cast the spell on the lovers and made them forget one another. It was a wonderful show.’
There was a note of hopefulness in his voice, that she would remember his performance. Thandie did remember the production, but the actors playing the spirits had all been covered in make-up – she had no specific memory of him on stage. But then it came back to her: Bill introducing his young protégé in the bar after the show, the worshipping way that Anthony had gazed at him, the way Bill’s eyes had lingered on Anthony’s greasepaint-streaked muscles. Now, as he carried on speaking, she knew, with total conviction, that this man was sleeping with her husband. She felt eerily calm and completely unsurprised. Of course he’d be an actor: the closest Bill could come to shagging one of his own creations.
‘I, ah, I ran into Bill, earlier, by chance, totally accidentally, in the pub,’ Anthony was saying. ‘He was acting very strangely. I mean, really strangely. Enough to worry me.’
‘He was acting strange at lunch today too,’ said Thandie, not at all sure why she was confiding this to her husband’s lover.
‘He told me that he isn’t Bill,’ said Anthony. ‘That he’s literally a completely different person.’ He hesitated, then went on, his voice shaking. ‘I think he might be having some kind of dissociative episode.’
Thandie almost laughed at the absurdity, but the young man was obviously distressed. She found herself feeling unexpectedly sorry for him. My marriage must truly be dead, she thought. But then she remembered that moment at lunch, Bill wild with indignation at his own treatment of her. It had been sweet, funny, oddly sexy even, and totally out of character. Perhaps what he told Anthony was true, that he did feel like a different person. But maybe this new person was one who was going to return to her? Was that even something that she wanted?
‘And he said that he’s planning to leave town,’ said Anthony. ‘Today.’
Or maybe not.
‘Could you talk to him?’ said Anthony. He looked down at his hands, a red creep of misery spreading up his neck. ‘I wouldn’t have asked you, but he won’t listen to me, and I’m really concerned. As his friend.’
‘I’ll try and find him,’ said Thandie. ‘There’s no point calling him, his phone got stolen.’ She looked over at this poor sad boy, quivering on his ornate wrought-iron chair. ‘I’ll tell him you were worried,’ she added.