3

Thankfully, the taxi driver was silent as he drove her home to her townhouse in the west of the city.

Just as he parked the car, her phone rang. She really didn’t want to speak to anyone, so with a sigh she fished it out of her handbag. But she didn’t recognise the number on the screen. Could it be someone who couldn’t make the funeral offering their condolences?

‘Hello?’

There was nothing. But the connection was still live.

‘Hello?’ she repeated.

What was that? Breathing?

‘Can I help you?’

Nothing.

‘For goodness sake,’ she said as she disconnected the call.

‘Something wrong, missus?’ asked the driver over his shoulder.

‘Third time this week,’ she said absently, as she read the taxi meter and fumbled through her purse for the correct money.

Getting out of the taxi, she tried to ignore the alarm bell ringing faintly in the back of her mind. She had enough to worry about; she didn’t need to fret over a few prank calls.

After he drove away, she stood on the front step, the key in her hand, reluctant to enter her own home. The house Thomas worked towards – dreamed of – reached above her into a night sky turned featureless by electric light. His monument to success.

Cold and as welcoming as a mausoleum.

Somehow, miraculously, she slept. Only for an hour or so, but still, better than nothing. When she woke up, the room was in darkness and she imagined Thomas beside her, on his back, hands on his chest, his breath a soft gurgle in his throat.

She tried to assess what time it was. A slice of streetlight showed through a gap in her curtains. It would probably be nearly time for him to get up and get ready for work.

After Christopher’s death, work – the business – had become the channel for Thomas’s grief. While she’d thrown herself into charity work, he’d spent hour upon hour working on deals. And to be fair it worked, and he was soon expanding into bigger premises and sites in London and Manchester.

Sure, she suspected that there were some dodgy dealings going on; who grows quite so rapidly in such a short space of time without blurring the lines a little? But she trusted Thomas not to get into anything too tricky. And if she was honest, she had allowed the riches it brought her to blinker her. She had developed a tremendous ability to buy stuff – and then, when she was bloated with all kinds of nothing, she would sell it and raise cash for charity.

The money continued to flood in. They moved to a bigger house in the city. Then an even bigger one.

All of this room – she looked around herself – a tangible representation of the emotional space that had grown between them.

She twisted on the bed and faced his side. She reached a hand out and stroked the sheet where he only recently lay. Imagined her hand resting on his naked hip; the skin there smooth and hairless in contrast to the matting of hair that covered almost everywhere else.

Once again, an image of her son popped into her head. The ache of missing him ever present.

Enough, she thought. Sat up and kicked her feet off the bed. She was being morose.

She got to her feet, picked a silk dressing gown from a chair at the side of the bed, drew it around herself and went through to the spare bedroom, where Thomas sometimes slept when he came in late from a business meeting. He always said he didn’t want to disturb her, which was fine. He would only reek of cigarettes and whisky. Fumble at her as if prompted by memories of better times, and then turn onto his back and snore like a road drill was stuck in his throat. She sat on a small leather armchair that was tucked into a corner, looked over at the pristine, empty bed, and felt a shock to see that her husband wasn’t there. He wasn’t working late. He was never going to work late again.

Grief sucked the air from her lungs. She gasped with the pain of it. How had she managed to get through the funeral?

How was she going to get through the rest of her life?

Pulling her knees to her chest she thought about the day. All those people, and how many of them did she really know? How many of them really knew Thomas?

Then, from somewhere, an image of the young woman in the wide-brimmed hat. Her brief hug as she slipped something into her pocket.

She had been so caught up in the day she hadn’t even bothered to check what the girl had given her.

Her jacket. She’d just allowed it to fall to the floor in the hall. Since when had she become so careless about her belongings? The suit had cost her more than four hundred pounds and she’d let it fall to the floor like a rag…

She got to her feet, walked down the stairs and along the hall. There was enough of a glow from the street outside for her to see what she was doing without switching on the hall light.

There, a black slump of cashmere on the carpet. She bent forwards and picked it up. Patted it down to locate the pocket then slid her hand inside and pulled out the small envelope. Tucking her jacket under her left arm, she examined the contents.

It was a small piece of unlined paper, the upper edge ragged as if it had been torn out of a notebook. And there in careful, feminine, curled handwriting, three short sentences. Sentences that could have the power to change her life.

Your husband was not the man you thought he was. Call this number. You need to know the truth.