The day of our conference finally arrives. I’m feeling nervous and excited as I drive to the office in the early morning. Kelly is waiting, and together we fill the boot of my car with presentation packs and merchandise that we plan to distribute among the various investors who have committed to attend. In the end, there have been fewer acceptances of invitations than we’d hoped for, but Jess remains confident that we should emerge at the end of the day with a major investor in place. She’d had dinner earlier in the week with Alan Wright, a retired property developer who’d made a fortune in the Middle East. Alan is well known for his finicky ways, his mild eccentricities – he’s a man who likes to create a little fuss around him, which Jess was happy to do in order to secure his backing. Her feeling, at the end of the meal, was that his support was almost guaranteed. He had as good as said as much. Still, the pressure is on, and as we drive through the city streets I run through my presentation in my head. Despite all the preparations, all the late nights, the rehearsals, the fact-checking and role-playing, I still feel a pinch of anxiety as if there’s something I’ve forgotten.
‘What’s this?’ Kelly asks, her legs brushing against the ring binder in its tote bag sitting in the footwell.
‘It’s a draft of Ed’s new book,’ I tell her. ‘You’re not to look at it. He’d kill me if he thought I’d let anyone sneak a peek.’
‘Guard it with your life,’ he had intoned as he’d handed me the ring binder containing a copy of his latest draft. Despite his jokey manner, I knew that he was entrusting me with something dear to him. ‘Seriously, Faye. Don’t lose it or anything. It’s still a rough draft and I’d die if anyone else were to read it and pass judgement.’
My sensitive husband.
‘Don’t worry,’ I’d told him. ‘I’ll keep it safe.’
All week, I’ve been schlepping it around with me in a cloth tote, reading snippets of it on my morning commute, parsing the text in quick snatches on my lunch-break. I read hungrily, scouring the text for Michael, knowing the influence he’s had over the writing. Reading the description of the psychiatric facility: the yellow walls, beige tiles on the floors, the twin odours of gingivitis and disinfectant fighting against one another, one of the characters remarking: ‘All of us had bad breath from the Lithium.’ And I wonder if this character is Michael? Is it his own lived experience when the character’s mouth grows dry and ulcerous, his gums bleed, when the weight starts piling on? I think of the Michael I had known – that lean and vital youth – and, when I compare him with the overweight bloated creature he has become, I cannot help but believe that the account in these pages is his own bitter truth.
The traffic is light enough, and the car moves quickly, Kelly chattering animatedly beside me, which helps stave off my nerves.
‘Jess has just arrived,’ she tells me, reading the screen of her phone. ‘She’s gone up to the conference hall but says to call her when we get there, and she’ll come down to help us carry all the gear up.’
‘Okay. Great,’ I breathe.
My phone is clipped on to the dashboard and it pings, drawing our attention. It’s a notification of some sort but not one I recognize. I put out my hand and touch the screen, and straight away a map appears showing the grid of streets through which we’re travelling along with a trail of red dots.
Kelly leans forward to get a closer look. ‘That’s weird,’ she says.
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know, but it’s showing the route we’ve just travelled.’
When the car stops at the traffic lights, I glance down and see that she is right. Even after the lights change, and I put the car in gear again, turning left at the next corner, the trail of red dots on the map follows me.
‘It’s like we’re being tracked,’ Kelly remarks.
By the time we reach our destination, I’m feeling a little uneasy. I pull the car into a parking space and turn off the engine, reaching for my phone. Scrolling through, I find the notification and read it.
‘It says something about an AirTag,’ I tell Kelly. ‘What is that?’
‘Oh, I know what that is. It’s like a little Bluetooth gadget for finding your keys or your phone – it’s a little disk you stick on and then you can monitor the whereabouts from your phone.’
‘But … I don’t have one of those.’
Kelly is already busy looking around the car, opening the glove box, searching in the well behind the gearshift. ‘It must be here somewhere.’
Together, we look for it, scanning the back seats, looking under the carpet mats, until finally Kelly finds it tucked beneath the passenger seat. A small disk no bigger than a one-euro coin, bearing the familiar Apple logo. ‘It’s probably Ed’s,’ she says, handing it to me. ‘Either that, or you’ve got a stalker.’
A throwaway remark said flippantly, but it catches me off guard.
There’s no time to think about it, and, once I reach the conference space and start setting up the room, I manage to push away any negative thoughts, welcoming the investors with a smile and a firm handshake. We have coffee and chat for a while, before everyone takes their seat and the presentations begin. Jess kicks things off, welcoming everyone and giving an account of how she came up with the idea for the company. Frank picks up the baton and talks through the product design, how it’s being developed, the various features, clicking through his slide presentation with confidence and fluidity. A bank of laptops has been set up along a row of tables with the software installed, and he invites the investors to spend some time exploring the programs.
There’s a good buzz in the room, and I’m standing to one side, observing, when Kelly gestures for me to join her. She’s chatting with Josh, one of our software developers, and, as I approach, she leans forward and says: ‘I was just telling Josh about that thing we found in your car, Faye,’ she begins.
‘Oh, that.’ I’d put it out of my mind during the presentations, but now the uneasiness is back.
Kelly elbows Josh. ‘Tell her what you told me.’
Josh pushes his glasses a little higher up the bridge of his nose and says: ‘Well, they’re used mainly as key-finders. They’re relatively cheap – you can pick one up for less than fifty euro – and they’re easy to use.’
‘How do they work?’
‘So you attach the disk to your keys or whatever, and then whenever you want to find them you just check the Find My app on your phone and it’ll bring up a map to show you where they are.’
‘Wait, though. The AirTag that I found in my car doesn’t belong to me. I don’t even have the Find My app. So why did it show up on my phone?’
‘Ah. Well, that would be an alert to notify you to the presence of the device. You see, Apple have designed it so that if an AirTag not registered to you is seen to be moving with you over time, then you get an alert.’
‘A warning,’ Kelly adds, and Josh nods.
‘Tell her about the surveillance stuff,’ Kelly prompts, and the tightness in my chest squeezes up a notch.
‘Yeah, so there’ve been some concerns expressed about these devices being used to track people, rather than keys.’
‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Kelly says to me, a small note of triumph in her voice. ‘A stalker!’
‘I don’t have a stalker,’ I answer quickly, but my heart is beating fast.
There’s no time to think about it. At that moment, Jess calls me up to the podium. It’s my turn to present to the investors.
For weeks, I’ve been preparing for this moment, practising my speech over and over again, but now, unnerved by the conversation with Josh and Kelly, I find myself rushing through my slides, stumbling a little over my words, making small mistakes. When taking questions from the floor, I get flustered over my answers and am embarrassed when one of the investors corrects my facts and Jess has to step in, smoothly taking over, but I can tell she is furious.
Afterwards, she corners me.
‘What happened to you?’ she hisses.
‘I’m sorry. It’s nerves, I guess.’
Her eyes flash. ‘Well, get them under control. Now is not the time, okay?’
After that, I pull myself together. Any thoughts I have about Michael, or AirTags, or stalkers are pushed firmly aside. I focus ruthlessly on working the room, answering questions competently and professionally. It takes all of my energy, and by the time we sit down to lunch I feel the creep of exhaustion.
Jess and I have planned the seating arrangement so that each of the senior members of our team is next to a major potential investor. I’ve been appointed to sit alongside Alan Wright. He’s interesting company, regaling me with tales of deals done in Saudi and Qatar, and I’m grateful for his chattiness, his ease of conversation, although his fussiness grates a little. The starters are served, and immediately he begins quizzing the waiter on the provenance of all the ingredients.
‘I only eat organic,’ he explains to me, and I tell him that I’ll speak with the chef, which seems to reassure him.
I return from the kitchen, armed with guarantees as to the nature of the food, to find my uneaten starter has been cleared away. But when the main course arrives, Alan complains that the salmon is undercooked and sends his dish back, advising me to do the same.
‘Especially in your condition,’ he adds, nodding to my bump.
I’m tired now, and my hunger has been blunted by the strain of the morning. I just want this meal to end so I can go home and collapse on the sofa. In the lull between our main course and dessert, unwelcome thoughts begin trickling through. I catch sight of Josh across the room, and think again of what he’d said about the AirTag. Was it possible that Michael had planted it in our car so that he could track my movements? I run through all the various possibilities, the different occasions when he might have had an opportunity. Might Ed have given him a lift at some point? I seem to recall a wet afternoon when they’d returned to the house instead of going for a walk. Might it have occurred then?
‘Don’t eat that,’ Alan says, interrupting my thoughts with a jolt. He’s taken hold of my wrist, restraining me from putting a piece of Brie in my mouth. ‘You might want to check because I’m pretty sure that’s unpasteurized.’
Something in me snaps. ‘It’s just a piece of fucking cheese,’ I say with a quick laugh that doesn’t go far enough to mask my irritation. I see the look that comes over his face, the shuttering of his eyes, the small moue his mouth makes.
‘Sorry,’ he says coldly. ‘I was just trying to be considerate.’
‘I know you were, and I’m sorry if I seemed rude,’ I tell him, hastily backtracking, but it’s too late.
He turns away, making polite conversation with the guest flanking his other side. I try to draw his attention back to me, but he pointedly ignores my attempt. Shortly afterwards, he excuses himself from the table. I see him saying a quick goodbye to Jess and then he’s gone. She shoots me a quizzical look that communicates an anxious surprise at his hasty exit, and all I can do is shrug in return.
It’s a relief when the lunch ends, the guests leave, and I can pack up the leftover materials into the boot of my car. It’s late afternoon, the sky already darkening, street lamps coming on as I drive back to the office with Kelly. Together we unload the boot, returning the materials to Reception. There’s a message from Ed on my phone: he’s got tickets for Verdi’s Requiem in the National Concert Hall – a last-minute thing. When I call him, his voice sounds rushed, and there’s background noise like he’s in a station.
‘Oh, come on!’ he urges when I tell him how tired I am, how I’ve had a shitty day and I just want to curl up on the sofa. ‘We’re going to have months and months of being stuck at home after the baby is born.’
‘I know, but –’
‘No buts! Just put your shitty day behind you and come. The music will relax you, I promise!’
I don’t want to go but I’m aware of how strained things have been between us lately. Ever since our conversation about Ed’s new friendship with Michael, there has been a simmering tension in our home. Perhaps a night out together with some beautiful music in a comfortable setting will help us to ease back to the way we were. And so, as soon as I’ve finished following up on various actions arising from our presentations that day, I leave the office and hurry past Leinster House, which is lit up tonight in blue and yellow, and make my way around Stephen’s Green. The concert begins at 7.30, and I am already at risk of being late. Breathless, I arrive in the foyer of the Concert Hall to find the crowd drifting towards the open doors of the auditorium. I cast about, looking for Ed, while simultaneously unwinding the scarf from about my neck. It’s hot in here, and the swift walk from the office while carrying my bags has left me feeling sweaty and drained. Already, my feet are aching and I’m looking forward to slipping off my shoes and slumping in a comfortable seat, while soothing choral music fills the auditorium, my husband at my side.
I see him then, across the room by the bar, chatting to a woman in a red dress, a patterned orange scarf wrapped around her hair. As I weave my way through the crowd, Ed catches sight of me and waves and the woman turns and smiles. I don’t know this woman, and yet there’s something familiar about her.
‘You made it!’ Ed says, leaning in to kiss me, then takes a step back and turns to the other woman. ‘Verona, this is my wife, Faye. Honey, meet Verona.’
I shake her outstretched hand, and see a flicker of curiosity in her eyes, a pleat in the smooth dark skin of her brow as the introductions are made. She’s trying to place me, but I get there first. A beat of panic in my chest, and then she says: ‘Didn’t I see you before? Outside the house –’
‘What’s this?’ Ed asks, leaning into the conversation, but at that moment Michael arrives, wiping his hands on his jeans.
‘Faye. So good to see you again.’
The breath quickens in my throat, as he leans forward and kisses my cheek. The ticklish brush of his beard makes me recoil, his lips against my skin a violation. It is all I can do to maintain some semblance of poise, of calm.
His arms rise briefly as he beams at me. ‘Look at all of us here. Isn’t this great? I’m just so glad you guys could make it.’
I shoot a glance at Ed, who explains: ‘Jamesie here had the tickets. There were a couple going spare so when he rang and offered them to us, I jumped at the chance.’ Turning to the others, he explains: ‘Faye loves choral music.’
‘Really?’ Michael says, his eyes lighting on me.
‘It’s how she relaxes,’ Ed explains. ‘A hot bath and Rachmaninov’s Vespers, isn’t that right honey?’
‘Ed.’ I flash him a quick glance, alarmed at the words pouring out of him, details which seem too intimate a revelation.
‘What? It’s true. You’re always saying as much.’
‘The Vespers, huh?’ Michael remarks, his gaze still locked on mine.
It frightens me, this charade we are playing. And it shames me too, my husband looking on smilingly, unaware of the great lie that is unfolding around him. But somehow the moment for owning up to the past, admitting to an old intimacy, a relationship that had been deep and important, has slipped by. Time and events have moved too quickly, and now any attempt to explain it, to rationalize the deceit, just seems too difficult, too dangerous.
‘When are you due?’ Verona asks.
‘The end of the year,’ I tell her.
‘New Year’s Eve,’ Ed clarifies.
‘Oh, that’s exciting! Perhaps your baby might be the first child of the New Year! It’s always the picture on the front of the paper, isn’t it? A woman holding a tiny baby. I love those shots!’
There’s a musical lilt to her laughter. I look at her, this woman – the fine dusting of gold powder high on her cheeks, short lashes curled and frosted with mascara that is an electric shade of blue – and I wonder at her relationship with Michael. Is she a girlfriend or is this an early date? The latter, I suspect, given the lack of physical touch between them, a certain unease in the way they stand together that suggests they are not used to being paired in this way. But then I remember her coming out of his house that day and getting into a little green car.
‘Is this your first baby?’ she asks.
‘Yes,’ I say, avoiding Michael’s stare, which I know has tightened, grown focused and intense.
‘Shall we go in?’ Ed suggests.
In the darkness of the auditorium, I cannot relax. I try to concentrate on the music, or on the warm pressure of Ed’s hand in mine, but I am too aware of Michael’s presence. I keep thinking of the AirTag found in my car, the footprint in the garden, this feeling I have of being under his constant surveillance. Separated from him by Ed and Verona, I am alive to his every movement. Every shift in his seat, each turn of his head – I follow it all with my peripheral vision, like an animal grazing nervously, alert for a predator.
When the lights go up for the interval, and the room thunders with applause, it feels like I’ve been holding my breath for the past hour. Ed lets go of my hand and suggests a drink to the others, and we are all filing out of our seats when it happens.
Michael, who has the aisle seat, stands aside to allow Verona out first and then Ed, each of whom slips into the stream of people making a beeline out of the auditorium and towards the bar. And so it is that I am the last to make my way out of the row. Michael waits in the aisle. I avoid eye contact with him and am edging past when he thrusts out his hand and grabs my belly.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask, breathy with shock and confusion – he grabbed me – but he doesn’t answer, and, when I look at his face, I see his features have darkened, his mouth set in a grim line of determination.
‘Stop it!’ I hiss, alarm jumping in my throat. His grip is hard, insistent; the baby turns over inside me.
I push away from him and stumble into the aisle, forcing my way through the crowd, not caring how brusque I appear, desperate to get away.
The foyer is buzzing with noise, people milling about and clotting around the bar, but I head straight for the ladies, pushing the door through into the nearest available cubicle. I slam the door behind me and flip the lock, before I bend over double, leaning into the closed door, the blood pounding in my temples, my limbs trembling.
From outside the cubicle come sounds of taps turning and toilets flushing, hand-dryers loudly humming, alongside the murmurs and shuffles of those waiting. Minutes pass, but still I don’t leave. Occasionally, someone pushes against the door, testing to see if it’s occupied, but I remain where I am. I can still feel the imprint of his hand on my belly, the current of need that channelled through his fingers right into my womb – a dark want, the feeling of a debt owed to him, a debt he was going to call in.
When the buzzer goes at the end of the interval, I emerge from my cubicle and see Verona waiting by the sinks.
‘Are you all right?’ she asks.
‘Yes. Just … you know,’ I answer, flustered.
‘Ed asked me to come and check on you. He was worried –’
‘Of course. Thank you. Just tired. But I’m fine, really.’
I move past her to the sink. Turning the tap, I catch sight of myself in the mirror. Two spots of high colour have appeared on my cheeks; the rest of my face is wan and drained.
‘No wonder you’re tired. Uncomfortable too, I imagine. Trying to sit in those seats with that little one resting heavily on your lap.’
She tugs a paper towel from the roll and passes it to me so I can dry my hands. I remember the day I saw her outside Michael’s house, the child clambering into the back seat of the car.
‘Do you have children?’ I ask, and she smiles and shakes her head.
‘No. But I have a niece – my sister’s little girl. I was her birth partner – she was doing it alone, you see. So I kind of lived it vicariously. Which is not the same, I realize.’
‘And you and Jamesie,’ I say tentatively, that name sounding artificial coming from my mouth. ‘How long have you been –’
She laughs suddenly, a rich burst of sound, the skin above her nose wrinkling with amusement. ‘No, no. It’s not like that. I mean, we’re friends, I suppose. I was in the house when he offered the tickets, so I said yes.’ She tilts her head to one side and says: ‘It’s funny the way you and Ed call him “Jamesie”. Everyone else – me, his mother, even Min – we all call him Michael.’
I take in this piece of information and it prods the suspicion within me – that this friendship between Michael and my husband is just a ruse to get to me. He has taken care to hide his identity from me. Why else would he use this nickname? Verona sees the expression on my face and misreads it as confusion.
‘Min is Michael’s aunt,’ she explains. ‘Or great-aunt, actually. I’m her carer. I look after her several days in every week.’
‘How long have you been her carer?’
‘Just over a year. She’d had a series of falls, you see, and Nuala – Michael’s mother – wanted her to go into a nursing home. But Min was having none of it. Her body’s frail, but there’s nothing wrong with her mind. Sharp as a tack, she is, and pretty feisty too.’
She tells me then about the closeness that has developed between them, about how Min’s health has been failing recently, and I remember what Michael had told me: She’s old now, bedridden. She can’t even make it to the bathroom without help.
Perhaps this is true, but, then again, I’ve only his word for it – that, and Verona’s vague testimony. This version of Min – frail, helpless – doesn’t tally with my memory of her. There was a side to her that was waspish and vindictive. I could never be entirely sure whether she liked me. Of all the people he might have told our secret to, Min remains the most likely. And what would she do with that knowledge, I wonder. That spidery handwriting – could it be Min’s scrawl? Michael had dismissed the notion, but he’d always thought the best of her, naive to what she was capable of. But the Min I knew was shrewd and calculating. If she wanted something done, she would find a way of doing it. Could it be possible that she blames me for what’s happened to him, the wreck he’s made of his life?
‘Didn’t you know her once?’ Verona asks, her brow wrinkled with curiosity. ‘She mentioned a Faye before, and then something Michael said made me think –’
‘Must be a different Faye,’ I say quickly, my mouth dry, suddenly parched.
A beat and then she says: ‘Okay. My mistake.’ Brightening, she adds: ‘We’d better go and join the others.’
Back in the auditorium, the lights are dimming as we take our seats.
‘You okay?’ Ed whispers, his eyes fixed on me with concern.
I nod, then add: ‘A bit sore. Uncomfortable.’
He places a hand on my bump, gently rubs it. From over his shoulder, I can feel Michael’s gaze, sense the hunger in it.
‘Actually, would you mind if I go home now?’ I ask Ed. ‘You don’t have to come with me –’
‘Are you not well?’
‘I’m fine, it’s just been one hell of a day and these seats are killing me. Seriously, you stay …’
Around us, there’s applause as the conductor resumes his place at the podium. Ed glances at the stage before turning back to me, his features sharp and hassled.
‘I’ll come with you –’
‘No, you don’t have to –’
‘It’s fine.’ He hurries me along, whispering something to Michael as we shuffle past. I don’t hear it, refusing to look at him or Verona, not caring what either of them thinks as I hurry away.
We are both quiet on the drive home. A light rain begins to fall, and the windscreen wipers flick back and forth. Ed leans one elbow against the driver’s window and sighs gently.
‘You know you didn’t have to come home with me,’ I tell him.
‘I know.’
‘Honestly, I wouldn’t have minded.’ I feel guilty at cutting his night short, even more so because I can’t explain it.
‘I wouldn’t have been able to relax and enjoy it,’ he explains. ‘I’d have been worried about you. And the little one.’
‘I’m fine. We’re fine.’
He nods and smiles, but the smile falls quickly from his face as he turns his attention back to the road. There’s a long silence, broken only when he turns the car into our driveway, switches off the engine, and says: ‘You really don’t like him, do you?’
I don’t ask who he’s referring to. We both know well who he means.
‘No, I don’t.’
‘I don’t understand – you’ve hardly even spoken two words to him. How can you judge him when you’ve barely tried to get to know him?’
‘It’s a feeling I get – an instinct.’
‘Right,’ he says, unimpressed.
I’ve been grappling with whether or not I should say something to Ed about what just happened. Part of me knows that it means opening a whole can of worms, but the other part just thinks, fuck it …
‘You were wondering what happened to me during the interval, why I spent the whole time in the bathroom? Well, it’s because just as you were heading off to the bar, as I was getting out of my seat, he sort of grabbed me –’
‘He what?’
‘He put his hand out on to my bump.’
Ed frowns, thinking about this. ‘He touched your bump?’
‘Yes, but not just like touching it. There was something aggressive in the way he did it.’
He props his elbow on the side of the door, rubs a finger over his mouth. I can see that he’s turning it over in his head, trying to figure it out.
‘Is there a chance this was a misunderstanding? I know how sensitive you are about people touching your bump.’
‘Are you kidding? You think this is my being overly sensitive?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
I stare at him, but he goes on: ‘Remember what you were like when my mother tried to touch you? You jumped like a scalded cat.’
I shake my head. ‘This is different. It’s not just a case of his not asking first. He just lunged at me. I was frightened.’
He sits up straighter in his seat. ‘Did you confront him about it?’
‘Yes! I mean, I told him to stop, but he kept on pushing his hand there, like he wanted something … like he was leeching off me –’
‘You make him sound like some kind of incubus! Come on, in the middle of the fucking Concert Hall?’
The argument is running away from me, but still the frustration is there, the swell of anxiety at how deeply and consistently Michael is infiltrating our lives.
‘He gives me the creeps,’ I say, shuddering a little.
‘For God’s sake …’ he mutters. He thinks I’m being melodramatic, but he doesn’t know what I know.
‘Look, the other day, you said he was in the car with you, that you picked him up and gave him a lift back to our house.’
He eyes me warily. ‘Yeah. So?’
‘I found this today.’ A quick rummage in my bag turns up the AirTag. I hand it to him, explaining: ‘It was here in the passenger side, just underneath the seat.’
He turns the disk over, examining it, his mouth tense. He doesn’t say anything and I can’t tell what he’s thinking. Instead I go on, explaining to him about the device, its purpose.
‘Don’t you see? He planted it here in our car so he could keep track of our movements, see where we’re going.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Who else could it have been? All this time you’ve been spending with him – have you asked yourself why he’s around so much? Every time you want to go for a pint, he’s there. Or during the day, when you feel like popping out for a coffee, he’s happy to come along. You didn’t even know him a few months ago, and now he’s suddenly your best friend? I think it’s strange and, yes, sort of creepy, the way he’s latched on to you. It scares me a little.’
He breathes deeply, exhaling through his nose. The AirTag is held between his thumb and index finger, and he holds it up to me. ‘I bought this myself, Faye. Not for me but for my dad. He’s getting old and forgetful, and he keeps losing his keys, which is driving Mum mad. I bought it to help them out but, ironically, it must have fallen off the keys when I brought him to the hospital the other day for his check-up.’ His jaw clenches and I see just how angry he is. ‘I can’t believe you would jump to such a ridiculous conclusion. Do you have any idea how paranoid you sound?’
I don’t answer. A well of shame rises inside me, pressing up against my earlier conviction of Michael’s guilt and unsettling it.
‘As for the way he’s latched on to me, as you put it – I had thought that’s because he actually might enjoy my company.’
‘I just wish you didn’t hang around with him so much. You have other friends –’
‘Oh, yeah! There’s a stampede of them wanting to hang out with me …’
There is real bitterness in his voice; it surprises me.
‘You can’t have it both ways,’ he tells me. ‘You can’t push me to make new friends and then disapprove of them afterwards.’
‘I don’t push you –’
‘Yes, you do! Jesus!’ he cries, exasperated. ‘You’ve no idea how controlling you can be. Trying to stage manage my whole life, dictating who I can and cannot be friends with.’
‘He grabbed me –’
‘Oh, please, just spare me the drama.’
I stare at him, a cool tide of panic rising within. ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’
He looks down at the AirTag still in his hands and says nothing.
‘You’re taking his side instead of mine.’
He makes a sharp grunt of annoyance, and snaps that it’s not about taking sides. For a moment, he doesn’t speak. Then he brings his eyes up to meet mine, his expression guarded, his tone careful. ‘It was your idea to move back here, Faye, and I was happy enough to go along with it. But you’ve been difficult to live with lately. You’re so focused on work, which is fine, but whenever we spend time together I get the sense that you’re constantly trying to bolster me, boost my ego or something. I don’t think you realize how much pressure that puts on me. It’s like I have to constantly reassure you that I’m fine, that I’m happy, that I’ve no regrets. It’s exhausting.’
He shakes his head, waiting for my reaction, but I say nothing, too shocked to utter a word.
‘And your own behaviour,’ he adds tentatively, ‘well, it’s been erratic. The day of my party, the way you disappeared like that –’
Instinctively, I squirm from the topic, and he continues: ‘It was so out of character. At times you’ve seemed so distant, almost secretive. And then there’s the baby –’
‘What about the baby?’
‘It feels sometimes that you’re more frightened by this pregnancy than excited about it.’
‘That’s not fair, Ed. I’m just a bit nervous. It’s perfectly normal.’
‘I know, I know,’ he says calmly, trying to be conciliatory. ‘I just wish we could talk to each other more about this stuff. I’ve tried, but you push me away, and then I’ve ended up talking to other people instead – Martha, Will –’
‘Jamesie?’
The set of his jaw hardens.
‘I think you’re wrong about him. He’s a good guy. Isn’t it possible that whatever happened between you two this evening was just a misunderstanding?’
I remember the incident, the letters, the footprint in the garden – the sense that’s been building for months now that he’s shadowing my life, seeking to destabilize my marriage, pulling me into his own orbit with a stubborn insistence that frightens me.
‘I know what happened,’ I whisper. ‘I just can’t get over the fact that you are wilfully choosing not to believe me.’
He holds up the AirTag, counters: ‘Yeah, well, it’s hard when you act so irrationally.’
My heart is thumping, frightened by how quickly this has escalated, and how Michael is winning, my own husband choosing to take his side over mine. And, worst of all, I have no idea of how to turn things around, how to get rid of Michael once and for all.
Ed puts a hand up to his face. Closing his eyes, he squeezes the bridge of his nose, a sure sign he has a headache.
‘I’m tired,’ he declares. ‘Let’s just leave it.’
We both get out of the car, he locks it, then follows me slowly to the house.