"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.
