Page 22

Natalie

Natalie ties her hair back into its messy bun and slicks lip gloss over her mouth before hurrying back downstairs as quickly and quietly as she can.

Zadie’s bedroom door is shut and Erin is finally asleep, and all Natalie can think about is getting her hands on a fresh glass of that good Sauvignon Eve brought from M it sounds so preposterous.

She’s known him for over twenty years.

Yes, things have been a little difficult since she found out she was pregnant with Erin, but they’re Natalie and Pete.

A team. Solid. She’s spent twenty years lying beside him – she could map every freckle and scar on his body, could tell you his wildest dreams and his biggest fears.

She knows him better than she knows herself.

She would know, wouldn’t she?

If Pete was cheating on her?

‘Oh dear. You look a little pale,’ Vanessa observes.

‘You didn’t really think Pete was a good man, did you?

That he was actually working all those evenings he came home late.

Natalie, don’t you know all men are the same?

Once a cheat, always a cheat.

Isn’t that what they say?

’

‘What do you want?’ Natalie is sure she’s lying.

Revenge, for what Natalie and Pete did to her all those years ago.

It has to be.

‘Just to tell you the truth!’ Vanessa says.

‘I can prove to you Pete and I are … close. We’ve been talking about going to Australia – to see his parents, and to look at a plot of land.

He wants to build us a house out there.

’

That was their dream – well, Pete’s – but Natalie was always going to go along with it, even if it has been slightly delayed.

‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ she says, the words thick, almost strangling her.

‘Everyone knows Pete wants to go to Australia some day and build a house. You could have overheard him telling Dave.’

‘If I’m lying,’ Vanessa says, ‘why has Pete been coming home so late every night, Natalie? Do you know where he’s been?

Because he wasn’t at the office, like he told you.

He was with me.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ Natalie says, her throat thick.

Vanessa gives Natalie a look full of pity.

‘Oh, Natalie. Think about it. You know what I’m saying is true.

Why on earth would Pete want to come back to this,’ she gestures towards Natalie, to her too-tight sundress and greasy hair, then to the chaos that is their kitchen, ‘when everything he really wants is in MontpellierSquare.’

Montpellier Square .

Natalie can see it in her mind’s eye now: all the times she checked Find My iPhone and Pete’s car was in the car park just down the street from the square.

She’d thought he was taking the client out to dinner.

Her face burns, and she feels like a fool.

What contractor takes their client out to dinner three or four times a week?

‘There’s more,’ Vanessa says, her words coming out in a hiss that makes Natalie think of low-bellied animals, of snakes and worms, of lies and deceit.

‘That file I brought over? That wasn’t anything to do with work.

Ask Pete about it – that’ll give you all the proof you need.

I mean, I have it right here on my phone, I could show you now.

But I think it should come from Pete.

’ She smiles – a quick, bright flash of white teeth – and then before Natalie can respond, she’s gone, leaving Natalie winded and half wondering if she imagined it all.

The file . Natalie remembers the way Pete had snapped when he saw Vanessa in the kitchen.

She’d thought it was because he didn’t want the collision of work and home life, that he’d been annoyed with her for calling him back home, but now …

Swallowing down the nausea that makes her mouth fill with something bitter and unpalatable, Natalie heads for the stairs, wondering where Pete would have put the file, if he hasn’t destroyed it already.

Her heart sinks at the thought of searching her own bedroom for evidence of her husband’s affair, sinks even further at the thought that her searching might disturb Erin, but she has to do it.

She has to know for certain.

Tiptoeing into the darkened room, she holds her breath as she pulls open the drawer of Pete’s bedside table.

Rummaging as stealthily as she can, Natalie lays her hands on an old watch strap, a business card for some plant hire rep, earplugs, a tiny screwdriver kit that looks as if it’s come out of a Christmas cracker, but no file.

She checks the wardrobe, pressing her hands in between neatly stacked T-shirts and inside suit covers.

She lifts the mattress, her shoulders straining, but under the bed is clear, too.

As she creeps out of the bedroom, pulling the door gently closed behind her, Natalie glances across to the end of the hallway, to the spare bedroom.

She rarely has cause to go in there – onlyto freshen up the sheets and give it a dust on the odd occasion when they’ve allowed Jake to stay over, or if Stu and Mari have too much to drink and can’t drive home.

Pete, though … Pete uses it all the time.

He’s set up an old Ikea desk and chair, and if he’s really under the cosh he’ll spend Saturday mornings in there doing his paperwork.

Fire sparking in her veins, Natalie pushes open the door and heads for the desk.

There are tidy piles of paperwork on top, supplier invoices, a printed VAT return, drawings that Natalie can’t make head nor tail of, but no file.

The drawers contain staples, Post-it notes with curled edges and an old packet of gum; all of them are unlocked apart from the bottom drawer.

‘Don’t be so stupid,’ she mutters under her breath, aware that she sounds crazy – that Pete’s lies have made her feel crazy.

‘He wouldn’t leave it lying around.

He would lock it away.

’ Running her eyes over the desk, her gaze snags on the plastic pen pot, on the leaky biros and the mound of paper clips, and the glint of a tiny silver key underneath them.

She pulls it out, resting it in the palm of her hand as far below, in the garden, someone shouts Pete’s name, and then there is raucous laughter and the clink of glasses.

Natalie blinks as she stares at the key.

It’s so light in her hand, but it has the power to change everything.

Stooping, she slides the key in the lock and the bottom drawer glides open.

Documents lie in the drawer – Pete’s tax return, Erin’s birth certificate, a copy of Emily’s GCSE results – and there, buried beneath all the other papers, is a slim maroon wallet.

Natalie slides it out and sinks down on to the bed.

She feels sick and weak, the way she did when Zadie was four and Natalie had gastroenteritis and couldn’t even keep water down.

‘I don’t have to look,’ she tells herself, one finger sliding under the flap of the file even as she says it.

Her pulse screaming in her ears, Natalie flips the file open, one hand going to her mouth as her stomach rolls over and over, an emotional rollercoaster of fear and pain.

Vanessa’s face stares up at her, her lipsticked mouth seeming to mock Natalie as her eyes roam further down the photograph, over Vanessa’s perfect breasts and flat stomach, no hint of a single stretch mark.

Natalie shuffles through, feeling more and more sick as she does, still telling herself that this doesn’t mean anything.

Vanessa could have just sent the photos to Pete, it doesn’t mean he’s guilty …

until she gets to the final photo.

Pete, clearly naked, asleep in a bed that is not theirs, in a room Natalie has never seen before but would probably have lusted after if she had seen it in an Instagram post. The ground seems to fall away from beneath her feet, the file and photographs sliding from her lap, and somewhere far away Natalie thinks she hears the sound of breaking glass over the noise of the party.

She can’t be sure, but she thinks it might be the sound of her heart shattering into a million pieces.