That’s when I found it.
A memory stick, taped behind the screen of his computer. I reached down for it carefully, using my fingers like tweezers. My hands shook as I pushed it into the port, and just for a moment I had that same sour taste rising in the back of my mouth, fear tasting like spoiled apple juice.
My stomach clenched as I opened up the folder and peered at the single file there. The name of it was numeric: 16032015. Secret bank account, I thought as I clicked on the folder. He’s hiding money from you. You knew it all along, you felt it in your gut and he—
I caught my breath. Snatched it, holding it hot and shivering in my throat.
She was young, although beneath the carefully applied make-up and coy, doe-eyed poses it was hard to tell. She knew her angles, I can tell you that much. Her skin was as golden as Egyptian silk. Her nose was long and straight with a noticeable bump on the bridge that only surgery could iron out. There was a piercing in her nose, a tiny silver stud, barely there. She had a curtain of straight dark hair, glossy and slick. I touched my hand to my own messy blonde waves, half grown out from a blunt bob I’d given myself last autumn. I felt something in my chest, a singular shard of glassy pain. Envy, maybe.
I quickly flicked through the handful of photographs. She wasn’t naked, but her underwear was revealing: the hard little bumps of her nipples beneath peach-coloured lace, the soft creases of her upper thighs as she sat on the edge of a bed, toes pointed, delicate and ballerina-like, to elongate and define her calf muscles. Like I said, the girl knew her angles. In one she was bent over a dressing table, ass towards the camera, pink satin and the long road of her spine just visible where her hair fell. She was looking back at the lens with an eyebrow arched, slight smile on her glossy lips, and in her hand was a bag. I stared at it for what felt like a long time, even as outside the birds began to sing. A pink sequin shoulder bag with a chain strap, and on it, the Miu Miu logo in silver. Distantly, I heard the alarm going off in the bedroom, the grunting noise Will made as he reached for it, his voice furred with sleep.
‘Frances? Where are you, babe?’
‘I’m just here,’ I said, struggling to keep my voice straight. I hurriedly pulled the USB out and taped it back behind the screen. I’d barely had time to close everything down when I heard his feet shuffling out into the hallway, the long, elastic sound of him yawning. I was swept with a fierce chill that flushed my skin with goosebumps and rattled my teeth.
In all the years we’d been together I’d never ached for him as much as I did right then.
After that, I waited each morning for Will to leave, his bag slung crooked over his shoulder, hair still damp from the shower, and I would watch him walk up the tree-lined avenue towards the train station in the pearly morning light. I’d watch him until he was out of sight, letting my forehead lean against the glass until my breath misted my vision. Then I would take the USB from its hiding place behind the computer and look through the photographs over and over again, searching for clues in her poses, in the background of her small, messy flat, until acid burned the back of my throat. Her mirror, smudged with fingerprints; the unmade bed, the tattoo snaking up her outer thigh, the catalogue flatpack furniture – nothing gave me any idea about the type of person she was or how she knew my husband so intimately.
I studied the faces of every dark-haired woman on the street, on the train, looking for the familiar lines of her features; almond-shaped eyes heavy with kohl, narrow lips, that thin, angular chin. Since I’d first seen her photographs I’d felt there was something familiar about her, and it was only after a week or so that it came to me. Samira.
When I’d first told William about my previous relationships with women, we’d both been drunk on wine and Pernod and he’d struggled to conceal his interest.
‘Is it better or worse than with men?’ he’d asked, picking up the knife and cutting a chunk of brie from the cheeseboard on the table. The candlelight had carved shadows in his features, sharp glaciers of bone. ‘Like, is it, uh, softer?’
‘Softer?’ I’d laughed. ‘How do you mean?’
He’d shrugged awkwardly, and I’d decided to make it easier for him. ‘Do you mean hornier? Is that what you mean? You want to hear about me with women, is that it?’
‘God, yes. Fuck. I thought you’d never offer.’
We’d both laughed. Then, he’d leaned in closer. ‘Was there ever anyone serious?’
‘Sure.’
‘Who?’
‘She was beautiful. Let me just get
