Next to him, Claire drained her wine and then leaned over and took his hand, squeezing it gently, signalling that she wanted him to refill it. He squeezed it back and reached for the bottle. It was easier for her, he thought, she had no ties at home and nothing to stop her from moving countries at the drop of a hat. She was still in her twenties and had that confidence and carefree abandon that everyone seemed to lose when they hit their thirties. All she needed was a toothbrush and passport and she was good to go. Even quitting London was straightforward because she worked as a temp and rented her flat. She never liked to stay in one place for too long, she told him, there was too much to do in the world, too much to see.
He was intoxicated by her spontaneity but also terrified, fearing the day when she might get bored of him and move on to her next adventure. But when he confessed this to her late one night, whispering his insecurities into her ear as they lay in bed, she had showered him with kisses and assured him this was not the case – that he was the anchor she had been looking for. The problem was, she wanted to moor on the other side of the English bloody Channel. And now he had agreed to go with her.
From what she had told him about her upbringing, he knew Claire had some money which had been left to her by her fairly well-off parents – her dad had been a self-made businessman and her mum a TV actress – and that safety net allowed her to live with a kind of frivolity that many people couldn’t afford. An only child, her mum had died when she was at college, leaving some money for her in a trust which had become available when she was twenty-one. Then when her dad had passed away, everything that was left had come to her, including the house in France that lay just a few miles away, waiting for someone to breathe life into it again.
They’d talked a lot about how it would work. Claire had suggested staying in the B&B while they made the house, which had been untouched and unloved for two years, liveable. They’d get wifi installed, make sure they had the home comforts they were used to and then they’d move in. He would start his new job and she would begin work on converting the outbuildings on the plot of land into holiday lets. Between them, they had worked out that they’d have enough money to get by, even with the extra cost of a London flat. He’d go back home a few weeks after he had left and arrange to meet Kate, to sit down and have it all out with her, one way or another. She would have had time to calm down a bit by then and hopefully he would have had time to work out whether he’d done the right thing.
It all seemed like a story he’d read in one of those women’s magazines that Kate left lying around the house. Something that happened to other people, not him. Yet here he was, sipping wine and planning his future with the woman who had made him feel alive for the first time in years. Because that’s how he felt – like she’d pulled him out of the darkness and into the light again. She had brought him back to life. And that was enough for him to risk everything to be with her.
‘It’s getting late,’ Claire said, breaking the silence. ‘Shall we go in and get changed for dinner? Maybe take a walk into the village and check out that new little restaurant we saw on the way in?’
She wriggled out of the blanket and stood up, reaching over to pull Pete out of his recliner and up towards her. The close contact immediately aroused him – she’d had that effect on him from the beginning. He kissed her, still marvelling after all these months at the joy of being able to kiss someone whenever he liked and be kissed back, such a simple gesture that married couples seem to forget how to do.
‘I’ve got a better idea,’ he said, which came out a bit more lewdly than it had sounded in his head but she simply laughed at him and nodded her agreement, turning in the direction of their room and pulling him along with her.
‘There’s no rush for dinner,’ she said. ‘There’s no rush for anything, really. We’ve got all the time in the world, Pete.’
And in that moment, despite all of his misgivings, fears and guilt about the enormity of his betrayal, he felt in the pit of his stomach that he was exactly where he should be.
3
Kate
It was Erin’s idea to search the house. Kate realised that she should have thought of it sooner but instead she’d been sitting around like a spare part, unsure of what to do with herself. What was wrong with her? She sprang to her feet, glad of something proactive to do. It might distract her from the ball of dread growing inside her.
She started in the bedroom, glancing over at their bed which hadn’t been slept in the previous night, the neat silk bedspread and matching cushions lying undisturbed. She went to their fitted wardrobes first, sliding open the smooth mirrored panel on Pete’s side and looking in at his messy piles of clothes, a stark contrast to her neat, orderly section
