A thought struck her as she divested herself of her coat and scarf. She should charge Des’s phone. He’d be wanting it ASAP to make calls to work. In fact she supposed she should ring his secretary first thing to let her know to cancel his appointments. Not that he deserved that she should go to such trouble, Colette thought grimly, carrying his briefcase through to the den. She flung it on the sofa and poured herself a measure of brandy and took a slug of the amber liquid, grimacing at the kick of heat at the back of her throat. She’d be taking a sleeper tonight too. If Des decided to kick the bucket that was his tough luck.
She opened the Montblanc briefcase and found the BlackBerry that he always used. Would that woman’s phone number be on it? Colette wondered. She knew his password. Jazzy12. Their daughter’s name and birthdate. She knew it because, when Jazzy was younger, Des would always let her play games on his phone. He had kept the same password for all his upgraded phones. She keyed it in and scrolled through his text messages. Most of them were business ones. A couple from Jazzy, and two from herself. A few from friends. But otherwise nothing untoward. She checked his call log. The last phone call was to her. The call that woman had made to tell her that Des was in hospital. She scrolled through the other calls he had made that day. Every number came up with a name. Only one, to a woman, and Colette knew by the name that she was a Wells Fargo trader. Colette had met her a couple of times. A woman in her mid-forties with two children, and divorced, who wouldn’t have time for an affair even if she wanted one. She didn’t even colour her hair any more, Colette remembered, thinking that the grey, though superbly cut, was ageing. Hardly her. Des liked stylish women who were well maintained. She switched the phone off and went over to the Victorian pedestal desk and plugged the phone into the charger. She could do with charging her own BlackBerry too; she’d charge it in her dressing room.
She flicked through the pockets in the briefcase and saw the white padded envelope that Des had taken the papers from that morning and as she lifted it out she saw an iPhone tucked in a leather case, nestled snugly in a phone pocket. She took it out, flipped it open, slid the screen across and was instructed to enter a passcode. She keyed in Jazzy12, but no luck. She tried several combinations of birthdays, names, car regs, but the phone would not give up its secrets and she knew this was the one he used to make his assignations. Were there photos of him and his mistress on it? The woman’s name? Address?
‘What bloody difference does it make,’ she muttered, flinging the phone back into the case. The white envelope lay on the sofa and she pulled out the pages to flick through them. Her eyes widened in mounting horror as her attention was caught. She stiffened and sat up straight and studied the typescript with growing concern. He wouldn’t do that to her, would he? But his signature was on the last page. The line with her name blank underneath his. No wonder he hadn’t wanted her to read it, and just sign it unseen. This was unambiguous proof of how her husband had planned an even greater betrayal than the ones she had already learned about this day.
Stunned, she reread the papers just to make sure she wasn’t mistaken, and what she read spelled the death knell of her marriage. She had to take action, had to take desperate measures or her future would be even more uncertain than it was now.
Colette stood up and paced the room. There was no one she could talk to or confide in. She couldn’t tell her parents. They were elderly and far away and she knew they would insist on flying over to New York to be with her. She would end up having to take care of them. And besides she didn’t want Frank knowing the depths Des had sunk to.
She wouldn’t tell anyone here in New York about what had happened. How mortifying would that be? It was bad enough that her husband had got screwed by Madoff, and proved that he was not the financial hot shot he thought he was, and that he was having an affair, but this last wounding duplicity was one none of her American friends would ever know about. And she certainly couldn’t and wouldn’t tell their daughter. Jazzy idolized her dad. It would be bad enough that she would learn that her parents were divorcing and that their wealth was no longer secure.
Colette glanced at her watch. Ireland was five hours ahead. It was 5.30 a.m. in Dublin. There was only one person in the world she could share the horrendous details of today with, but even 5.30 was too early to ring Hilary. She’d get into bed and wait for another half an hour. She’d take a Xanax instead of a sleeper. She would need all her wits about her tomorrow without having the cotton-wool head sleeping tablets gave her. She went out to the kitchen to get a drink
