pour us both some water.
‘Don’t play games,’ Kit says. ‘Why are we here?’ He’s still on his feet, poised for flight, unwilling to commit to a conversation with me without knowing what its subject will be.
‘I’m staying here.’ I don’t tell him that Selina Gane is too. Of course, he might know that already.
‘You’re . . .’ His breathing speeds up, like someone running. I wonder if he’s thinking about escape. How hard is it for him to stay where he is? ‘You walk out of your own birthday party without any explanation . . .’
‘The birthday party was the explanation. That and the dress you bought me.’
‘I swear to God, Con . . .’
‘Forget it,’ I say. ‘I don’t care. I need to talk to you about something else. Sit down. Sit.’
Reluctantly, he lowers himself into a chair across the table from me. He looks as unrelaxed as I’ve ever seen a person look – shoulders hunched, jaw rigid, red in the face. ‘We ought to discuss work,’ he says.
‘Go ahead.’ This is a business meeting, after all. You can’t invite your husband to a business meeting and then tell him he can’t talk about work.
‘You’re Nulli’s business and financial director. All the strategy originates with you, all the planning . . . You’re the one who makes sure everyone gets paid. I can slog my guts out, my team can do the same, but we’re wasting our time if you’re not doing your bit.’
‘Agreed,’ I say.
‘If you don’t keep on top of things, Nulli falls apart.’
‘And you don’t think I’m keeping on top of things?’
‘Are you?’
‘I haven’t been, no,’ I admit. ‘Not since I saw that woman’s body on Roundthehouses. But it’s been less than a week. The company’s not going to crumble to dust because I’ve neglected the paperwork for a week. Anyway, all this is irrelevant. This time next year, Nulli’s unlikely to exist.’
The colour drains from Kit’s face. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘You’re bright, you’re determined,’ I say briskly, deciding I ought to offer him some compensation for losing both his wife and his business. ‘You’ll start another company without me. I’m sure it’ll do very well.’
Kit’s mouth and eyes start to move – random twitches, uncoordinated. He doesn’t think this can be happening to him. I know how he feels.
‘How can you . . . ?’
I’m sorry. I don’t love you any less than I did before all this happened. I trust you less, like you less, am more willing to cause you pain, but the love hasn’t changed. I wouldn’t have thought that was possible – would you, Kit?
I resist the urge to explain, knowing it wouldn’t help.
‘How can you calmly sit there and announce your intention to destroy everything we’ve got?’ Kit’s voice is hollow, hoarse. ‘Our marriage, our company . . .’
‘I need you to read something.’ I pull the letter out of my bag and pass it across the table to him. ‘I wanted you to see it before Selina Gane does. Once you’ve approved it, I’ll push it under her door. She’s staying here too. Did you know that?’
Kit shakes his head slowly, his eyes wide, fixed on my handwritten words.
I expected it to be hard, but it was the easiest letter I’ve ever written. I assumed, for the purposes of the exercise, that Selina Gane was innocent, and I explained everything, or at least as much as I could explain: finding her address in Kit’s SatNav, my suspicions and fears, how they led me to wait outside her house and follow her, how in retrospect I wish I’d been more upfront about it, spoken to her directly. That’s what she’ll want if she’s as frightened and baffled as I am, I thought: a straightforward letter of clarification and apology, one innocent person to another.
I didn’t waste time worrying about what to include and what to leave out; I was generous with information, telling her far more than she needed to know – even that I was staying at the Garden House, though in a room nowhere near hers. ‘I’m sorry if that makes you feel as if I’m stalking you all over again,’ I wrote. ‘I’m really not. I chose this hotel because its name was in my mind, because I rang you here. In an ideal world, I’d have been tactful and chosen another hotel, but I’m exhausted and my energy levels are well into the red, so I didn’t.’
Reading snatches of the letter upside down, as