– that it wasn’t the woman from her past sending the texts, was it possible that she might somehow be able to salvage her relationship?
She’d accused him of sleeping with Kim. The Adam she knew before their lives had fallen apart would never have cheated on her. But now… She was as certain that Kim was coming on to him as she was that it had been her sending those texts. He couldn’t fail to have noticed. Could he? She had to ask him outright, talk to him calmly, not rant like some demented witch. She would have to apologise, whatever her suspicions. If he was attracted to a woman so much younger than she was, a prettier woman with flame-coloured hair, then she might be fighting a losing battle, but she would fight. Adam had been her whole life. She loved him. Would love him until the day she died. She needed him to know that.
Heading up the stairs, she tried to work out what she would say to him. Where to start to explain the terror gnawing at her insides, the voice in her head that constantly told her she was about to lose everything. That she deserved to.
Going into the bedroom, she ran a hand through her hair, which needed a good wash, and was reminded how short it still was. Cursing herself for being obsessed now about her appearance, she walked towards the bed. She was about to drop her bag onto it when she hesitated. Something didn’t feel right. Her gaze travelled over the Egyptian cotton duvet cover and her heart lurched.
The appliqué frill was at the bottom of the bed. The duvet was on upside down. She tried to think rationally above the panic mushrooming inside her. Adam had slept in it, obviously he had, and hadn’t made the bed properly. Her hand went to the indent in his pillow. But why was there an indent in the other pillow? Her pillow?
Her mouth ran dry as she spotted the evidence of what she already knew. Her heart rate quickening, she stared stupefied for a second, and then plucked it from the pillowcase and dangled it between her thumb and forefinger. One long flame-red hair.
She snatched the pillow up, nausea rising like corrosive acid inside her as she pressed it to her face and breathed in a perfume that wasn’t hers, floral, musky, warm and sweet, the smell of another woman. Would he tell her this was all in her mind? Her world crumbling, she stood rooted to the spot, recalling the smouldering anger in Adam’s eyes when he’d told her she was imagining things. The disillusionment. She’d tried to convince herself he was right. She’d sensed the sexual charge in the air when Kim had been around him, felt it, yet she’d doubted her instinct, doubted her sanity. Sloped off like some spurned woman, allowing them to carry on behind her back, undoubtedly aroused by the illicit thrill of it. Right here. In the bed she and Adam shared together. Had they talked about her? Laughed at her whilst lying together in their post-fucking afterglow? Raw with pain, with the knowledge that this nightmare she’d been living was indeed her reality, she wrapped her arms tightly around herself, a primal moan escaping her as she rocked to and fro.
How could she have been so stupid?
Anger and humiliation rising hot in her throat, she clutched hold of the corner of the duvet and, summoning the last vestiges of her self-esteem, tore it from the bed. She didn’t know whether to be more insulted by what he’d done, right under her nose, or by the fact that he would think she wouldn’t notice. Perhaps he wanted her to. Knowing her as he did, surely he would have been more careful if he’d wanted to cover his tracks. Plainly he didn’t care.
Her chest heaving, she grappled for the fitted sheet and attempted to pull it from the mattress, catching a fingernail in the process, tearing it to the quick. The pain was excruciating, the droplet of blood stark against the pristine white of the sheet. Blood from the wound of her marriage that had opened the day she’d lost her baby.
Trying to oust the images from her head – her husband and the mother of her grandson grinding and moaning in her bed – she bundled the duvet and sheet into her arms. Carrying them along the landing, tripping over them as she went, she heaved them