Page 85 of The Honeymoon Affair

There are plenty of pix from the party – mostly tight-shot selfies, and quite a few of Charles and his young fiancée hashtagged #NewYear and #NewWoman. Or #NewYear and #EngagementSurprise. There are also a couple of Google Alerts linking to short online pieces about the engagement. Truth is, most of the journalists had left before midnight, and although the story is cute if you like that sort of thing, it’s not real news. And Charles is too old for it to pop up on any celebrity sites. There’s one brief story about him and me, saying that we separated a number of years ago but remain friends. It doesn’t suggest that we didn’t get divorced.

I craft a post for Charles’s accounts saying that he’s delighted to have finally delivered his next book to his publishers and hopes that readers will love his foray into intelligent crime writing. I add that as well as writing books, he’s also found time to fall in love and that he’s delighted to announce his engagement to . . . and here I have to stop, because my mind is a total blank. I can’t remember the name of the girl in the green dress. All I can think is that she was his beta reader. But I can’t call her Beta Girl, can I? I feel the glow of a hot flush start at the tip of my head and work its way through my body. I forgot to take my HRT last night. For feck’s sake, though. Is it menopausal brain fog, or did I actually decide to blank the name of my husband’s twenty-nine-year-old fiancée?

In the end, I post it without her name and use the hashtags: #NewYear #NewBeginnings #CrimeFiction #LiteraryFiction #Bestseller and finally #SoInLove. I nearly gag at the last but shove it in anyway. Then I slam the lid of the laptop closed and get into the shower. I lean against the tiled wall and allow the warm water to massage the top of my head. I want it to relax me, but of course it doesn’t. I’m still on edge when I get out again.

I’m not going out today, so I dress in my sloppiest tracksuit bottoms and fleecy top before sitting at the table with Charles’s manuscript and my red pen. I’m going to edit the shit out of his crime novel. Hopefully Sydney will too. And he’ll be so damn busy rewriting it that he won’t have time for his young lover. Even hearing the words ‘young lover’ in my head makes my heart pound again.

Seriously, what’s he thinking? Oh look, I don’t need to ask myself that question. She’s vibrant and pretty and those dark doe eyes looked at him with such love and admiration I’m not surprised he fell for her. All men want to be admired and it’s obvious she admires him. But she hasn’t seen him first thing in the morning with his gold and silver stubble and his eyes bloodshot from being up too late writing without stopping. She hasn’t seen him in a temper because the book isn’t working out the way he expected. And she hasn’t had him shouting at her to find his white shirt – ‘no, not that one, the one with the better buttons’ – before he goes off to a book event or a TV appearance. She’s only seen the professional Charles, not the domestic Charles. She thinks she loves him, but she only loves the idea of him.

I, on the other hand, love all of him.

Even if I left him.

Loved all of him, I mean.

Although right now, I’m furious with him.

Sydney calls me the following day saying that she has some editorial notes for Charles and will forward them to me too in the next few minutes.

I download the document as soon as it arrives. Her notes are very comprehensive. Charles will go ballistic at the amount of work they entail, as she’s made some very clever suggestions around some of his too-easy clues that will mean extensive rewriting. He hates rewriting.

She’s done well, though, with lots of ideas about how he can make it a little more Charles Miller while keeping the best of his Janice Jermyn experience. If he does as good a job as I know he can, I’m absolutely sure we’ll have a winner on our hands. Although, I concede, as I get to yet another note about the orange-blossom scent the murderer wears, Janice would never have let such an obvious tell slip through.

I’m so intent on what I’m doing that the sound of my mobile buzzing is an unwelcome distraction. I glance at the caller ID and feel my eyebrows rise in surprise.

‘Hello, Ellis,’ I say as I answer it. ‘It’s good to hear from you. Happy New Year.’

‘Same to you,’ she says. ‘Ariel, what the hell is going on with Charles?’

I like that she gets to the point straight away. I used to think Ellis was a little bit airy-fairy, what with chucking in her library job and opening an art studio in her shed, but she’s quite hard-nosed when it comes to business. And possibly when it comes to her brother, too. We used to have some great chats about him, among other things. I can’t believe we’ve allowed our friendship to drift.

‘He told me when we were together at Christmas about this girl he met in the Caribbean,’ she says. ‘Said she was bright and intelligent and that she and her friend were good fun. He didn’t say anything about getting engaged to her. He still hasn’t. I saw it on social media. What the actual fuck, Ariel?’

‘It’s a question I’ve been asking myself,’ I say.

‘Have you met her? What’s she like?’

‘I’ve no idea. The party was the first time I set eyes on her. The first time I knew anything about her.’

‘Ariel!’

‘It knocked me for six,’ I admit.

‘What on earth is wrong with him that he simply sprang it on you without a word?’

It’s quite pleasing to hear how furious she is with him. It makes me feel less like a raging old hag.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say. ‘We’re practically divorced.’

‘Though in reality married,’ says Ellis. ‘I’ve got to say it, Ariel, I always thought you guys would get back together. I think he did too, and that’s why he didn’t chase you up over the divorce. Plus, you continued to represent him despite everything.’

‘It’s hard to believe we work so well together when we couldn’t live together,’ I admit. ‘Quite honestly, it was easier being his agent when I wasn’t being his wife. And I do care for him, of course I do. But whatever either of us might have thought about one day getting back together, it’s not going to happen now.’

‘It was a mistake to give him the best of both worlds,’ Ellis tells me.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘You working in his back garden meant he could see you any time he wanted. You socialise together. You have each other’s backs. You’re one of those married couples who live in separate houses and have wild sex every time they get together.’

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