Page 58 of The Love Hack

It can’t be, said another part. It’s too much of a coincidence. He doesn’t even know Adam exists.

Come on, coincidences happen. And all the facts match – the wedding, the move to a different city, the car, the unhappy new wife. It’s Zack, and the wife is Amelie.

Nononono. It’s not possible. Mostly because if it were true, I’d have to do something about it, and I’ve got absolutely no idea what that could be.

Feeling like my brain had just been put through a smoothie-maker, I stood up again, unlocked the cubicle and washed my hands. My eyes stared back at me in the mirror, maybe a bit wider than usual but otherwise normal. My hair hadn’t abruptly turned white, or anything. But it didn’t feel that way – it felt like the whole landscape of my life had shifted, like when you arrive on a new level in a computer game and you’ve got to adjust to the fact that you’re not on the deck of a ship any more, but in the middle of a desert.

Still dazed, I returned to my desk, for once not noticing whether Ross was looking at me or not. I sat down and read the letter again, anger beginning to replace my shock. ‘Citizen of nowhere’ indeed. Who did he think he was?

And then, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I knew. That phrase – ‘citizen of nowhere’. I remembered Zack using it months before, in his and Amelie’s London apartment. I’d suppressed an eye-roll at the time, because it was such an up-himself thing to say – not that anyone would have noticed. Zack never noticed anything I said or did, and when he was around Amelie seemed incapable of noticing anyone else.

I was as sure as I could possibly be that he’d written this letter to Adam. That the clingy, needy wife, in danger of being betrayed by her new husband, was my sister.

I remembered my conversation with her the previous day. She’d sounded so down, so unlike herself. ‘Nothing I do seems to make her happy.’ Yes, that sounded pretty much like the unfamiliar version of Amelie I’d encountered on our hour-long Facetime chat.

The Amelie I knew would be relishing life in a city known to be even more buzzy and exciting than London. She’d be booking shows and going to the kind of restaurants you had to spend hours glued to social media and then pounce in seconds to get a table at, and shopping till she dropped. She’d be making new friends at hot yoga classes and going for runs in Central Park.

She wouldn’t be moping alone in her apartment – unless something was very wrong.

Unlike me, Amelie understood men. If her husband’s head had been turned, if he was having – or even considering – an affair, she’d know about it.

But would she know what to do about it? It was so huge, such an unexpected betrayal on such a grand scale, after such a short time, I suspected not. I imagined that anyone, even my savvy, take-no-prisoners sister, would be blindsided, paralysed by what she knew or suspected.

She needed help. She needed me.

But I didn’t know what to do.

But you’ve got a secret weapon, Lucy. Remember?

I felt a trickle of relief. I had the oracle of GenBot 2.0, Adam’s virtual assistant, which I turned to to solve problems I couldn’t deal with on my own, and this one was the very definition of that.

I tapped on the tab, kept permanently open on my browser. There was the blank window at the bottom of the screen, and basically the whole of human knowledge waiting in the background to help me.

I typed – making a few mistakes, because my hands were still unsteady and I had to delete and try again – ‘I think my sister’s husband is having an affair. What should I do?’

As always, the answer took just seconds to appear and, as always, the response was comprehensive but concise.

This is a complex and worrying situation. If your suspicions are correct, it could have serious implications for both your sister and her husband, it said.

As usual, it then presented its advice in a numbered list. I skimmed the points rapidly.

1. Gather evidence. Don’t confront your sister or her husband until you’re sure.

2. Communicate with your sister and listen to what she has to say before voicing your own suspicions and presenting her with the proof.

3. Respect her boundaries and privacy.

4. Consider counselling for yourself, and recommend it for your sister and her husband

5. Be there to support her.

It said I shouldn’t take sides. Ha – as if. If Zack was cheating on Amelie, there was only one possible side for me to be on, and it wasn’t Zack’s.

But gathering evidence was going to be more of a problem. When Amelie had first starting dating Zack, she’d shown me his social media pages, just so I could admire the chiselled jaw and designer suits of her new boyfriend. I remembered thinking at the time that I’d never seen a more anodyne, buttoned-up set of profiles in my life. Presumably Zack thought he was being professional – personally, I’d thought he just came across as dull.

But the point was, his online presence wasn’t going to give me the clues I needed. Gathering evidence was going to be hard. And so was being there to support her.

I was in London. Amelie and Zack were in New York.

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