LITMIR.BIZ

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eyes darted left and right as her nerves snapped. Did Celine know who she was? Oh my God, you’re getting married to her? What does this mean for us?

      Her. Us.

      Delia nearly broke into a run to reach the coffee shop, wrenching open the door as if pursued by wolves.

      She got herself a flat white and took a seat in the window with a good view of the room. There was a trustafarian-looking girl with dreads, typing on a MacBook Air, and three Japanese students huddled round an iPhone – no one with plausible Naan potential. Before, she thought she’d love a stake-out; today, she was listless. It was a countdown to speaking to Emma.

      Delia’s mind drifted, as she toyed with her sugar wrapper.

      Clichés about the aftermath of being cheated on were coming true, she noticed.

      For example, she used to think the ‘it’s the lying that hurts’ line about affairs was slightly wishful. Really? Pretty sure it’d be the tongues and the hands and the frantic pulling at clothes and the groping and licking and gasping and grasping and sharing a shuddering climax that’d most bother me.

      And while the thought of Paul having illicit intercourse with Celine was so horrific as to make her nauseous, unexpectedly, it wasn’t the worst pain. He’d had plenty of girlfriends before Delia – the thought of him having sex with another woman could be assimilated, however agonising it was. What Delia couldn’t begin to reconcile was the eerie, disorientating sense that she hadn’t known Paul the way she thought she had.

      Take the conversation on their anniversary meal in Rasa, for example. He’d blithely mocked the younger generation’s dating habits and implied he’d be at sea if he was back on that scene. Meanwhile, he was confidently knocking off a twenty-four-year-old. Oh my God: and the remarks about intimate waxing. He knew this from a firsthand encounter with a lady’s bald part? Delia couldn’t bear to contemplate it.

      That discussion had been gratuitous. Paul had voluntarily done an impersonation of a person he wasn’t, for her benefit. She tried to tell herself he’d been so scared of her finding out, that he’d overdone it. But it was more than that. It was treating Delia as a dupe.

      She now recalled a few times recently that he’d grumped about being left to do all the bottling up at the end of a shift. I’m too nice a boss. These were times the too-nice boss had been in bed across town with another woman.

      It was accomplished, bravura bullshittery. His deceit had been conducted so artlessly, all as part of Paul’s charming patter. Who exactly was she in love with?

      Did any of his staff know? They might’ve had some idea, at these lock-ins. Did Aled and Gina know? Aled and Gina. She couldn’t believe it had taken this long to wonder. They’d declined the last dinner party, she remembered.

      Had they cancelled out of awkwardness? Had Paul told Aled, in a drunken ‘Mate, I’ve messed up’ confidential?

      She couldn’t pretend she was on her A-game, as time alone meant time thinking about her broken engagement, yet she saw precisely no one who could conceivably be Naan for the hour that she staked out Brewz and Beanz.

      The only gang on a laptop now was a shoal of squawky teenage girls in private school uniforms, and whenever she passed them, ostensibly to get a stirrer or a sugar, she saw Facebook on their screen.

      The Naan could be a member of staff, she supposed, tapping away out of sight in a backroom office. But his or her activity was unlikely to be confined to between 12 p.m. and 1 p.m., if so. She checked his timeline her phone: no Naan tweets.

      The search for answers would continue, in more than one area of her life. How ironic: Delia the ‘resident sleuth’, who hadn’t noticed her other half had another life.

       Nine

      ‘I’m struggling to get my head around this,’ Emma said down the phone, as Delia wiped tears from under her eyes and sniffed loudly and snottily as she plodded back to the office.

      ‘Me too.’

      ‘Why? Early midlife crisis?’

      ‘I don’t think he’s in any crisis. Or he wasn’t. I think a hot student threw herself at him and he went for it.’

      How long would it have gone on if she hadn’t found out? Even if he was going to break it off after the proposal, that was led by Delia’s decision-making, not Paul’s. Perhaps her proposal forced him into ending it with Celine, when he didn’t want to.

      ‘Did you see any signs at all?’ Emma said. ‘I thought everything was as good as ever between you.’

      Emma had a squeaky baby voice. Every single clue about her was misleading. The cute name, the cherubic, wholesome tavern wench face with rosy cheeks, the sleek ‘lacrosse at Malory Towers’ yellow bob. In fact, she was one part raucous socialite to two parts terrifying litigator.

      Emma knew that her forcefulness came as a surprise and she used it to good effect in her job. She even played up to it, with her Boden dresses and Mary Jane shoes. ‘They think they’re dealing with Shirley Temple and discover it’s more Temple of Doom.’

      ‘Nope, no signs at all. Zero. Which makes it worse. I’m officially stupid and he’s a really devious liar,’ Delia said.

      ‘You’re not the first person to not know your partner’s being unfaithful. It’s not your fault. Paul, though. I can’t believe it. I’m so bloody angry with him. He knows what he’s got in you.’

      ‘Does he?’ Delia said, miserably. She was ashamed of him, and annoyed she felt the pang of protectiveness. ‘Everything I thought I knew was a lie.’

      ‘Not everything. You’re staying at home?’

      ‘For the time being.’

      ‘Do you want him back?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ Delia raised her eyes to the cloudy heavens. ‘I honestly don’t know. He says he’ll end it with her, but I don’t know what to think.’

      ‘Does he say it was only sex?’

      ‘Yeah,’ Delia said with a shrug. It wasn’t how that text sounded. ‘Oh my God, you’re getting married to her? What does this mean for us?’ Delia had never had an affair – perhaps they were always this febrile and needy, even when they were only about banging.

      ‘But he would, wouldn’t he?’ Delia continued. ‘It’s a lot less trouble to choose me rather than her. That’s the awful thing. I’m not sure of him in any way.’

      ‘You do have ten years of history and a home. He loves you.’

      ‘Ten years that’s culminated in me wanting to marry him, and him wanting to sleep with someone else. The reviews are in.’

      ‘How easy will it be to get your money out of the house, if you do split up?’

      Emma knew how much Delia loved the house, and that Delia had co-paid the mortgage for long enough that a chunk of it was hers. Her lawyerly mind usually leaped straight to practicalities.

      ‘Not very. I don’t think Paul has the money set aside to give me my equity. The bar’s needed a lot of work recently.’

      ‘And then there’s calculating what you spent doing it up. Oh, I am so sorry for you, Delia. This is so shit. Can I come and visit?’

      ‘I’d love you to but there’s no space in Hexham. Shall I come down?’

      ‘Definitely. As soon as you like. This weekend! I’m so sorry, but I’m going to have to run into a meeting …’

      ‘No, go!’ Delia made her farewells as her mobile pipped at her with a waiting call from Aled. She switched to answer it before she knew what she was doing.

      ‘Hi,

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