The Question: A bestselling psychological thriller full of shocking twists

‘Shut up!’ she shouted out loud, then quickly clamped a hand over her mouth, frightened that he could somehow hear through the machine. So what? she thought, and wondered why it mattered to her. She had done nothing wrong – why did she feel frightened at the idea of John finding out that she was onto him?

‘Because I don’t trust him,’ she said out loud. Well, of course you don’t, you idiot, what else do you think all this is about? she thought, scornful of her own naïvety. No, she mused, I don’t just mean that. It’s more complicated than that. And she thought of all the years of little lies and deceptions that she had watched John indulge in without any compunction. It hadn’t seemed to matter too much when she had been party to them all: a little twisting of the truth to make a higher percentage profit here; a small distortion of the facts to secure a deal there. How easily and smoothly they had all been accomplished! And somehow, even when he had patently been in the wrong – or at least been in the shadowy no man’s land where the perception of what would be the right thing to do is carefully avoided so that no choice appears to exist – John always managed to emerge looking as if he had behaved with integrity and honesty. She sometimes wondered whether he fooled everyone but her, or whether they could all see, just as she could, that something a little less straightforward than appeared was hiding behind the front of confidence and honesty. In their arguments, however forcefully Eleanor put her case, and however much she knew her point of view was the valid one, he always made her appear to lose – even to herself. Although she could see the hints of insecurity hovering behind his eyes, she could never seem to force them out into the open, and would later think back over their conversations and marvel at the way he had yet again managed to manipulate them to his own purposes.

If he could twist things so easily in a simple argument, Eleanor knew she was going to have to be very, very careful when confronting him with – with what? What would she say to him?

‘You’re having an affair.’

‘Oh, really? With whom, may I ask?’

‘Well – I thought it was Ruth, but now I think …’

‘Yes?’

‘I mean – I think it’s Ruth, but she’s – she’s not Ruth. Or not called Ruth. If you see what I mean. I think she may have a different name, but I’m not sure if—’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘I’ve met her mother.’

‘Whose mother?’

‘I’ve met the mother of the woman you’re having an affair with.’

‘So, I’m having an affair. You don’t know who she is, or her name – or anything about her – but you’ve met her mother. Is that right?’

‘Yes. Well, you were wearing the wrong tie, you see …’

It was hopeless. She could picture him listening, watching her, arms folded over his chest, impatience and anger growing in his face at every blustered accusation. She would need to know and understand far, far more before she would be ready to tackle him. For now she had to have time to think. If he could be kept unaware of her suspicions for a little longer it would give her a breathing space in which to move.

‘So lots of love, darling, hope you’re having an early night. I’ll speak to you tomorrow. ’Bye!’

He lifted the end of the last word in a cute, baby voice that made her feel like throwing up. She sat up quickly, reached for a towel and stood up, pulling out the plug and drying herself briefly but adequately before stepping out of the bath and wrapping the towel round herself as she walked out of the bathroom and into the sitting room, where she arrived just in time to hear the beep at the end of John’s call, and a series of clicks as the machine reset itself. She waited impatiently while it finished its whirring and winding, then, once the small red light let her know it was settled, she pressed the Play button and listened to the two messages that were stored on the tape. There was the one that he had left at eight fifteen, a casual, everyday, uninteresting message about budgets or something. She hardly listened. Then the recent sickening one – loving, understanding and oh so calmly self-satisfied.

A small part of her wondered yet again if she could possibly have been mistaken in everything she thought she had found out. He sounded so utterly confident and plausible: it took her breath away to consider the efficiency of his lying. To have known he had been living a double life, a life of pretence and deception, of planning and brilliant juggling of times, dates and telephone calls had been hard enough to believe. Now that she could hear him doing it, it seemed even more unreal, and more preposterous.

She didn’t want to see him. Suddenly she couldn’t bear the thought of facing him – either to have to try to maintain the pretence that everything was normal or to risk blurting out the muddled accumulation of semi-facts that made up her evidence. By the time he came home the next evening she knew she must be gone; and gone without his knowing that anything was wrong. In the morning she would pack a few things and leave before he returned. Perhaps this was the time to go to Andrew’s. When she had rung him and suggested going to stay with him she had done so without thinking, not at all sure whether she had any intention of really doing so, or whether it was simply a comforting idea, to be imagined but never undertaken in reality. Now it suddenly seemed a good idea.

But as she walked back into the bedroom and moved towards the bed she stopped, suddenly overcome with revulsion. He had lain there. He had lain there next to her and chatted about his week; slipped an arm round her shoulders; drunk the tea she had brought him. And all the time his body and mind had been betraying her.

She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t bring herself to get back into the sheets he had fouled with his lies. She wanted out. She would go now. Tonight.

She picked a selection of easy, comfortable clothes, threw a minimum of cosmetics and washing things into a sponge bag and put it all in a small suitcase. What else do people take when they’re leaving home? she thought to herself, feeling like a character in a film escaping the law, or eloping. Passport! That was it – you took your passport. ‘Oh don’t be so melodramatic,’ she said out loud, but walked into the sitting room and over to the desk, where the spare keys to the small wall safe were kept in a secret compartment at the back of a drawer, the originals being on John’s own keyring.

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