Richard moved through the house as if the halls were fogged moors and he, the only soul awake at dawn. He was certain his wife would betray him, the idea blooming behind his eyes, dense and sticky as treacle. So, preparing himself for the worst, he planned to catch her out. But the truth he uncovered bewildered him.
Darling, arent you running late? asked Emily, his wife, catching him with the mobile pressed to his ear, her voice misted with an odd concern. Youve a train to Manchester in two hours, love.
Richard blinked, phone lowering. Did I not mention? The business trips been pushed back. I wont be leaving for a while yet.
Oh. Right then, Emily replied, turning on her heel to the kitchen, footsteps tapping like the tick-tock of a grandfather clock, odd and insistent. She grabbed her own phone and tapped out a message into the ether, returning seconds later, hands empty as if nothing at all had happened. The more Richard puzzled over this, the more the suspicion clung.
He wondered, in the half-sleep between dusk and dawn, if the age gap matteredhe was eight years older, after all. Had she met someone fresh-faced, dazzling in the way youth dazzles, so different from him? But Richard, English restraint stitched deep in his bones, never uttered his worry. Accusations without proof? Not the done thing.
Instead, he put up little cameras, set in the corners like glassy-eyed ornaments in the flat, watching and waiting, silent as the weather.
When his trip came, Richard left the house in a fog of despondency. Even Emily, flitting about the kitchen in her dressing gown, noticed his gloom and offered him a paracetamol. For a flicker of a moment, her fussing made him think perhaps everything was just soa brief thaw in the English drizzle of suspicion.
He told himself there was no hurry to review the cameras’ secrets. In the evenings, in blank hotel rooms, hed open his laptop, watch for a few minutes, then snap it closed, shoving it away as if the screen might leap at him.
The business trip melted into grey days and early trains, the world outside flickering past unseen. Finally home, after ushering Emily off to work, Richard cracked open the laptop for one last look, heart tapping Morse code against his ribs.
He watched the day unfold as if through a frosted window: Emily rose, had toast and strong tea, dusted the mantels, and floated from room to room. The afternoon light slanted; she appeared, not in her usual neat skirt, but in his old rugby shirt and pyjama shorts, sprawled before the computer. She played online gamessomething with the frantic, distant shouts of other players barely audible over the speakers. It seemed Emily was lost, not with another soul, but in the strange, rolling worlds of internet poker and fantasy quests.
Not ideal, I suppose, Richard muttered, the cadence of his disappointment as gentle as rain on cobblestones. But everyone needs an odd hobby these days.
He fast-forwarded, flicking through days and nights in moments, always the same: Emily, her computer, chores, and the empty rooms. Not a single strangers shadow crossed their threshold.
With a sigh that echoed around the silent flat, Richard closed the laptop and stared at his own reflection in the black screen, feeling the guilt that always follows doubt. He decided to buy Emily a huge bouquet of red English roses and arrange a dinnercandlelit, with fish and chips and trifle, just the two of them. Yet something held him back from removing the cameras, a half-formed thought drifting like mist; he couldnt quite let the dream end, not yet.
What he did not know, under those watchful, blinking eyes of glass, would surprise him yet.
