‘Friend? Which friend? Anyone I know?’ he said with a slight raise of the brow.
‘My friend Karen from Bristol. She came to the house once . . .’
‘Karen Karen. Fuck. I thought there was something familiar about you. Ball Karen.’
‘Yes, Max, that Karen,’ said Amy. ‘Josie did brilliantly well as an intern—’
Max burst into delighted laughter as his brain finally caught up.
‘You’re Karen’s daughter!’ he hooted, throwing both hands in the air. ‘Fuck! I knew I recognised you. Karen. I took her to the Commem Ball in our final year.’ His face broke into a lecherous grin and his hands described an egg-timer figure. ‘She was . . . Well, I can see where you get it from.’
‘Max,’ said Peter. ‘Button it up, old man. You’re embarrassing the girl.’
‘Embarrassing? She should be proud! Karen was sexy in a . . . Well, she was sexy anyway. Isn’t that a compliment?’
‘Leave it, Max,’ said David, lowering his voice. ‘I’m sure Josie doesn’t want to hear that about her mother.’
Amy glanced across at David, annoyed that he was defending Josie all of a sudden. Yes, Max was being an arse, but did he have to step in? Couldn’t the girl look after herself?
Juliet defused the situation by telling Josie the story about how Max had been woken from his drunken stupor in the bath and press-ganged into asking Karen to the ball, then skilfully segued into asking about Josie’s time at university and starting a discussion about the importance or otherwise of education in the internet age. Max sat glassy-eyed, seemingly having drunk himself to a standstill, and David said pointedly that he thought everyone could do with some coffee. As he stood up to go to the kitchen, his phone fell out of his pocket without him noticing. Juliet bent down, picked it up and handed it to Amy.
‘You should probably look after that,’ she said.
Amy knew what she meant. ‘I think I’ll just check on the children,’ she said, and got up from the table. Making sure that David was still in the kitchen, she practically ran up the stairs, closing the bedroom door behind her before fumbling the phone out and turning it on. For a banker, David was surprisingly security-averse. He used the same password and PIN for everything, including the TV package, so Amy found herself using his codes more often than her own. She clicked on his messages and began scrolling through them.
‘Work, work, me,’ she whispered absently. ‘Work, Max, me, his boss . . . Wow, they never leave him alone . . .’ Fingers moving fast, opening anything vaguely promising, she quickly worked her way through the past few weeks, but there was nothing. Nothing at all. Sighing, she clicked onto his email account, flipping down the inbox column, her hope fading. If you discounted Amy herself, and David’s secretary Dawn – late fifties, as sexy as a broom – he barely got emails from any women at all, let alone an illicit lover. She supposed she should be outraged or depressed that the world of banking was so very male-dominated – and she also supposed that she should be pleased that she had found no evidence of her husband’s imagined affair. He did love her, he was faithful; wasn’t that what she wanted? But whether it was the wine or the heat or the neurotic paranoia she’d managed to stir up within herself, she just felt let down, disappointed. She’d almost wanted to find something, wanted to be right, so that all this pain and confusion wouldn’t just have been a pointless delusion.
Looking around the room, her eyes fell on David’s wallet, squatting like a fat frog on the bedside cabinet. She snatched it up, emptying the contents out onto the bed. Credit cards, a cute photo of the three of them, driving licence, an Oyster card – when did David ever travel by Tube? – a coffee shop loyalty card, one stamp. She opened the money slot: fifty quid in tens, about a hundred euros and a load of crumpled receipts. She smoothed them out: drinks in the village square, ice creams, a slip for a cash withdrawal. And there: a receipt for something from ‘Le Visage’, 255 euros. She frowned. Le Visage, why did that seem familiar?
Nausea collected at the base of her throat when she realised where she remembered the name from. The boutique next to the ice cream shop. The one she and Juliet had been looking at, the one where Josie had glanced over her shoulder and said she liked the pendant. With David standing right there.
Amy’s heart leapt. This was it: she knew it! David had heard Josie admire the necklace and had bought it for her. She looked at the receipt again. No description, just a number. Evidence, Juliet had said she needed evidence. Wasn’t this good enough?
‘Mummy? What are you doing?’
Amy gasped, clutching a hand to her breast. ‘Tilly, God. You scared me. What are you doing out of bed?’
‘I had a bad dream.’ Tilly rubbed her eyes sleepily. ‘Isn’t that Daddy’s phone? Can I play Happy Mrs Chicken?’
Amy had no idea what Happy Mrs Chicken was. ‘No sweetie,’ she said, slipping the phone back into her pocket. ‘It’s bedtime. Come on, I’ll tuck you in.’
‘Josie likes playing Happy Mrs Chicken with me.’
‘I don’t give a shit what Josie likes doing,’ Amy said, feeling her teeth bare.
Tilly stepped back in surprise. ‘Why are you always angry now, Mummy?’ she said, her voice wobbling.
‘I’m not angry, sweetheart,’ Amy said, pulling her daughter into a hug. ‘I’m just a bit tired. That’s why we came on holiday, to have a rest.’
Tilly yawned, seemingly placated. ‘Okay,’ she said, her eyelids dipping. ‘I’m sleepy too.’
Amy took her back to her room and sat there for a while, stroking her hair away from her face. She was beautiful, perfect, but even here, Amy couldn’t stop her mind from straying to dark thoughts. Imagining Josie putting the children to bed. David coming to check on them, pushing her up against the wardrobe, his hands urgently seeking . . . Just because she hadn’t found anything in his phone, that didn’t mean he wasn’t screwing the bitch, did it? He didn’t have to be sending her sweet nothings; he could just be grabbing her on the stairs as she came out of Tilly’s room, waiting until Amy was deep into her stupid note-making then slipping into the pool house, even behind a bloody tree.
Amy could feel her anger rising, her pressure on Tilly’s head increasing. Stop, she told herself, standing up. Just stop. But she couldn’t, wouldn’t. She was going to find evidence, and screw anyone who got in her way.
She left Tilly and crossed back into her own bedroom. She yanked the dresser drawer open, scrabbling in the back until she found the crumpled bra. ‘Exhibit A,’ she smiled, holding it up in triumph. Part of her brain was telling her it was a crazy idea as she swayed up the stairs towards Josie’s room, but the rest of her wasn’t listening. Even so, she pushed on the door gently. ‘Hello?’ she said. ‘Josie?’ No answer, just a darkened room, the sounds of conversation and laughter from the garden drifting in through the open window.
She stepped inside, aware that she was walking on tiptoes. I’m allowed to be here, she thought angrily. This is my friend’s house, not hers. Why should I be creeping around? The pendant must be in here somew