The phone rang. A voice on the other end said, “Your husband has been in an accident. But that’s not all…

The phone rang, and a voice on the other end said, Your husband has been in an accident. But thats not all The tone was cold and formal, as if reciting a script. I felt the blood in my veins turn to ice. Before I could ask what it meant, the voice continued, You must come to the hospital at once. Hes conscious, but there was someone else with him.

I bolted out of the house without my coat, in flipflops, clutching the keys in one hand and the phone in the other. On the pavement I hailed the first taxi that stopped. The driver gave me a bewildered look, as though I were mad. All I could think was: who was this other person? Who could it have been? James had just returned from a business trip, or so hed always said.

At St. Marys they led me to the casualty ward. The nurse gave me a look I recognised from countless filmssympathy, embarrassment, and a desperate wish to end the conversation. Hes been in a roadtraffic collision. No fractures, but badly battered and hes had a concussion. Hes in the observation unit. The woman she was in the car with him. She died on impact.

I stared, baffled. Which woman? A colleague? A hitchhiker? James never stopped for strangers. He never talked to unknown people. He never did anything without a reason.

I entered the observation room. He lay there with a bandage across his forehead, his cheek scraped, an IV drip humming beside him. When he saw me, his gaze slipped away. Hello, he whispered. And then everything inside me shattered. Who was she? I asked. A work colleague? He stayed silent. After a moment he said, Now isnt the time. But I already knew.

It was the next day, when they were discharging him, that he finally told me the truth. She was Emily. Wed been seeing each other for a year. She was supposed to go back to her husband, but wanted to say goodbye to me. I drove her home, was going too fast, and we left the road. He said it as calmly as if he were commenting on the weather. Then added, I didnt want you to hear it like this.

I walked back to our flat with a hollow emptiness inside. The kitchen was exactly as it had always been: a coffee mug on the table, his slippers beneath the radiator. Yet everything had changed. James tried to act as if life would simply fall back into place, as if all would work out. I could not sleep in the same bed, could not breathe the same air.

Emily had been thirtynine, left two children behind. I read about it later online. Her husband appeared on the local news, saying he still did not understand what had happened, that Emily had been happy and they were planning a holiday. I stared at the screen and felt that I, too, should have been thereme, the one who knew nothing.

I shut myself away. I stopped eating, stopped answering calls. My daughter came home one day and said, Mum, you have to do something about this. But what? He had cheated. He had fallen in love, and by accident had killed the woman he loved. What now?

Two weeks later James began talking again about saving our marriage. It was no longer a dialogue between two people. It was a monologue from a man with nowhere to go. He never wept for Emily, never spoke of her, as if trying to erase her from memory. I felt as though a part of me had diedthe part that had trusted him.

In the end I packed a suitcase and left for my sisters house. I said only, I dont know how long this will last, but I cant be a backdrop to his lies any longer. James was left alone. He called, he texted, once even turned up with a bouquet. But I was no longer the same woman.