I shrugged.

“It’s a marriage,” I said. “I don’t know what you want me to say. We have our ups and downs, our silly squabbles, like everybody.”

“Have you told your husband about the letter?”

“The detective asked me to. I left a message at work; he’ll phone later.”

She looked at me as if she could see through me. It made me feel uncomfortable. There was a long pause.

“Jenny,” she said finally. “I know that one of the things that you feel, or will feel, is violated. And what’s worse is that some of our efforts to help you may feel like a violation as well. There are things I need to know about.” She looked around at the chaos of the house and gave her knowing smile again. “Think of me as like your surveyor going round the house looking for bits where the water might get in.”

“Tell me about it,” I said in mock bitterness.

She leaned forward again.

“Has your husband been faithful, Jenny?”

“What!”

She repeated the question, as if there was nothing strange about it.

I glared at her and felt my face going red. My head was starting to hurt. “I think you should ask him,” I said as coolly as I could.

She made a mark on her notepad.

“What about you?”

“Me?” I snorted. “Don’t be stupid. When on earth would I find time for an affair, even if I wanted one, unless it was with the gardener or the odd-job man or the tennis coach? I virtually never meet anybody else. Look, you say you are just doing your job and you have to ask about these things, but really, you’ve done it and now I just want to get on with my day, whatever is left of it, that is.”

“Do you find these questions intrusive?”

“Of course I do. I know it’s an unfashionable view, but I like to keep private things private.”

She stood up at last, but she wasn’t ready to leave quite yet.

“Jenny,” she said. I was irritated by the way she kept using my first name. I hadn’t told her she could. It felt like an insurance salesman keeping his foot in the door. “All I want, all any of us want, is to put a stop to this and get out of your life. If anything comes into your mind that seems significant in any way, let the police know or let me know. Let us decide what is or isn’t important. Don’t be embarrassed to tell us, will you?”

She almost seemed to be pleading with me. It made me feel better, more in control.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll put on my thinking cap.”

“Do that.” She turned to go. “And Jenny.”

“Yes.”

She hesitated, then thought better of it. “Nothing. Take care.”

Later, they all went-except that Stadler man, the one with the bedroom eyes. He told me they would be opening my mail in the morning, just to be on the safe side.

“No more nasty shocks for you,” he said, and gave me a smile that was perilously close to a leer. Honestly! I glared at him. “And,” he added, as if it was an afterthought, “we’re leaving a couple of police officers outside the house.”

“This is getting beyond a joke,” I said.

“Just a precaution,” he said soothingly, as if I were a horse. “And during the day there will be a woman officer who’ll be here most of the time.” He smiled. “Continuity for you.”

I opened my mouth to say something but couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t obscene, so I just glared.

“She’s here now. Hang on a minute.” He strode to the door and shouted: “Lynne! Lynne, can you come in here for a minute? Mrs. Hintlesham, this is Officer Burnett. Lynne, Mrs. Hintlesham.”

The woman was almost as small as me, but much younger, almost young enough to be my daughter, with light brown hair, pale lashes, and a birthmark on her left cheek that made her look as if she’d been smacked in the face just before she came in. She smiled at me but I didn’t smile back.

“I’ll try and keep out of your way,” she said.

“Do,” I snapped. I pointedly turned my back on her and Stadler until they had both left the room and I was blessedly alone again.

The kitchen was full of empty mugs, and there were a couple of cigarette butts by the back door. You would have thought the least they could do was clear up after themselves. I rang Clive again, but he still wasn’t available.

Lena brought Chris and Josh back. Harry was being dropped off by another mum after football practice. I told Josh, in vague and reassuring terms, about a stupid note and there being policemen outside. I thought he might be a bit alarmed, or impressed. But he just leaned against the kitchen door, chewed his lower lip, and shrugged before loping off to his bedroom with two peanut butter sandwiches and a tankard of milk; I don’t know where all the food goes.

I dread to think what he gets up to in his room. He closes the curtains and there’s loud music, and bleeps and shrieks from his dreadful computer games, and incense, probably to cover up the cigarettes he smuggles in. I make sure it’s always Mary who tidies up in there and changes his sheets. I don’t go in his room, I just shout through the door for him to do his homework, practice his saxophone, turn down the music, bring down his dirty washing. He’s grown up all of a sudden. His voice has broken, he’s got little pimples on his forehead, soft hair on his upper lip. And he’s so tall. Much taller than me. He’s got that odd, man’s smell about him, as well, underneath all the lotions and gels that he and his friends seem to wear nowadays. Not like when we were young.

Chris is too young to understand, of course; I didn’t say anything to him, just gave his squashy little body a hug. He’s my baby.

Then I drove to the reclamation center but it had just closed so I didn’t get the hooks, which was the last straw.

Clive rang to say he wouldn’t be home until late, so after Harry got back, and after I had put Chris to bed with a story, I had supper with Josh and Harry. Lasagne that I’d taken out of the freezer earlier, with peas, and for pudding ice cream with chocolate sauce. No one spoke much. I watched them shovel food down their throats as if it were fuel. I didn’t eat very much. It was too hot.

The boys drifted off into their own rooms again, so I poured myself a glass of white wine and sat downstairs with the TV on, leafing through magazines. We needed a dining room table. I knew what I was looking for, something in grainy dark wood, long and simple, a refectory-type table. I’d seen one I quite liked recently with little mosaics of different-colored wood set into the surface, like coasters. Jeremy said I ought to find the perfect chairs first, since they are always more difficult. He told me about a client of his who had waited eight years for the perfect chairs. I told him I wasn’t that patient.

Clive still hadn’t come home. From Josh’s room came a booming bass note from the awful electronic music he listens to. I drew the curtains, seeing as I did so the two policemen sitting in their car. We should have a dinner party as soon as we buy the table, I thought. I could wear my black dress and the diamond choker Clive had given me for our fifteenth wedding anniversary. I picked up a cookbook and thumbed through the summer recipes. Champagne to begin with. Then iced chervil and cucumber soup, tuna scented with coriander, apricot sorbet, cold white wine, on the table those peachy roses from the garden that Francis planted when we arrived. I put my glass against my forehead. So hot.

I heard the key turn in the door. Clive kissed me on the cheek. He looked gray with tiredness.

“God, what a day,” he said.

“There’s lasagne if you want some.”

“No, I ate with some clients.”

I looked at him: expensive charcoal-gray suit; black shoes, well polished; purple and gray tie I’d given him for Christmas; slight paunch beneath his well-ironed white shirt; little threads of silver in his dark hair; a hardly discernible double chin; frown marks just beginning to appear in his high forehead. A distinguished man. I always thought that in a strange way he looked at his best when exhausted, late at night, just after walking through the door. First thing in the morning he was busy, fussy, nervous, distracted, before he put on his lawyer’s mask and went to work. He took off his jacket and hung it carefully on the back of a chair, then lowered himself onto the sofa, sighing. There were circles of sweat under his arms. I went to the kitchen and came back with two glasses of white wine, very cold from the fridge. My head was still sore.