I realize now that he stopped me at the bar because Denis was talking to Carol. Just one man on the payroll makes that sort of thing easy. Just a quick word and the husband loses almost an hour in strained small talk with a complete stranger. I even had a tray full of drinks, but every time I started to go back Michael dropped one of his hands onto my arm and made some comment, or joke, or asked me some inane question. I remember he said he had put on a bit of weight over the winter, but come spring, when he was ‘in season’, he would turn it back into muscle. I’d never heard anyone describe themselves that way before. It wasn’t exactly politeness that kept me there, it was a prickling fear that he was drunk and he was violent and I didn’t want to offend him. I stood it as long as I could, and when he turned away at last to pick up his change from the barman, I walked back to the table.

Carol wasn’t there and neither was Denis. It’s so easy now to understand what had happened, but at the time I just didn’t. Midnight was coming and I had the drinks in. I sipped one pint to the dregs and then started on another when she was suddenly back at the table and Denis was there too, kissing his wife just as the countdown started. You wouldn’t think I could miss something like that, knowing what I did, but I’ve stopped that sort of paranoia. It eats you alive, especially if you’re right every now and then. You really can’t watch them all the time. It destroys your nerves, your stomach and maybe your sanity.

Carol did look a little flushed, I remember. I put it down to alcohol and excitement. Balloons came down from the ceiling and everybody joined hands with strangers and sang that Scottish song where you only know one line and everyone repeats it over and over. There was a man in a kilt there and I remember smiling when I saw him and turning to Carol to see if she’d noticed. She smiled back at me and everything was all right.

The thing that really makes me bitter is that poor old Denis didn’t know the woman he was dealing with. If he’d gone hard at her like he did at his business acquaintances, he’d have had her skirt up after a meal or two. The trouble with Carol is that she looks the complete opposite. If you can imagine a Grace Kelly with dark hair, it isn’t her at all, but the attitude, the long neck and pale skin, that’s the same. She’s the sort of woman you want to muss a little, to see a tendril of hair come loose and a wicked gleam come into her eyes. You know the type? She’s the sort of woman you want to gasp when you kiss her. I worked hard at it when we were young together. She was a little drunk that first time with me. It wasn’t the way I’d pictured it. I could hardly see her in the dark room back at the student halls. Her thighs were long and white and they made a whispering sound as I ran my hand down them. I remember that she cradled my head against her, almost like holding a child. I think one of us cried, but we were drunk and young and it was a long time ago and two different people.

Denis thought he had found the great love of his life, of course.

Carol sells houses to people with too much money, the sort of people who surround themselves with gold-framed pictures and match the colour to their bath taps. Denis wouldn’t have looked out of place on her client list, even if he’d brought Michael as a driver. I heard his name when a girl from Carol’s office left a message about taking ‘Mr Tanter’ to another viewing. I didn’t recognize it at first, but there was another one the following day. I pressed the buttons on the phone and I heard the girl’s voice – with him in the background, making a wisecrack. I think I probably knew then, as I wiped the message. Carol hadn’t heard it yet, but I just wanted it off the phone memory, as if I could wipe away my suspicions with a couple of quick clicks.

She hates me when I think something is going on. She says I pretend to be normal and friendly, but all the time there is a spite in my eyes that she can’t bear. She says it makes her want to get out of the house. Sometimes she does and comes back smelling of drink and too much perfume at two or three in the morning. When she’s drunk, I pretend to be asleep. If she sees I’m awake, she talks like a gutter whore and it’s all I can do to lie there and pretend I can’t hear every last word of it. It’s just another one of the little games we play with each other.

I think it took Denis about a week to ask her to come to a hotel with him. It might have been sooner if he’d known her, of course, but I think he probably felt like the luckiest man in the world as she dropped her skirt to her ankles and stepped out of it. I’ve been on the receiving end of the best she has to offer, and it caught me. I mean, I’m still here after some pretty vicious years, so I can sort of appreciate what Denis went through, you know? I’m not saying I understand the man. He was a taker and I knew it from the first time I met him. Like my brother, he was one of those people who use those around them, for fun, for sex, for friendship.

Sometimes they make a mistake and think they’ve found something more important than it really is. Denis did that with Carol, the moment he woke up in the hotel and found out she’d gone. She’d come home to me in the small hours and Denis was not the sort to understand that kind of relationship. Hell, I don’t understand it and I’m in it.

She came home to me because she always comes home to me. She doesn’t stay till the morning, not after they’ve gone to sleep. After all, a hotel morning is just bad breath, crumpled clothes and a full English breakfast with too much salt and burned coffee. To be honest, I don’t really care why she trusts me enough to keep coming back. Maybe she even loves me as much as I love her.

That great love of hers didn’t stop it happening again, of course. I don’t know whether it was another hotel, or maybe even his own house. The difference from my point of view was that the second time she spent an evening away that week, Denis arranged for me to have a friendly visitor. While he was bending Carol over a bed somewhere plush, I actually opened the door with a piece of buttered toast in my hand. Can you imagine anything more middle class and harmless? I had a mouthful of bread and Marmite as I recognized Michael and I was in the middle of trying to say something when he took a step forward and shoved me onto my back. I think he trod on one of my feet first, but I didn’t take much in as I smacked my head on the hall floor. If it had been carpeted I might have been a little sharper for the next few minutes. Unfortunately it was block wood, and one of the things that sold us the house when we first saw it.

It was the casual nature of it that was so insulting. I think most of us have wondered how we would handle a burglar, say, if we confronted one. I thoroughly enjoy politicians talking about ‘reasonable force’ for those moments in life. You can take it from me that terror makes a mockery of anything resembling reason. I opened the door with some vague thought about a football match on the television. A moment later I was half-stunned and blinded by the hall light directly above me. I felt a hand grab my shirt collar and I found myself sliding along the wooden floor towards the kitchen. I panicked and tried to get up, but I wasn’t wearing shoes and my socks slipped underneath me. I couldn’t do more than make kicking motions in a panic.

There’s a small table and chair in the kitchen. It’s too cramped really, but Carol insisted on being able to use the words ‘breakfast room’ for when we sell the house on. It is her business, after all. That’s the sort of stupid thought that came into my head as Michael dragged me up and dumped me on my own chair. Reasonable force? I’d like to see one of them try it with Michael resting his great fists on my kitchen table.