Page 24 of All the Things We Never Knew

‘Laurel.’ She pronounced my name like it left a bad taste in her mouth. ‘Gray’s sleeping, but you may as well come in.’

I stepped into the hallway. The first time I’d seen it, I was too shocked and, let’s face it, too embarrassed (because who wants to be peeled off the pavement by a handsome man after somehow fracturing their wrist falling off a bike while travelling at less than twenty miles an hour? Plus, I’d almost killed his cat) to take much in.

Now, though, I noticed the details. The industrial-style pendant light. The stairs stretching upwards, carpeted in a monochrome geometric pattern. The jewel-coloured paint and peony-printed wallpaper in the front room, which I glimpsed through a half-open door as we walked past.

‘We’ll go downstairs,’ Anna said. It was more a command than an invitation, so I followed her obediently.

Downstairs was equally swanky. At one end was what I presumed was a family room – shelves groaning with books, squashy teal sofas, a television with a picture of the cat on its sleeping screen. In the centre was a huge wooden dining table, one side suspended from the ceiling and the other supported by a single leg, like a letter L on its side. The far end was taken up by a vast kitchen with a marble-topped island, a wine cooler, a space-age coffee machine and shelves stacked with cookbooks. Beyond, glass doors and a flight of flagstone steps led up to the garden.

It was a gorgeous house. The kind of place I might have dreamed of living in if I’d ever seen anything like it for real before.

‘Your home is lovely,’ I said, pausing to take it all in.

Anna looked back at me, her face still. ‘Coffee?’

Clearly, we were not going to be new BFFs – not that I’d expected that. Still, I felt myself tightening with embarrassment, not knowing whether I would offend her more by accepting or declining, or if it would make no difference because I had offended her so much already just by existing.

And sleeping with her husband, of course.

‘I was going to make some anyway,’ she said, as if relenting slightly.

‘Thanks.’ I smiled cautiously. ‘That would be great.’

She flew into action, as if she was relieved to have something to do, offering me milk and sugar (‘Frothed or flat? Brown or white?’) and putting homemade shortbread on a plate. I wondered if she always had baked goods on hand in case of unexpected guests or whether she’d made it especially, not as a gesture of welcome but as a way of saying, See? This is the life he’s had with me.

Or maybe, having teenage children, she simply kept her kitchen full of calorie-dense treats as a matter of course.

We sat together at the kitchen counter and drank our coffee, talking first about the weather and then, formally, as if he was just some mutual acquaintance, about Gray’s health.

‘He gets very tired,’ she said, ‘and his appetite’s not great.’

‘That’ll be the pain medication, I expect. Have they given him anything to help his appetite?’

‘Yes, but…’ She shrugged, then glanced at her phone. ‘He’s awake now. I’ve put a baby monitor up there. It seems ridiculous, but it was the best thing I could think of.’

‘That’s a really good idea,’ I said. ‘In a house this size…’

I was interrupted by a click and a rattle, and the cat came strolling in through his flap from the garden. Again, I remembered seeing him that first time, unsure if it was a feline or canine trying to commit hara-kiri beneath my bike wheels. Now I could see that he was, in fact, an exceptionally large animal, black and white and fluffy, with a magnificent set of whiskers.

I got off my stool and squatted down to fuss him. ‘Hello, Augustus.’

It was as if the temperature in the room had suddenly dropped ten degrees. I heard the rattle of crockery as Anna put our coffee things in the dishwasher, then felt her standing over me.

‘You may as well go up,’ she said.

‘Okay. Thank you. Is it…?’

‘I’ll show you. And, Laurel…’

I looked at her. Her blue eyes were as cold as marbles.

‘You’ve fucked my husband. You can befriend my cat if you like. But stay the hell away from my children.’

By the time we’d climbed two storeys’ worth of stairs to reach the bedroom, I’d managed to compose myself. Anna’s words – or not so much her words but the venom with which she’d spoken – had thrown me. Of course she was angry with me. I would be too. Anyone would be. But seeing it like that, seeing that poised, smooth face twisting with rage, hearing her middle-class London voice turn into a hiss of fury, was frightening.

So frightening I wanted to let myself straight out of the Farrow & Ball painted front door and leg it home.

Except I wanted to see Gray more.