Chapter 2

I forcefully dragged him out of the hall, got him into the first room I found, a small sitting room off the east corridor, and shut the door on the guests who were still buzzing about what had just happened.

"Mark, What the hell just happened?! Where did that video come from?!"

My voice came out unsteady. I hated it.

"It doesn't matter where it came from." He wasn't looking at me. "It was you. It was unmistakably you."

"It wasn't me! I swear to God I have never met that man in my life!"

He didn't answer. He put his hands in his trouser pockets and stood there like a stone, his gaze wandering at nothing in particular. After the unbearable moment of silence I crossed the room and took hold of his arms.

"Please believe me! Five years, Mark. Five years and I have never lied to you once, not about anything, not even small things." I was begging now, and the tears had started. I was gripping him hard enough to feel the seam of his jacket. "I don't know how that video exists. I don't know who made it. But it isn't me! You know it isn't me!"

He didn't say anything, which made me grip him harder, as if I were holding on for dear life.

"Please believe me, Mark! I don't know where you got that video, but I'll do anything to prove my innocence. Please!"

He looked down at my hands. Then he took my wrists, one in each of his, and loosened them off his arms the way you'd unhook something from a fence.

"I'm seeing someone."

The room went quiet. My tears stopped falling.

"What?"

"I'm seeing someone else, Sarah. I'll be announcing our engagement once this has died down."

It all arrived at the same time. Heartbreak, confusion, hurt, none of them in any order, none of them waiting their turn.

Then it hit me.

"You did it."

"What?"

I went for him again, and this time I didn't hold on. I slapped him hard enough that he took half a step back.

"You made that video!" I screamed in his face. "I don't know how you did it but you made it! How could you do that to me? How could you stand up in front of those people and —"

He touched the corner of his mouth with his thumb and checked it.

Then he laughed. Short, and genuinely amused.

"I didn't know you have that kind of energy in you," he said. "I'm impressed."

"You could've just asked me to leave if you didn't want to be with me anymore. What did I ever do to you?" I was shaking. "If you had asked me to go, I would have gone. Why, Mark?"

His eyes had gone dark and flat in a way I'd never seen, and something went cold along the back of my neck.

"Because that would make me the villain in our story. I can’t have that kind of reputation after polishing my image for so long."

I stood there, completely at a loss. Then I gathered myself as best I could.

"Here's what's going to happen," I said. "I'm going to walk out of this room. I'm going to stand in front of those people. And I'm going to tell them my husband manufactured a video of me so he could leave me for his mistress."

I turned for the door, but he caught my arm before I'd taken a step and pulled me back.

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"Let go of me!" I pulled against him.

He took out his phone instead.

He held the screen up between us. A livestream, already running, forty thousand people watching. A man sitting in front of a plain wall in a shirt he'd clearly been told to wear.

I knew the face. I had been looking at it fifteen minutes ago on a screen the size of a wall.

"My name is Blake Jones," he said. "You've all seen the video of me with Sarah Hudson. I want to confirm that it was the two of us. It was a hotel in Buenos Aires, over four nights in September, and I have the booking confirmations and the messages. I'll be handing all of it to Mr. Hudson's lawyers. I'm sorry. Mark, I'm so sorry. I didn't know she was married until —"

"No," I said.

The word just came out of me.

Mark locked the phone and put it back in his pocket.

"So here's what's actually going to happen." He didn't raise his voice at any point. "You're not going to say anything remotely close to 'my husband set me up.' You're going to go back into that room and tell them you're sorry. And then you're going to face reporters and say you're sorry again. You're going to say your judgement was clouded. You're going to accept the divorce. And you're going to wish me well and say you hope I can move past what you've done to me."

"And if I don't?"

"Then I go to a judge with a wife who's defaming me," Mark said. "And you'll be doing all of that with no money and no lawyer."

I turned every page in my mind, trying to remember what I'd done in September. Trying to remember if I had ever met that man in my life.

I had been in Buenos Aires in September. Four days, at a conference on the social programmes his company ran across Latin America. A routine trip, like the dozens I'd made before —

He knew I was in Buenos Aires. He had booked the flights. He had chosen the dates. He said he couldn't come. He told me to enjoy myself and see the city, so I did, and I put half of it on my socials.

He hadn't found four nights that fit. He had built them.

He had built them so carefully that fighting it would be like walking into an arena where the result had been decided before I arrived.

I closed my mouth. Mark watched me do it. Something moved behind his face — satisfaction, almost.

"There she is. Good girl," he said.

"I don't know who you are." My voice came out level and I have no idea how. "I've been married to you for five years and I don't know the person standing in front of me."

"You don't have to." He straightened his cuff. "It's over for both of us."

He opened the door and went back to his party.