All the Things We Never Knew

Chapter 1

ONE

ANNA

They say the wife is always the last to find out.

I like to think that wasn’t true in my case: the shame, the humiliation, the sense of having had the wool pulled over one’s eyes, was bad enough without imagining that everyone else had already known.

That everyone – our friends, the school mums, Gray’s colleagues – would have been whispering behind my back, exchanging messages on WhatsApp groups I didn’t know existed.

It’s been going on for over a year.

Poor Anna, she has no idea.

Sometimes it’s easier to be in denial.

I like to think that Gray was careful enough – discreet enough – that not many people knew before I did.

After all, he was good at keeping secrets.

Although, of course, back then, as January turned to February, the relentless gloom of winter seeming as if it would never loosen its grip, I didn’t know that either.

After eighteen years of marriage, I thought I knew all there was to know about my husband – or at any rate, all I needed to know.

The way he mumbled to himself as he emerged from sleep in the mornings, although he didn’t snore any more.

The way he’d often stop, distracted, halfway through getting dressed, one sock on and the other concertinaed over his toes.

His hatred of bananas and classical music, so the first were banned from our kitchen and the second endured only if I listened on noise-cancelling headphones.

That makes it sound as if he was an intolerant man – one of those domestic dictators you hear about sometimes, cruel to me and impatient with his children.

But he wasn’t. He was gentle and funny and generous.

He always made time for the kids, listening when Lulu came to him with her friendship worries, cheering from the sidelines when Barney played football. He was always laughing.

When I met him, I thought I’d found the perfect foil to my own introversion – a man who’d always be at the centre of things, always cheerful, always looking on the bright side.

Perhaps over the years the laughter and silliness had dwindled, along with the sex. But that was normal, I told myself, it was to be expected from two busy, tired, stressed people with growing children. We were still close. We were still kind to each other.

But over the past year or so, I’d noticed sometimes I had to say something to him two or three times before he heard me.

And there’d been his ever-demanding work, his cycling hobby that took him out of the house for hours or often whole days.

I’d found myself increasingly snappy and resentful, sometimes engineering rows over minor, stupid things (the garden paving still un-jetwashed nine months after I’d first asked him to do it; the cashmere jumper of mine he’d ruined when he put it in the washing machine with his cycling kit; the cat’s food left uncovered to gather flies) just so I’d have the chance to vent at him about the big things.

You only think about yourself.

It’s like you have no respect for me at all.

I’m not your bloody support human, Gray.

So not so kind after all, then.

I’d even caught myself browsing the internet for little three-bedroom houses outside of London, imagining what life would be like if it was just the children and me.

But then reality would kick in. I could never leave.

I loved Gray. I loved our life together.

I loved our house – number eight Damask Square.

It had been ours for almost as long as we’d been together.

We’d poured years of work and money into it, burying ourselves beneath a mountain of debt I’d thought we would never escape, and now it was finished, perfect.

Almost perfect. I glanced up at the crack that had recently appeared on our bedroom wall, where the salvaged Victorian cornicing met the Shadow White-painted plaster – We’ll need to get someone in to look at that – and then back to the bundle of socks in my hand, which I’d been sorting into pairs prior to putting them away in Gray’s drawer.

Then I noticed the jeweller’s box. It had fallen open, tilted on its side, and I picked it up without thinking to close it and couldn’t help catching sight of what was inside. Earrings. Diamond earrings.

I stood there for what must have been a minute, looking blankly down at the open box in my hand.

Low afternoon sunlight falling through the window caught the gemstones and threw a rainbow of colours on to the wall behind the chest of drawers – they would cast similar light on the wearer’s face, I knew, lighting it up like only high-quality, well-cut diamonds can.

I’d never owned a piece of jewellery like this.

My engagement ring had come from a stall in Spitalfields Market; Gray and I had bought it the afternoon he’d proposed, giddy with cheap Riesling and love after a long lunch on Brick Lane.

The ring was vintage, an opal set in silver, and the stone had chipped round its edges over the years.

I’ve since learned that opal isn’t generally used for engagement rings for that reason.

These diamonds would never chip. They were the real deal – perfect round solitaires set in what might have been platinum or white gold. My engagement ring was precious and I loved it, but these were in a different league.

They were beautiful. Objectively, breathtaking.

But my breath was taken away for a different reason.

Gray had bought these, clearly intending them as a gift for someone who wasn’t me.

The box still resting on my trembling right hand, I raised my left and touched my earlobe, as if I needed to confirm to myself that it was not and never had been pierced.

I imagined the earrings there, sparkling against my skin.

I imagined telling people, smiling, Yes, they were a gift from Gray, and them thinking, Lucky woman – he must be mad about her, even after all these years.

But they weren’t mine. I was not that lucky woman, and it wasn’t me my husband was mad about.

Apparently.

I fought the urge to take an earring out of the box and inspect it.

There was no point – I knew what they looked like and, in the midst of my shock, I was aware of the risk of dropping it and losing it between the floorboards.

That would take some explaining – explaining I was nowhere close to ready to do.

I put the box on top of the chest of drawers, its lid still open, Gray’s sock drawer still ajar, and sat down on the bed, suddenly feeling weak and sick.

I took my phone out of my jeans pocket and navigated to the Liberty website, tapping on the Jewellery tab then navigating to Fine Jewellery, Earrings and on to Diamonds.

And there they were – the fifth item out of thirty-six listed, just the same in the picture as in real life.

The name of their designer was there, along with their carat weight and, of course, their price.

More than four thousand pounds.

My throat made a dry, clicking sound as I swallowed.

Four thousand pounds – it was more than I spent on myself in a year.

Not because we couldn’t afford it, but because over the years I’d become accustomed to thrift – to looking on Vinted for clothes, tinting my roots myself at home, going to the local council leisure centre instead of to the swanky gym a few blocks away that did hot yoga and had an on-site massage therapist. There were more important things to spend our money on, I told myself.

And clearly my husband felt the same.

My mind flashed to our daughter – to Lulu. She’d be sixteen in summer. Perhaps Gray, in a moment of madness, had decided that a piece of fine jewellery was an appropriate way to mark the occasion?

But Lulu couldn’t go more than a month without mislaying her school blazer, her phone or her house keys.

Her flakiness drove Gray mad sometimes. He’d never splurge on such an expensive gift for her, knowing that she was likely to lose them almost immediately – and certainly not without discussing it with me first.

And Lulu’s birthday was months away, anyway. It was February now: February the thirteenth. The day before Valentine’s Day.

No, the earrings were not for our daughter. Not for me, either. They were for someone else. Someone Gray wanted to surprise with a beautiful, expensive present that she would treasure for ever.

Someone special.