I manage a few hours of sleep before the winter sun sears through the threadbare curtains and wakes me again. Izzy hasn’t moved, but her hair has shifted, laying two strands across her cheek. I get as close as lifting my hand to smooth them back before remembering how inappropriate that would be.
I slide out of the bed quietly and grab my clothes before slipping into the bathroom. I want to get back to Forest Manor. This room feels like a trap—if I spend much more time with Izzy here, I’ll kiss her.
She lifts her head as I emerge from the bathroom. “Oh,” she says, rubbing her face. “I remember. Woking. Snow. Ugh.”
I straighten my pillow. I don’t know where to look. She slept in her top and knickers—her jeans are folded on the footstool.
“We should go. The trains are running again.”
“Yeah? Has it settled?” she asks. “The snow,” she clarifies when I look blank.
She slides her legs out of the bed and pads over to fetch the rest of her clothes. I turn away with a sharp breath as she bends to pull on her jeans.
“Wow,” she says, opening the curtains.
I step around the bed and look over her shoulder. Outside, the town looks like a different place—it’s blanketed in snow, every hard edge softened, every block of flats now capped in white.
“A blank slate,” Izzy says, and the small smile she shoots over her shoulder gives me hope.
Izzy
We travel home in a silence that is only broken twice: once by Lucas saying, “Please stop kicking the table leg,” and once by me objecting to Lucas manspreading, though the moment he moves his knee out of my space, I find to my alarm that I kind of want it back again.
I feel totally panicked by last night. The kiss. The strip poker. Lucas in nothing but boxers. It’s hard to even know where to begin with processing it all, so instead I just stare out at the snowy countryside and listen to an upcycling podcast, fully aware that I am forgetting everything the podcaster says in real-time.
When we get back to the hotel, there is a dark-haired woman sitting on the front steps, doubled over, shoulders shaking with sobs. A thin layer of snow dusts the stone around her, but her navy coat is hanging open, as though she hasn’t noticed the cold.
Lucas and I exchange a glance and accelerate.
“Madam?” Lucas says. “Can we help you?”
She looks up at us through blue-rimmed glasses clouded with tears.
“You,” she says with venom. “You’re the ones doing this ring thing, aren’t you?”
Shit. Is this Wife 1? Wife 2? Or someone else entirely whose life I have managed to ruin?
“Yes,” Lucas says calmly, ducking down to sit on the step beside her. “That’s us.”
This is kind of him—I think we all know this is my pet project. I was quick to remind him of that when it was earning us a fifteen-grand reward.
“You’ve ruined everything. Graham is—was—he was a good husband. We were happy.”
Her make-up is scored with tear tracks. She’s beautiful, in that classic, statuesque way that always ages so well—I find myself thinking, How could anyone cheat on someone like her? As if beautiful people are immune to the damage a screwed-up man can create.
My stomach twists. I feel terrible. I never, ever imagined that the Ring Thing could cause any harm. I just thought about how desperately I would want someone to return the ring my dad gave me if they ever found it. But maybe some things are better off lost.
“Mrs. . . .”
“Rogers. Actually, that’s his name, so—Ms. Ashley, I guess.”
“I see,” Lucas says. “Ms. Ashley, I am very sorry for the pain this has caused you.”
She’s sobbing again. I twist my hands together, sitting down on the other side of Ms. Ashley, then biting my lip as the freezing cold snow soaks through the backs of my trousers.
“But Graham was not a good husband.”
Lucas’s voice is firm. I glance at his face, surprised—I thought he would just listen and make some supportive noises, but he’s gone in pretty hard there.
“Someone who can lie to you so easily, and give his love to somebody else when he promised it all to you . . . that is not a good husband.”
Ms. Ashley drops her face into her hands. “Oh, God. But Graham is so nice. Everyone says it.”
She lifts her gaze to me. I almost recoil at her expression.
“Don’t listen to people,” she says. “You hear me? People are stupid. Listen to your instincts. Yours. Nobody else’s. Everyone said I should go out with Graham because he’s a good guy, and now fucking look at me!”
I try not to jump as she starts shouting. I glance up—a car is pulling into the car park.
Ms. Ashley shoots to her feet. “That’s them. You wanker!” she screams at the car.
I widen my eyes at Lucas, standing up and brushing the snow off my legs.
“Ah,” comes Mrs. SB’s voice from behind us, in the hotel doorway. “Everyone’s here very early for brunch! How nice. Mrs. Rogers . . .”
“Ms. Ashley,” Lucas and I correct her in unison.
“Ms. Ashley,” Mrs. SB says, not missing a beat. “I wondered where you’d got to. Won’t you come back inside and warm up?”
“I don’t think I can do this,” Ms. Ashley says, staring at the four-by-four currently parking up, with a serious-faced couple inside: Graham, presumably, and the other Mrs. Rogers. “Look at that car. Is that his car? He would never drive a car like that, but he’s driving that car right now. How is that possible?” Ms. Ashley fixes her gaze on me again. “He was always too good to be true,” she whispers, gripping my arm. “I should have known.”
I grip her hand right back, feeling a bit desperate. I want to give her a hug, but I am pretty sure she doesn’t want one from me. “You couldn’t have known. Ms. Ashley, it’s not your fault.”
“I can’t do this,” she says. “I can’t sit in the same room as them. I thought I could yesterday, but I can’t do it. Oh, God.”
They’re climbing out of the car. The other Mrs. Rogers looks as though she is vibrating with rage. She slams the door hard and stalks past her husband. She’s younger, curvier, with orange-blonde hair in a crown braid.
“Darling,” says Graham, racing after her. “Please. Talk to me. I love you.”
He does look like a nice guy. A bumbling British type. All tweed and good intentions. He’s not seen Ms. Ashley yet, I realise—she’s hidden behind one of the round box hedges. She steps out now, her arms folded, her whole body trembling.
“Which darling would that be?” she says.
It’s extraordinary to watch Graham make his decision. In one second, then two, it all passes over his face: indecision, cunning, deliberation. Not so well-intentioned now. As the other Mrs. Rogers falters at the sight of Ms. Ashley, Graham picks the life he wants to live.
“The truth is, darling,” he says to the blonde wife he drove here with. “This is all a terrible mix-up. I knew this woman once. I’m sorry to tell you . . . she’s quite mad.”
Ms. Ashley’s mouth drops open. The blonde Mrs. Rogers narrows her eyes, keeping her gaze fixed on the woman in front of her.
“Tell me,” she says.
Ms. Ashley doesn’t hesitate. “He married me eight years ago in Godalming. We live together in New Milton. He stays away a lot for work. We’ve had two cats, a miscarriage, eight holidays in Spain, and three days ago he told me he’d never loved me more.”
“All nonsense,” Graham says immediately.
Mrs. Rogers nods once. “In that case—no brunch,” she says, redirecting her attention to Mrs. SB. “We’re calling the police instead.”
Ms. Ashley tenses. We all wait, wondering exactly which we Mrs. Rogers means, until she turns slowly and looks at her husband.
“Bigamy is a serious crime, darling,” she says.
* * *
? ? ? ? ?
When the police car pulls up the hotel’s sweeping gravel drive, most of the hotel staff, Mr. Townsend, and even the Jacobses (their cheerfully waving baby included) have come to watch the drama unfold.
The two former Mrs. Rogerses stand at opposite ends of the crowd, stony-faced, as Mr. Rogers gawps in the face of the policeman currently reading him his rights.