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If he tells you the truth then you will understand all of this immediately. If he doesn’t then you won’t, and that is when you will know he is lying.

Think about that, Mary: he is lying to you. You remember those early days, don’t you, when you wondered why he was so interested in you? So insistent that you get together as a serious couple, despite your doubts? Why was that? You asked the question at the time. Just ask it again.

Ask him. See what he says.

Because there is a reason.

He might not give it to you – and if he doesn’t you will at least know one thing:

You can’t trust him.

Mary folded the note back to its original state and put it on the seat. She didn’t want to have read it. She didn’t want it to exist.

But it did.

While she was at the soccer game someone had put this in her car.

And what did it mean? Ask Ryan why he had married her? It was because he had fallen in love with her, fallen hard. And more to the point, how did whoever had written this know the details of their early relationship? How could they know she had questioned why he had pursued her so adamantly?

Because she had. She had been taken aback by the intensity of his feelings for her; she was divorced and fully occupied with raising her two kids and working a busy full-time job; she was not looking for a relationship and, if she had been, she was not seeking an all-encompassing grand passion. She had tried that, and it hadn’t worked. She was older and wiser, but then along came Ryan who, eight years younger, had approached their relationship with a single-minded intensity she found in part intoxicating and in part concerning. Intoxicating, because it was obvious she was the most important thing in the world to him; concerning, because it was obvious she was the most important thing in the world to him, and, much as she had grown to love him, he was not the most important thing in the world to her. Her kids were, without a question, but even more than that, she wasn’t ready for the emotional highs and lows of what seemed to her like someone experiencing the passion of a first love. She wanted stability and steadiness and reliability.

But he had won her over, told her not to wonder why two people fell for each other. Convinced her that if it felt good, felt right, it was good, was right. And they should simply enjoy it. She had, and it had worked out well. They had a good, loving marriage.

But this note suggested there was more to it, a specific reason why Ryan had chosen her. She struggled to think what it could be. Money? Yes, she did well, but he was hardly going to retire to the Bahamas if something happened to her.

And if this note was true it meant he had been hiding something from her all along. Worse: lying to her.

If he doesn’t you will at least know one thing:

You can’t trust him.

And there was more.

Ask him to tell you about Sandra.

Who the fuck was Sandra? She’d known a Sandra in high school, but the last she’d heard of her she was living in Boca Raton.

Mary started the engine. She just wanted to get out of there and go home and talk to her husband.

No: she wanted to quiz her husband and find out what – if anything – all this meant.

She looked left and right, ready to pull out, then stopped. A man was walking towards her car, and, for a moment, she felt the adrenaline rush of an approaching threat.

And then she saw who it was.

There was no threat.

It was Carl. As he approached he looked at the car, a smile forming as he recognized who was behind the wheel.

She lowered the driver’s side window and he walked over.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘It’s busy. I had to park all the way over there.’

‘You came for the soccer?’ It was odd if he had; he had no kids involved, and he had never been a sports fan.

He shook his head. ‘Had no idea it was on.’

Then what was he doing here, at the high school on a Saturday afternoon?