That night, Claire wrote everything down in a notebook she hid behind old recipe books. The bank alerts. The cancelled garage appointment. The letters. The laptop. On paper, it looked thin and ridiculous. She almost tore the pages out.
Instead, she added one more line: Colin’s hypervigilance around her. He seemed to be acutely aware of her comings and goings. He always seemed to double-check windows and doors now—more so now than ever before.
One of those days, Colin was almost tender. He made breakfast, bought her favorite pears, and suggested she visit her sister in Marlow for the weekend. “You’ve seemed tense,” he said. “A night away might help.” It was such a reasonable suggestion that Claire agreed before she could find a reason not to. Colin smiled, kissed her cheek, and said he would fill the car before she left. For a second, with his hand warm on her shoulder, she wanted badly to be his wife and nothing more.