Marriage and Other Games by Veronica Henry

sending off to posh estate agents with triple-barrelled names for details. Charlotte found the glossy brochures strewn all over the living room and in the downstairs loo, with Ed’s mathematical calculations scrawled over the envelopes. His vision was to find something that needed doing up, and for Charlotte to be able to leave her job and work her way through it until they had the home of their dreams. But the maths never worked. Anything with potential was always snapped up by builders; anything with a remotely affordable price tag always had something badly wrong, like a motorway on the doorstep or a mobile phone mast in the apple orchard.
     
    Charlotte had never really played along, because she never believed it would come to anything. She was practical and down-to-earth, knowing that with the best will in the world they could probably afford a substantial but dull modern-ish house on a pleasant-ish housing estate somewhere semi-rural but commutable, and she was happy to accept that. But Ed was perfectly entitled to dream.
     
    But that dream had obviously become an obsession. It was the world they moved in that was to blame. Some of their colleagues and most of their clients had luxurious homes and fabulous cars and glamorous lifestyles. She had underestimated just how badly Ed wanted that too, not realising he was so consumed by his desire, or that he would go to such drastic lengths to achieve what he felt he was entitled to.
     
    She turned down yet another street, realising she hadn’t a clue where she was. The terraced houses were smaller and shabbier than the area they lived in, with peeling paintwork and rusty gates hanging off their hinges, the hedges unkempt. She wondered how many criminals were harboured behind the doors, and what they had done. TV licence evasion, benefit fraud, possession of an offensive weapon, drug dealing, driving a car without insurance - she would bet that any number of crimes were going on inches from her nose. But none of them would be as despicable as what Ed had done. A young man on a good salary who just got greedy.
     
    Her cheeks burned with the shame. She cringed inside as she recollected his rousing speech at the charity ball, the way he had urged the crowd on into competitive bidding. And all along he had known the more they bid the bigger his pot would be.
     
    How long had he been planning it? More to the point, would people think she was in on it? Would they imagine that she had spent the best part of a year deciding themes, choosing menus, booking entertainers, all as part of an elaborate scam to get rich quick? Charlotte, who was generally good-natured and didn’t hate anyone, felt a sudden surge of pure loathing for her husband. How could he profess love for her and compromise her like that? Never mind his reputation; what about hers? No one was going to believe she was innocent. Even if he said she was, they would have their doubts.
     
    She shivered. The night air was damp, and she only had on a thin cardigan. Short of checking into a hotel there was nowhere else she could go, and actually she was buggered if she was going to be shut out of her own home. She’d have to go back and face him. Anyway, there were questions to be answered. She tried to get her bearings, heading for what looked like a main road at the end of the street, searching in vain for the lights of a taxi.
     

     
    It was just before dawn before she got in. Ed was passed out on top of the bed. She felt too exhausted for confrontation, so she slipped fully clothed under the duvet, trying to get warm, her eyelids burning from lack of sleep. Outside the dawn chorus started, and Charlotte knew there was no way she was going to be able to get to sleep. She felt as if there was a heavy stone in place of her heart, and a nest of writhing adders in her stomach. She hadn’t been able to face food. She’d managed half a piece of toast earlier, which had gone straight through her, and the half bottle of