The Third Wife by Lisa Jewell

fairy lights that shone through a tangle of white climbing clematis. The house was enchanting – but he hadn’t appreciated it when he’d lived here. He’d spent far too much time worrying about how to pay for it all and looking for ways not to be here. And now, well, he felt as if he’d won a competition just to be invited here for the afternoon.
    He knocked back the rest of his champagne in one gulp and let his gaze fall to the floor.
    ‘So,’ said Caroline. ‘Adrian. You have to tell us all about this mysterious girl with the phone.’
    The mystery of Jane had grown, exponentially, from his own tiny sliver of a secret into a slightly wider secret shared with his two daughters, and now, as the weeks had passed, into a big juicy anecdote passed around each member of his sprawling family like a biscuit tin.
    He held his empty glass out to Luke who was doing refills.
    ‘What’s this?’ Luke asked, looking at his father with those unnerving, colourless eyes of his.
    ‘Oh God,’ said Adrian. ‘It’s nothing.’
    ‘A lady came to see Maya’s cat,’ Pearl began. ‘Just before my birthday. And then I saw her at skate training. And then—’
    ‘I put an advert in the post office window,’ he broke in, wanting to take some kind of adult responsibility for the dissemination of the facts. ‘A couple of months ago. I thought I should rehouse the cat. Maya’s cat. Anyway, this woman called me and we arranged for her to come to the flat and she came but said she didn’t think I should get rid of the cat. She said she thought I needed the cat. Shortly after that Pearl
thinks
she saw this woman watching her at skate training …’
    ‘I did! I did!’
    ‘Maybe. Anyway. Then on Pearl’s birthday we bumped into her again on Upper Street. On the way to Strada.’
    ‘Which she totally did on purpose because she’d seen it written down on Daddy’s whiteboard.’
    ‘Maybe, Pearl. Maybe. And she was with a young man, on a date. We had a very quick chat and then I got home and found her phone down the back of the sofa. And when I switched it on I found that mine was the only number in it, that I was the only person she’d ever texted.’ He stopped and caught his breath.
    ‘How bizarre,’ said Susie. ‘It’s almost as if …’
    ‘She was looking for Daddy,’ finished Pearl. ‘On purpose.’
    ‘And then she found him,’ continued Caroline.
    ‘And then totally disappeared,’ said Susie.
    ‘She was really, really pretty,’ said Pearl. ‘Daddy went all red and his voice went all funny.’
    ‘Oh God,’ said Luke, ‘don’t tell me you’re casting about for the fourth Mrs Wolfe. God help us all …’
    ‘Luke!’ Susie admonished.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Totes inappropes,’ said Cat.
    ‘Oh my God,’ said Luke, his hand held against his heart. ‘London is turning you into a cretin.
Please
tell me you didn’t just say
totes inappropes
.’
    ‘I totes did,’ she said with a grimace.
    ‘I barely know my own sister,’ Luke said theatrically.
    ‘I was being
ironic
.’
    ‘Yeah. Sure you were.’
    ‘Anyway,’ interjected Adrian. ‘It’s all irrelevant. Unless Jane reappears out of the blue to claim her phone we will never know what her intentions were.’
    ‘But we could make a stab at what yours were, eh, Dad?’
    ‘Stop it, Luke!’ said Cat.
    Adrian sighed. ‘She was just a very nice woman,’ he said.
    The distant sound of the doorbell chiming broke the momentum of the conversation and Caroline got to her feet. ‘That’ll be Paul,’ she said.
    ‘Who’s Paul?’ said Adrian.
    ‘Mum’s new boyfriend,’ said Otis with a groan.
    Adrian felt his gut wriggle as he watched his ex-wife moving towards the back door and he reappraised the floral dress and the soft skin and the air of youthful buoyancy. Caroline had been steadfastly single since he’d left her, had constantly made pronouncements on the joys of single life: the empty bed, the lack of various male stenches, the spare drawers and