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Everything has changed now, but despite the searing pain ravaging my body, I will not be a victim. Alice Hughes is the only victim here.
Back at the table, Taylor springs up when he sees me. ‘I’m probably not handling this well,’ he begins. ‘I…It’s…This whole thing has been a mind fuck. I can’t believe she’s gone. I keep going to call her, then I remember…I should have given you more warning. Are you okay?’
I slide into my seat. ‘No, I’m not okay. But that doesn’t matter. All that matters is Alice is dead.’
‘I think you might need something stronger than water now,’ he says, glancing at the bar.
There’s no hesitation in my answer. ‘Gin and tonic. Not too much ice.’
By the time he’s back with my drink, I’ve managed to compose myself. Knowledge is power, and now that I know about Max, I can face this head on. No more second-guessing, wondering about his guilt. Doubting myself when the evidence is clear.
‘Tell me everything,’ I demand. ‘I want to know all of it.’
He points to my glass. ‘Don’t you want to have some of that first?’
I take a long swig, wincing as it burns my throat. ‘Just tell me.’
‘Alice met your husband in this pub. Did you know he came here after work sometimes? Most of the time he just sat with his laptop in the corner, and only had coffee.’ A thin smile emerges on his face. ‘Alice used to laugh about how he was addicted to coffee. He’d take it over alcohol any day, she said.’
Somehow, hearing something Alice said about Max is worse than knowing they slept together. I drink some more gin. ‘Max has never been able to work well in the house. Our daughter’s quite…noisy. He needed space away from the noise.’
Taylor nods, as if he understands. ‘I don’t have kids yet, but I’m sure it can be hard. Well, whatever his reasons, that’s how they met. According to Alice, she was a bit drunk and started talking to Max. I think he was trying to brush her off at first, but eventually something changed. Alice said they really connected.’ Taylor grimaces. ‘Sorry, this can’t be easy to hear.’
More gin, slipping uncomfortably down my throat. Numbing whatever this is I’m feeling. Taylor might be right and this ishard to hear, but the more details I have the better I’ll be able to face it. ‘Like I said, I want to know everything.’
‘That’s how it started,’ he continues. ‘They saw each other a lot. I’m guessing Max had a lot of late nights at work?’
I nod, recalling all the times he’d come home shattered but would still go to the garden office to work. ‘He has a high-pressure job. Not one you can easily switch off from.’
‘I know. Alice told me. He’s a financial analyst.’
Part of me wants to scream at him to stop talking about my husband, while the other part desperately needs more details. ‘You said Alice had issues. What did you mean?’
Taylor stares at the table, and it takes him a moment to answer. ‘It was all in her past. She suffered from depression. Badly. But she’d put all that behind her and was rebuilding her life. Starting afresh. She’d set up her own personal training business and was making a success of it. Alice was all about physical fitness, not just to look good, but for mental health.’
‘Yet she had an affair with a married man?’
Taylor lifts his glass but doesn’t drink from it. ‘She didn’t know Max was married for months. He told her he was single. He didn’t wear a wedding ring, did he?’
It’s never bothered me that Max has never wanted to wear one. It was just a token. We were married, I didn’t need him to wear something if he wasn’t comfortable wearing it. Under the table I twist my own ring around my finger, suddenly wanting to rip it off. To leave it abandoned in this pub for someone else to find and do with what they like.
‘By the time Alice found out, it was too late. She’d fallen for him. And he promised her they’d be together one day.’
Nausea burns my insides.
‘She was happy about this. She told herself your marriage couldn’t have been working. That he would have left you even if she hadn’t come along.’ He takes a long swig of beer. His glassis nearly empty now. ‘But then she found out something that changed everything. I think she was leaving him that night she died. Because of something she found out about him.’
My head swirls. ‘What?’ I hold my breath; I already know that I won’t want to hear what Taylor is about to say.
‘Max loves Poppy, doesn’t he? She means everything to him?’
‘Yes.’ Despite his irritability over the last few months, I can’t fault Max’s parenting, and his love for Poppy comes above everything else.
‘I don’t know how to say this, Hannah.’ He pauses again. ‘But Max was planning to leave you. And he wanted to make sure he got Poppy too. He told Alice that there was only one way this would ever happen.’ Taylor reaches for his glass and downs the last of his beer.
It feels like minutes tick by before he finally speaks.
‘He asked Alice to help him. He told her that he’d only ever get full custody of Poppy if you were dead.’
