Obsession: The bestselling psychological thriller with a shocking ending. Amanda Robson

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       ~ Jenni ~

      Craig is out at the fire station and I am checking the bank statements. Our balance isn’t adding up and I need to double-check it. Debits to the local Travelodge? And then I get it, sudden, sharp, and clear as daylight. Slicing through my mind like a knife. Random facts, facts I hardly noticed, snap together like a jigsaw. Changes in his hours. Copious showers. The phone calls. And I am numb inside like the day my mother died. As if this isn’t happening to me. As if I am floating above myself watching someone else.

      A key in the lock. Footsteps across the hallway into the living room. Craig is here, standing in front of me; lovable and familiar, bending to kiss me. We kiss and he steps back to look at me.

      ‘What’s the occasion?’ he asks. ‘Is everything all right? You don’t usually wait up when I’m on a late shift.’

      I flop down onto the sofa. He sits next to me and takes my hand.

      ‘Is everything all right?’ he asks gently.

      ‘I hope so,’ I say, and then I start to cry.

      He puts his arm around me and I wince inside.

      ‘Tell me, Craig,’ I hear myself say. ‘Are you having an affair?’

      ‘Of course not. Whatever makes you think that?’

      I push back my tears, pull away from him and grab the bank statements from the dining table, holding them so tightly that they’re crushed between my fingers.

      ‘These,’ I say, waving them in his face. ‘What have you been doing at Stansfield Travelodge? Why would you need to stay there?’

      ‘I can explain,’ he says calmly, standing up and attempting to take them from me. But I will not let them go. I clasp my fingers more tightly around them, crumpling them in my palm.

      ‘Jenni, I can explain,’ he repeats.

      ‘Can you, Judas?’ I hiss.

      I sit at the dining table, still clutching the bank statements, and he sits opposite me, face like a waxwork from Tussaud’s.

      ‘Go on then. Explain.’

      ‘I got behind at work – I’ve been going to the Travelodge to write up my notes.’

      ‘Oh please.’

      A silence that stifles. A waxwork face, melting and crumbling.

      ‘It meant nothing, Jenni. I’ll end it immediately.’

      ‘If it meant nothing,’ I ask, my voice breaking, ‘then why?’

      He reaches for my hands across the table but I pull away.

      ‘Jenni,’ he says, ‘I love you more than anything. This woman,’ he pauses for emphasis, ‘she means nothing to me.’

      ‘But who is she, Craig? Tell me, please.’