The Other Wife

“Good. The Halden people are already in reception.”

“So are we.”

“That depends on whether the presentation is as good as the numbers.”

Natalie gave him the smile she used when men confused aggression with insight. “The presentation is better than the numbers.”

Martin’s mouth tightened, almost approvingly.

One by one, the others entered: two representatives from Halden Capital, their solicitor, Natalie’s finance director, and the chair of her board. Coats were removed. Chairs scraped over the polished floor. Someone set down a paper cup too hard, and coffee slopped onto the table.

Natalie watched the brown stain spread towards her hand.

“Sorry,” said the finance director.

“It’s fine.”

It was not fine. It was close to the envelope.

She moved the folder an inch.

Her mobile vibrated inside her handbag.

Richard.

The name appeared on the screen, followed by a message.

Good luck today. Dinner tonight?

For a moment, the room softened around her. Richard knew how much this mattered. He had sat at the kitchen island the night before while she rehearsed the opening, listening with his head tilted and one hand wrapped around a glass of wine.

You don’t need to convince them, he had said. You only need to remind them you’re right.

She had believed him. She still did.

Natalie typed, Absolutely. Seven-thirty.

Then she turned the phone face down.

“Shall we begin?” Martin asked.

Natalie stood.

The boardroom lights dimmed, and the first slide appeared behind her: a clean blue field, the company names aligned beneath a white line. She spoke without looking at the notes. Northstar’s projected growth. The gaps in its distribution model. The opportunity to acquire before the market recognised what she had already seen.

Questions came quickly.

“What protects the margin if the regulatory change goes through?”

“Existing contracts,” Natalie said. “They run for eighteen months.”

“And the debt exposure?”

“Contained within the acquisition structure.”

The Halden solicitor leaned forward. “Contained is not the same as eliminated.”

“No,” Natalie said. “But it is manageable, and we have stress-tested the model against three adverse scenarios.”

She clicked to the next slide.

Beneath the folder, the letter seemed to occupy the whole table.

Richard has another wife.

Her voice did not falter. She moved through the figures, answered every challenge, and allowed Martin to interrupt twice without showing irritation. When one of the investors asked about integration, she gave the answer she had prepared in the taxi that morning. When another questioned her confidence, she held his gaze until he looked away.

At the edge of her vision, the envelope remained still.

That was the absurdity of it. A few words on cheap paper should not have been able to compete with a deal worth forty million pounds. Yet each time she reached for the next slide, she felt the hidden letter beneath her palm.

“Mrs Brooks?”

The solicitor’s voice cut across the room.

Natalie blinked. “Yes?”

“You mentioned a second operating site.”

“Bristol,” she said.

The word landed strangely.

She had not been thinking of Bristol. Not consciously. Richard had travelled there often over the past year, always for work. A client. A consultancy. Sometimes a dinner that ran late enough to justify a hotel.

She had teased him about it.

“Bristol again?”

“People do business outside London, Nat.”

He had kissed her forehead as he said it. His cuff had smelled faintly of smoke, though Richard had never smoked.

The solicitor was still waiting.

Natalie looked at the slide. “The Bristol site gives us access to a skilled workforce and a lower operating cost. It also places us closer to several existing clients.”

“Would you be willing to expand there?”

“If the numbers justify it.”

“And do they?”

“They do.”

Her answer sounded certain. It was the sort of certainty she had built her entire life upon: measured, polished, difficult to challenge.

The solicitor sat back.

Natalie continued.

When the final slide appeared, the rain had thickened against the windows. The city below was blurred into strips of light. She closed with the sentence she had practised until it felt less like persuasion than fact.

“Northstar is not a rescue. It is an opportunity to buy capability before capability becomes expensive.”

Silence followed.

Then Martin began to clap.

The others joined him, some more slowly than others. Natalie smiled, accepted the congratulations, and remained standing until the room broke apart into smaller conversations.

The moment she sat down, she pulled the folder towards her.

The envelope was gone.

Her pulse gave one hard, unpleasant beat.

She looked beneath the tablet, then under the nearest sheet of paper. Nothing.

Martin came around the table. “Excellent. They’re going to recommend approval.”

“I’m glad.”

“You don’t sound glad.”

“I’m tired.”

“You’re never tired.”

Natalie looked up at him. “That’s a strange thing to say to someone who has just secured your bonus.”

He laughed, but his eyes stayed on her face. “Dinner tonight?”

“With Richard.”

“Of course.”

He moved away before she could ask why he had said it like that.

Natalie gathered her papers with deliberate care. The envelope had to be somewhere. She checked the folder again, then the floor beside her chair. The boardroom was nearly empty now. Rain tapped the glass. A printer whirred in the adjoining office.

The letter was not there.

She stood and walked towards the door.

“Mrs Brooks?”

She turned.

The junior receptionist stood in the corridor holding the envelope between two fingers.

“This was left at the desk for you. I think it slipped out of your papers.”

Natalie took it. “Who gave it to you?”

“I don’t know. A courier, I think.”

“Did you see him?”

The receptionist frowned. “Not properly. He was wearing a cap.”

“Man or woman?”

“Man, I think.”

Natalie looked at the envelope. The typed letters were perfectly aligned. Her name appeared without a title, as though whoever had sent it knew her well enough to omit one.

“Thank you,” she said.

Back in her office, she shut the door.

The city sounded different behind glass. Muffled traffic. A distant siren. The low pulse of machinery travelling through the building’s walls.

Natalie placed the envelope on her desk and opened it again.

The letter had no greeting, no signature, no explanation.

Richard has another wife.

He has been lying to you for three years.

Ask him about Bristol.

Her first response was laughter. It came out thin and dry, with no amusement in it.

“Ridiculous,” she said to the empty office.

She read the lines again.

Three years.

Richard had been travelling to Bristol for almost exactly that long.

Natalie folded the paper once, then twice. The crease landed through the word wife.

Her phone rang.

Richard.

She let it ring twice before answering. “Hello.”

“You sound busy.”

“I’ve just finished.”

“I saw the message. I thought you might want to hear my voice.”

“How thoughtful.”

A pause. Not long. Just long enough for her to notice.

“How did it go?” he asked.

“Very well.”

“I knew it would.”

Natalie sat behind her desk. The leather chair gave a quiet sigh beneath her. “Are you still coming home for dinner?”

“Of course.”

“Even if Bristol calls?”

Another pause.

“I’m in London,” Richard said.

“I know.”

“Do you?”

The question was light, almost playful, but something in it caught against her.

Natalie looked through the glass wall at the rain. “What does that mean?”

“It means you asked where I was as though you expected a different answer.”

“I asked because I wanted to know.”

“You always want to know.”

“Is that a problem?”

“No. It’s one of the things I love about you.”

His voice warmed on the last word. He knew exactly when to soften it. He had always known.

Natalie pressed the letter flat with her fingertips.

“Richard,” she said, “when were you last in Bristol?”

The silence this time was unmistakable.

“Last week, I think.”

“For work?”

“You know it was for work.”

“I’m asking.”

“Why?”

She stared at the typed lines. “Because I’m interested.”

“You’ve never been interested in my dullest meetings before.”

“Perhaps I’ve changed.”

He gave a small laugh. “Then I’ll make a note to be more entertaining.”

The answer was effortless. Too effortless.

Natalie felt something shift inside her, not belief but the space where belief had been.

“Seven-thirty,” she said.

“I’ll be there.”

When the call ended, she remained still.

Then she turned the letter over and examined the postmark.

It was faint, stamped in purple ink across the back flap. She had assumed it was London because everything arrived through London. But the letters were clear enough now.

BRISTOL.

Natalie’s hand tightened around the envelope.

She opened her laptop and searched the postmark code. The result appeared almost immediately: Bristol Mail Centre.

The letter had been posted in Bristol.

Not sent from a random office. Not dropped through her company’s post. Someone in Bristol had written to her, sealed the envelope, and watched it enter the system.

Someone who knew Richard.

Someone who knew about her.

She opened a new message to Richard, then stopped.

The sensible thing was to ask him directly. The honest thing. The thing a wife did when a stranger tried to poison her marriage.

Instead, Natalie saved the letter as a photograph, placed the original inside her handbag, and deleted the unsent message.

At seven-thirty, she would watch Richard’s face.

And if he lied, she would know.

She shut down the laptop, picked up her coat, and glanced once more at the postmark.

Bristol.

The city had been in her husband’s life for three years.

Now it was in hers.

End of chapter one. 39 more chapters and about 76,827 words in the full book.