Free All in the Mind by Campbell Alastair Page B

assistant catering manager at the offices of a rival law firm. Though she had a second-class degree in fine art, she had been a full-time wife and mother for most of their marriage and it was only when the first of their children left home that she asked Matthew to help her find something to do to get her out of the house a bit more. She had no relevant experience in catering other than running a small household, but Matthew was a close friend of the head of the divorce specialists, Durrants, who agreed to take her on. Once she got the hang of it, she loved it.
    Her discovery of the affair with Madeleine resulted from the simple fact that the combined volume of a flushing toilet, a running tap and a ringing mobile phone is louder than the turning of the key in a front door, the closing of said door, and the movement of feet on carpet. Celia had left for work at 8.10, forgoing a goodbye kiss because Matthew was in the downstairs loo, reading
The Times
. Overall, he had preferred the newspaper when it was a broadsheet, he was thinking, even though a tabloid was a lot easier to read when sitting on the toilet. ‘Goodbye, darling, see you tonight,’ she had shouted, and as he heard the front door close, he took his mobile phone from his trouser pocket, and sent Madeleine a short text message. ‘
Safe to call xxx
.’
    Madeleine tended to respond to texts with an immediate call, one of the signs that had suggested to Matthew that she might be becoming more intense about their affair than he had ever intended. With that thought very much in mind, and with it an accompanying sense of disappointment, and slight dread at the day ahead, he flushed the toilet, then walked the four steps to the sink to wash his hands. It was now 8.11. As the toilet gurgled away, and as he washed his hands under the cold tap, his phone rang.
    Unbeknown to Matthew, at the moment he was pressing the answer button on his phone to silence the final ring, Celia was turning her key in the front-door lock, having come back for a letter she had forgotten to post. Worse, she was passing the door as he uttered the words, ‘Listen, Maddie, here’s a plan. I have a case first thing, but it won’t even see out the morning, so what do you say we meet for an early lunch, at the little Italian we went to last Tuesday, one course, quick as you like, then back to the flat, and I promise you, by the time we’re finished, you will be in no doubt how much I love you.’ Then she opened it.
    Matthew was so shocked he dropped his phone. When he picked it up, he told Madeleine that he was cancelling lunch. ‘Something’s come up,’ he said. Half an hour later, he ended the affair by text. ‘
Celia heard us talking. I’ve promised her it’s over. Sorry
.’
    He felt that, if he could last the first twenty-four hours without being thrown out, he would be able to make it through. He could live with being ejected from the marital bed for a while, and with the kids away, he had plenty of spare rooms to choose from, but he positively did not want to be kicked out of the house. Matthew was not far off the truth when he said to Celia that there was nothing much to the affair, that it was classic midlife crisis stuff, he had been flattered into it, now wished it had never happened, and how it made him want to be with Celia for the rest of his life, which all being well could be another three decades or so.
    The second affair lasted longer than the first, its intensity was stronger, the sex more joyous and there was even a brief moment when he really believed that he would happily end his marriage for a future with Angela. She was the junior brief for the defence in a case where Matthew was prosecuting two young Turks charged with beating up a minicab driver. The second he set eyes on her, across the corridor as he walked towards the courtroom, he was possessed by a desire to know her. She was tall, with long brown hair and green eyes and a smile that mixed mischief with