Woman with a Secret by Sophie Hannah

modesty. I’ve never failed to get to the bottom of a patient’s relationship issue.Never. Sometimes it takes a while, but the moment always comes when things slot into place and I think, ‘Aha, that’s what’s going on here.’ With Damon, I never got there, never found my answer. Maybe I was too close to see it.”
    Simon’s impatience had started to tick inside him. It was time to confront her. “Hannah, sorry if I’m being slow, but . . . if Damon’s act was so flawless, how can you be sure he didn’t really love you?”
    “Because he said it too quickly. On our second date. He was—he pretended to be—too besotted too soon. So I suppose what I said before wasn’t strictly true: there was a flaw in his act, at the beginning. If he’d seemed to like me only a bit at first, to find me interesting enough to want to see me again . . . If he’d gone for a more gradual buildup and let me see his enthusiasm growing as he got to know me better, that I might have believed in. If he’d waited a few months before telling me he loved me for the first time—”
    “So it was the speed of his love that you didn’t trust?” Simon interrupted her.
    Hannah gave him a pointed look to let him know she’d noticed. “At that stage, yes. Later on, there were other things. He never got angry or irritable with me, never missed an opportunity to be kind to me, never pretended to listen to me while secretly tuning out, the way all husbands do. With Damon, it was as if he was . . . I don’t know, trying to commit every word I said to memory. Like people are at the very beginning, when they want to drink in as much information and detail of a new partner as they can. Damon was like that permanently, from the moment I met him. It’s so hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t experienced it. It was as if he was sucking up to me the whole time, but not pathetically, not off-puttingly.”
    “I’d kill for one like that,” Uzma chipped in undiplomatically from across the room. Hannah didn’t seem to notice.
    “Hannah, just to play devil’s advocate for a moment,” Sam began hesitantly. “Isn’t it possible that . . . well, that it was love at first sight for Damon?”
    No. Not this woman . Simon felt guilty for thinking it and was pleased no one but him would ever know he had.
    Sam was persisting with his romantic fantasy. “I can imagine that if you’re swept off your feet and if that feeling lasts . . .” he said to Hannah. “I mean, maybe that explains why Damon thought you could do no wrong, and why he listened to you properly. Everything you’ve described, it sounds to me as if it could be . . . well, love. Not a fake.”
    Hannah smiled at him. “That’s sweet, if a little naive,” she said. “Do you listen to every word your wife says?”
    “Maybe not every word, but—”
    “Do you believe in love at first sight?”
    “I do, yes,” said Sam.
    “You?” She turned to Simon.
    He shook his head. “Something that feels like it, maybe,” was the most he could manage. A lust-fueled delusion, a form of insanity . He’d experienced it only once and hoped never to again, preferring the kind of love he had for Charlie, the slow-to-start sort that you added to gradually, that ended up being worth so much more; love that was more like a savings account than a spending spree.
    Alice Fancourt . Simon would never forget that name. It passed through his mind at least once a day.
    “You mean the frenzied obsessive attraction that sweeps through people like forest fire?” said Hannah. “That I-must-devour-you urge that we call love because it’s the most powerful word we have?”
    Simon made a noncommittal noise.
    “No, that’s not what I meant when I said Damon lied about loving me on our second date. I’m not saying he was infatuated or in a prelove state that he mistook for love. I’m saying he felt nothing for me beyond a desire to use me for his own ends, whatever they might have been.”
    “How can you