Maybe it’s true that the only two people who know the truth about affairs like this are the two people involved, and whether or not anyone else can do anything more than pick which one of the pair he trusts more and get on with it, I don’t know. At the time I was certain enough but as time goes on I get less and less sure of myself. It’s not that I’ve started to doubt Chelsea, but I keep thinking of Grant’s woeful and horsey face as they took him out of the courtroom and I wonder.

The evidence was against him, sure enough, all along the line, from the garbagemen who’d seen him walking along Hanover Street at five in the morning to the night manager of the fish fry who’d poured him a double whiskey, “on the house”, him being so shook up; his prints were all over the apartment and even on the black plastic handle of the kitchen knife that they took out of Ms. Gupta’s chest. The little bit that Chelsea added and I confirmed to the jury’s satisfaction was merely the icing on the cake, a long plan poured out in the darkness of a shared bed and a confession afterwards, but by that point he was sewed up as neatly as a quilt.

But even so, and especially when Chelsea rolls over and murmurs sleepily into my ear, I remember Grant’s face and I wonder if even two people isn’t two too many.