Adele knew the exact moment she noticed something was off. There may have been other occasions secreted in her subconscious that made her more sensitised to it, but this particular occasion was the one she recalled.

It was a Thursday, when he arrived back from Pisa. One of what he described as ‘bloody’ business trips.

His return seemed normal and yet there was something that didn’t quite fit. At the time, it was more of an instinct; an inkling somewhere deep down inside her that gave her a feeling all was not right.

It was only later that night and after they made love, she realised what it was. Jack smelt differently. He’d bought new aftershave and although he was one of those men who had a glass shelf full of potions, it was one she did not know. She looked in his bathroom the next morning after he’d gone to the office. Expensive. Foreign. New.

In the weeks that followed, there were other things too. The linen jacket he bought for himself one Saturday afternoon that he would normally besmirch. The morning runs he hadn’t done since the first six months after he moved in. The mysterious messages he received and hid. The whispering on the phone she’d heard more than once when he was supposedly working in his home office; his ‘personal’ place.

Very different, he was, if you added it all up. Comparing a ‘before’ with an ‘after’. As Adele did.

And today—of all days—he’d had to take leave of her celebrations to step out for a while. A ‘work thing’ he called it.

“Back in a couple of hours.” He called out a fraction before the door slammed. And he was gone, leaving her alone with her birthday cake and the spiced fruit punch which she had prepared for her special day.

So, she followed him.

It was something she’d never done before, but then again, she’d always trusted him completely, up to recently. On foot, of course. Not a difficult thing to do after his drink too many at the office party and the driving ban, but she wanted to be careful.

She peered carefully round the corner into the High Street, just to be sure he wasn’t watching. He had not once looked back, so far. Why would he, for he trusted her implicitly, she told herself? Still as she edged close to the corner, she found a useful beech hedge, thin enough to camouflage, yet from where she was standing, gappy enough to make sure she was safe.

Once round the corner, she found herself in an unaccustomed role of amateur sleuth, dodging behind rows of cars, hedges and even whole tree trunks, rare as they were in the urban streets in Balham.

She was more worried about him spotting her than losing him, for he was easy to see. As he reached the first row of shops, his pace slowed and it was then he stopped and turned around, looking throughout the whole view around him, forwards, to his left and behind, scrutinising the scene carefully. Once satisfied that the coast was clear, he entered the shopfront to his immediate right and closed the door behind him, as if to seal himself and his mission from the rest of the world.

She breathed again, lucky to remain concealed behind a Lewisham Locksmiths – ‘One-Hour Callout Guaranteed’ – van.

Although he was now inside, this made her approach all the more difficult, for she did not know when he might be likely to come out or what he could see. As she got nearer, from both the enticing smell and the giveaway shopfront title ‘On What Grounds’, she was able to discern without much doubt, that the shop was a coffee bar.

But was he popping in for a takeaway, or was he inside, settling into one of those comfy seats she knew they had there?

Adele’s dilemma was taken from her when she remembered that there was another coffee shop across the road, which she now crossed. One of the big chains, famous for their West Coast logo, predilection for ‘Have a Nice Day,’ mantra and obsession for asking your first name as you ordered whatever extravagantly priced gourmet drink you desired.

So, keeping an eye on Jack’s bolthole as she approached, she slipped in and placed her order.

‘Cortado,’ she requested and moved along to collect her glass of concentrated confection. Her thinking being that it would make a purchase, keep her sharp for the duration and also that the low volume drink would minimise her need to visit the bathroom, risking that she might lose sight of him or miss a vital piece of evidence of whatever he was doing there.

She found a table just back from the window, so she was able to see, with little chance of being seen.

It might have been that he did not fear being seen. Or he cared nothing even if he was, but he sat right at the front, in clear view of whoever was passing whether on foot or by vehicle on the hectic road outside.

As Adele sat there, she realised from the way he was straining to catch sight of something (or—as it turned out and not really as a surprise to Adele at all—someone), that there was a third and probably most likely reason for his positioning.

He was watching for her. And his anxiety did not last long, for within less than ten minutes, a blonde with very long legs and short skirt to go with them, turned into the shop door and Jack—Adele’s Jack—shot up to greet her.

Adele might have been hoping that her doubts were in vain and there was a perfectly good explanation for his absenting himself from her birthday celebrations. That all evaporated by the way he greeted his friend and dispelled Adele’s increasingly unlikely aspiration.

For Jack and the girl embraced in a way that made no misinterpretation possible. From the way his right hand grasped and grasped again her left buttock several times and he kissed her so passionately that in any other case, observation of the couple in such a state would have led anyone to suggest the pair of them simply ‘get a room’ and be done with it.

But this was Jack.

She knew that her recent doubts were not unfounded. She knew that there was now no need to change her mind, so calculated and considered course of action would now be inevitable.

She would sip her drink until it was finished and leave for home. She would check before exiting her coffee shop that the pair were still looking at each other with the same gooey eyes.

She would cross the road without being observed and retrace her steps and once home she would commence her retribution, first with his clothes and then with the rest of the oddments he had brought with him, including the offensive after-shave, of course.

Within the hour she would have them dumped outside the front gate onto the street. Within the same hour, the locks would be changed by the very van she had called from the coffee shop, from the number she took off the van she hid behind.

And finally, she would take that final, desperate 21st-century step as her last resort and Jack would be wiped from her phone, never to return.

For Adele, the time had come once-and-for-all, to ‘Delete’.