The Marriage Act(71)

For an hour, he had followed Noah by car from the grounds of the Old Northampton hospital where he was stationed, to the village of Oadby in the neighbouring county of Leicestershire. Jeffrey parked far away from Noah and hurried by foot to catch him up, while retaining a safe distance. Eventually, Noah turned to enter the grounds of a churchyard and approached an adjoining community centre. Others were making their way along the path too. Jeffrey held back until there was a group large enough to envelop him and made his approach.

He hovered by the doors as Noah went inside, then he peeked through a crack to observe rows of plastic seating that were gradually filling up with people. He inserted his ear buds and asked his operating system to locate the community centre’s online calendar. Tonight’s listing was a Freedom for All branch meeting. It was not what he’d expected to hear. Why was Noah seeking the company of a group whose sole objective was to repeal an Act that benefitted millions, including Noah and Luca? Jeffrey slipped inside and hovered about the dark corners of a porch until the meeting began.

For an hour, a variety of speakers discussed a forthcoming rally in London. They voiced their concerns over bias and discrimination and used examples of couples forced apart by Audite’s misunderstandings of their relationships. Jeffrey flinched when they described the power Relationship Responders wielded as being ‘unethical and unfair’. How dare they criticize him! He had never tried to part a couple who were completely secure in their relationship. Yes, sometimes the line between client and Responder had blurred, but then he never claimed to be perfect.

As tonight’s FFA meeting came to a close, he was about to turn and leave when he spotted Noah approaching one of the guest speakers, the group’s spokesperson Howie Cosby. Cosby nodded and tapped something into his phone as Noah spoke into his ear. It piqued Jeffrey’s curiosity.

Jeffrey hurried back to his vehicle, grabbed his tablet and used his password to access Noah’s work account. He scanned his emails and diary again but it contained nothing regarding the FFA or any previous participation in the group. However, his face lit up at the search engine history. Noah had visited dozens of websites relating to divorce. ‘How to divorce voluntarily when you’ve signed The Act’, ‘Financial penalties for divorcees’, and ‘How assets are divided’.

This was concrete evidence that Noah had given up on his marriage. He was planning his escape route and a knot of excitement unravelled deep in Jeffrey’s gut.





53


Roxi




Roxi inhaled so deeply, it made her lungs burn. She pulled on the ring of an iron knocker. Hurry up, hurry up, she whispered, knowing time wasn’t on her side. Twenty-three minutes remained before her window of opportunity closed. Eventually she heard footsteps descending what sounded like a wooden staircase before the front door opened.

‘Hello,’ said Antoinette Cooper, her tone soft and her smile friendly.

Roxi took in her appearance. Her troll must be at least twenty years her senior, but she carried it well. Her eyes were hazel-coloured and above her plump lips there were faint diagonal creases. Roxi’s sharp nose for scents recognized Chanel perfume. That, coupled with the fitted cut of her trousers, blouse, matching Tiffany necklace and bracelet all suggested she was someone who appreciated timeless, classic design. To Roxi’s relief, she wore no wearable technology. Roxi’s line of sight moved over Cooper’s shoulder and into the hallway but failed to locate anything recordable.

Cooper’s smile began to fade and her brow wrinkled as she awaited a response from the stranger on her doorstep.

‘Why . . . why are . . . why . . .’ began Roxi, suddenly tongue-tied. This was a huge mistake, she thought. By confronting her husband’s mistress, she thought she was controlling the narrative but now she feared it might backfire. It might hasten any plans she and Owen had, and Roxi had yet to find a way to protect her career and her assets.

Since she and Owen’s heart-to-heart over dinner, which had culminated in sex on the dining table, Roxi had pulled out all the stops to remind him why he’d first fallen in love with her. Sex, attention, food, family time, more sex . . . she was giving him everything she thought he wanted. Only it wasn’t enough to stop those Wednesday night encounters with his lover.

After more sleepless nights and personal insults left by Cooper on social media channels, Roxi reached the end of her tether. Her civil servant contact had revealed to her a little-known glitch in some older models of hardware installed with Audite software. She could trick her wearable tech, which also fed into her carpool vehicle’s onboard computer. A specific thirty-seven digit and symbol code inputted into a burner phone followed by her Smart watch’s serial number meant all recordings and even her location would be rerouted to the untraceable burner phone and the information not saved or analysed by Audite’s software. But it only lasted for a period of twenty-seven minutes. After that, the system would suspect something untoward and report the user to the relevant authorities. This time, Roxi wasn’t wearing any cameras to record her confrontation. This was even too personal for her to make public.

‘Is everything all right?’ Cooper asked, her face marked with concern.

A tightness formed in Roxi’s gut. How dare you? How dare you pretend to care about a stranger after all you’ve put me through! It snapped her out of her inactivity.

‘Why are you trying to ruin everything for me?’ Roxi began.