Out of the Blue by Isabel Wolff

of course. But if you thought for a second I was having it off with her, Faith, I’d take you down to the head doctor like a shot.”
    “OK, OK, OK,” I said weakly. “Look, I didn’t ask for all this.”
    “Oh yes you did,” he said. “By your suspicious behavior. But let me assure you that the only person who’s strayed around here is Graham! ”
    “Look,” I said, beginning to feel upset, “I only asked you if you know someone called Jean.”
    “No,” he said emphatically. “I can honestly say that I don’t .”
    But I knew this was a lie. Not even a white lie, but a flashing fluorescent pink and green one. And this was very significant, because Peter’s usually so truthful, but now he was being barefaced. But I couldn’t admit that I’d seen the note about Jean, because then he’d know I’d been snooping again. I really would like to have him followed, I thought. But then I reminded myself that it was out of the question, because private detectives don’t come cheap.
    “Are you all right now, Faith?” Peter asked me as he stood by the door.
    “All right?”
    “Are you feeling convinced? Can we just kick all this nonsense of yours into touch? Because I’d just like our marriage to be…”
    “What?”
    “Well, normal.”
    “I guess it is normal,” I said.
    * * *
    Work is a refuge these days, from my current marital distress. There’s something about staring at the satellite charts, with their masses of Turneresque cloud swirling above the blue planet, which makes me forget my concerns. And of course the cold snaps in the studio are pretty distracting. Sophie had a very bad morning. Gremlins in the autocue. Funny that, I thought. I mean, normally Sophie reads it very fluently and I’ve never ever seen her fluff. She makes it all look so natural, as though she’s ad libbing, not reading a script. But of course it’s not like that at all. Up in the Gallery, Lisa the autocue operator works the machine by hand, scrolling the script down at a pace to suit the presenter. If the presenter slows down—she slows down. If they pick up—she picks up. But this morning something went wrong.
    “Welcome back…to…the show,” Sophie said awkwardly after the break. “And…now,” she went on at thirty-three rpm and I could suddenly see confusion in her face, “…a…report…on…sexual equality…in…the…boardroom…concludes…that ambitious…young…women…are…spearheading…Britain’s…drive…into…the twenty-first…century.”
    It was agonising to watch. Once or twice she glanced down at her script, but it was clear that she’d lost her place. Then she looked up at the autocue again, but it was still crawling along the hard shoulder. It was like watching her being tortured, but she bravely battled on.
    “Nearly four…in…ten…”
    “What’s going on, Lisa?” I heard Darryl bark into my earpiece.
    “Ooh, I don’t know,” she whined. “I just can’t get it to work.”
    “Boardroom bosses…are now…female,” Sophie continued. “The…highest figure…since data was…” I heard her sigh “…collected. Women are also…”
    “Oh, come on, Sophie!” interrupted Terry suddenly. “We haven’t got all day. Sorry folks,” he said into his autocue with a regretful smile, “but Sophie seems to have lost the gift of the gab. So we’ll skip that item and go straight to Tatiana’s report from the Old Vic. Yes, the lovely Tatiana’s been talking to Andrew Lloyd-Webber about his plans for this much-loved London landmark where Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud first trod the boards.”
    “What’s going on?” I heard Sophie say into her microphone as Tatiana’s filmed report went out. “What happened to the autocue?”
    “There were problems with it, apparently,” Darryl said.
    “Well, it worked perfectly OK for Terry,” she pointed out. I could see that she was close to tears. “Lisa,” she said carefully as she swallowed hard, “kindly don’t do that