Celia Walden’s diary: Have I finally caught my husband in an affair?

For a minute I just stood there with my back against the wall, staring at the credit card receipt. Then I slid down into a crouching position on the kitchen floor. ‘So this is it,’ I thought to myself. ‘This is really going to be how I find out.’ I’d found the receipt in the front pocket of one of my husband’s suitcases on Tuesday morning. It was for dinner for two at the Four Seasons Hotel in Santa Barbara — a place he’d told me he’d never been. He’d had the Merlot and the rib-eye; she’d had the cucumber martini and a Caesar salad. I’m guessing that she waived the dressing.

I’m already working out the logistics by the time my husband gets home from work. My daughter and I will return to the UK and we’ll try to do this thing without getting the lawyers involved. I’m flicking through my mental Rolodex for prospective second husbands when I hear his key in the lock. ‘I thought you’d never been to Santa Barbara before?’ It wasn’t the opening gambit I’d planned on. ‘I haven’t,’ he replied, perplexed. With a flourish, I produced the receipt. There was a — surely contrived — bout of forehead scratching before he dared look me in the eye. ‘I’m pretty sure I wasn’t with my mistress that weekend,’ he smiled. ‘Because I was with you, in London.’

An article in Time magazine wordlessly handed over the breakfast table to me the following morning insists that ‘the secret to a happy marriage’ depends on ‘who makes the first conciliatory move to lower the emotional temperature’ after a row. If you’ve just unfairly accused your husband of adultery, it should probably be you.