According to the Paul Simon song there are 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover. But, in general, all 50 of those ways will hurt your lover like hell. That’s me. Mike Collins. Truisms-R-Us.

There’s a very important corollary there. Because if there are 50 ways to leave your lover, there are also 50 ways to love your leaver. The one who is leaving you. Betraying you. Hurting you.

Did I mean corollary? Probably not. But, and I quote from the great Lewis Carroll, “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master, that’s all.”

How did I find out that my wife, my wife and lover, was considering leaving me? She began the process of inadvertently clueing me in by quietly humming, singing or whistling snatches of 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover at random and often not particularly appropriate moments. All the bleedin’ time. Sometimes even whilst looking at me, but in that special way people have when they are trying not to be obvious. And thus making it all the more obvious.

The kicker, as far as I was concerned, was when we went out to an expensive restaurant to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary and she was humming it sotto voce as we walked through the doors of the restaurant. The restaurant in question? It was the very posh and pricey Italian restaurant on Penfold Street, called Mostri Vili. No expense spared for the love of my life, of course.

The look on her face as we were shown to our table was a mixed bag of emotions. Sympathy, a touch of loss, and was there just a soupçon of sneeriness, too? Yes. Sadly, there was. But there was no love there. Not really.

I’d hoped to be able to use this, the occasion of our fifth wedding anniversary, to rekindle our relationship and our marriage, but that hope was choked off by her attitude.

Fifth wedding anniversary gifts are, by tradition, made from wood, but I realised then that she couldn’t give a wooden nickel for our marriage. An odd expression that I’d picked up from an American film, I beg its pardon, I mean movie, some years ago.

Sadly that expression seemed very apposite. I’d already bought her a necklace with an absolutely exquisite gemstone that was a cleverly polished piece of petrified wood, suspended from a solid gold chain. Together they had cost me about £350. However, the shocked look of guilt on her face when I presented it to her at the restaurant with the special fifth anniversary card that I’d spent about an hour choosing and the bottle of Taittinger Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blanc 2002 (it had cost me over £200) was priceless.

Oops! Guess what? She hadn’t bought me anything for our anniversary, not even a fucking greeting card, from ASDA, which pretty much backed up my assumption that she’d be using at least one of Paul Simon’s 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover on me. And fairly soon. Me. Her former lover. Because I knew now, or rather had come to terms with the fact that, although I was her lover, she was no longer my lover.

And that was me. I loved my leaver, but she didn’t know that I knew that was her end game. Well, probably her end game.

Had she got someone else already lined up? Or someone she was already seeing in a romantic fashion? Or even someone she was already playing hide the sausage with? I found the lack of any intimacy in our relationship of late rather telling.

Probably “yes” to any of those options because Louise was risk averse. Which was why I was finding the idea of her cheating on me to be such a shock. Because it just wasn’t like her, the Louise that I had come to know and to love.

Or perhaps over the eight years we’d been together she’d only allowed me to see what she wanted me to see? And if that was the case, well, it was bloody depressing, to be honest. As I said, I found the lack of any intimacy in our relationship hurtful... ? Yes. That. Hurtful. Adjective.

Causing hurt or injury; injurious; harmful. And some of the synonyms for hurtful are damaging,

Destructive, distressing, harmful, malicious, nasty, unkind, upsetting, cutting, evil, poisonous, spiteful and wounding.

Bed time that night was a rather chilly affair. Even though it was in the middle of early summer.

Next morning I did what I always do at times of crisis. I called my good friend Carol and invited her out for coffee.

No! Get your mind out of the gutter! How dare you! Carol and I had been best friends since our very early teens and, although we went to our school’s Prom Ball together, we never actually dated, as such.

The school’s then headmistress had seen Grease at the local cinema and she’d thought that what worked on the big screen depiction of 1950s America would work for a British secondary modern school in the late 1970s. So she had launched the school’s prom ball.

By the time Carol and I attended the school several years later the original headmistress had long since retired to a villa in Portugal or Spain and had left her mark because the school was renamed after her as the Daphne Barker School, this was before she had died, an almost unheard of event in the UK. Normally they only like to name stuff after dead people. And the school prom is still a major part of the school’s timetable, even today.

Where the hell was I? Oh, yes. Even though we’d been mates forever, Carol and I, we had never thought about going to bed together, well, I had, but she hadn’t, because she was 100% gay.

She’d let me down very gently by saying if she ever did go straight, she would go ‘straight’ to me. So there you are. Not only did she let me down very gently, she made me smile at the same time. So our relationship continued to be purely platonic. As it happened she was between romantic relationships at that point.

We met up in our favourite coffee shop (the branch of Costa that’s on the High Street, not the one on the retail park) I had my usual, the Salted Caramel Crunch Coffee Frostino with Cream and a shot of coffee, Carol had her usual, a Caramel Cortado.

She looked at me and said: “OK, Mike, what’s wrong?”

“I think Louise is cheating on me.”

She took a sip of her drink and was obviously in thought for several seconds before she responded. “What makes you think that?”

I explained about the indifference, the lack of sexual intimacy, well, any intimacy, to be honest, the sneers, the lack of even a card on our anniversary and the constant singing, whistling or humming of 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.

I had hoped, vaguely, that Carol would tell me off for overthinking things and being an idiot. Instead she patted my hand and said, with sympathy, “Well, that’s not looking too good, is it?

“When I was studying for my psychology degree one of my lecturers asked us to read the non-science fiction mystery short stories by the American Science Fiction author Professor Isaac Asimov.

“At first I didn’t like the idea but he persisted, telling me that Asimov’s mystery short stories would be helpful in my psychology studies and, to my surprise, I found out that he was right. The one story that is relevant here, well, tangentially relevant, I suppose, was the mystery story “Yankee Doodle Went to Town” in which a suspect had, when under pressure whilst being interrogated, kept humming the old American tune Yankee Doodle Went to Town, because it contained a clue to the case that was being investigated.

“I think that what Louise is inadvertently doing is humming 50 Ways to Leave Your lover, because she is thinking very seriously about leaving you. Or in a sense, has already left you.

“However, I can’t be sure that she is thinking of leaving you, or even, worst case scenario, is actually cheating on you until I can see her for myself. As you know after earning my degree in psychology and then my MA, my PhD was in the applied use of body language and, if that cow is cheating on you, I’ll be able to identify it by watching her interactions with you. Obviously we’ll all have to all be together, but we can do that this evening if I pop round on one of my impromptu visits. As it happens I owe Louise a couple of recipes and when we sit and have drinks I can monitor her behaviour and I’ll be able to report back to you tomorrow.”

I thanked her for her help. She nodded, finished her coffee and stood up, giving me a brief hug. “Look, hopefully it’ll be nothing and she isn’t cheating on you, OK?”

We hugged, parted with a brief kiss and I headed back to my office. Being a sole trader and answerable to no one else has its advantages.

That evening Carol brought the recipes round and she, Louise and myself shared a nice bottle of wine from the Halfpenny Green Winery over in the West Midlands. We’d bought a couple of mixed cases by mail and this particular bottle was a nice white wine called Black Country Gold.

I’d tried to ‘normalise’ the evening by picking up a few snacks and nibbles on the way home as I often did when Carol was coming round, and we had Classic FM on in the background. Inconsequentially I noticed that the presenter that evening was John Suchet, the brother of David Suchet, the actor famed for presenting a particularly good characterisation of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot.

Whenever I am stressed or upset I find my mind doesn’t wander, instead it has a laser-like focus on the inconsequential minutiae of life. I mean, the wine? The radio presenter? His brother? Who cares, right? But that’s how I deal with shitty situations.

Despite everything that I suspected was going on we had a pretty good evening and out of the corner of my eye I noticed that Carol was observing Louise very closely indeed. Louise, however, was utterly oblivious. So utterly oblivious that a snatch of 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover left her lips as she hummed quietly away, much to Carol’s bemusement.

We said goodbye to Carol at 10pm and by 11pm Louise and I were in bed. She was probably asleep almost immediately, but for me? Sleep didn’t come that easily.

Unusually the next morning Louise had left the house before I woke up. I vaguely remembered that she’d mentioned something about an early staff meeting at the school she taught at. I took a shower, ate a quick breakfast and left for my office which was in the High Street a few doors away from my favourite Costa.

As soon as I got into the office my phone chimed to advise me that I had a text message. It was from Carol. Could I meet her as soon as possible, please, at the Costa?

I texted back in the affirmative setting our meeting for 9.00, which gave me enough time to go through my emails and reply to a couple of important ones.

When I arrived at the Costa, Carol had already got our drinks and had snagged us a table as far away from the windows as possible.

“Hi, Mike. Look, let’s not beat around the bush on this. Having closely observed Louise yesterday evening, I’d have to say that I am 99% certain that she is cheating on you. The body language signs were all there. Negative cluster clues, how dismissive she was of you, but in a very subtle way, or so she thought, plus she didn’t seem to be into PDAs, public displays of affection. I mean, she’s usually very lovey-dovey with you if we’re all together, but what she was doing last night seemed false, almost as if she was having to force herself to be normal with you. And humming that fucking tune like she did? What the hell was that all about?

“And she wasn’t able to look you in the eye, almost as if she were ashamed of something.”

My shoulders slumped. I’d been fearing, expecting bad news from Carol about Louise, but I’d hoped that my suspicions were wrong. But they weren’t.

Carol reached over to me and squeezed my hand, briefly. “I know, Mike, I know. You wanted me to be able to tell you that your suspicions were unfounded, I’m sorry I couldn’t do that for you.”

I gave her a smile, it was probably weak, but it was the best I could manage. “Carol, I’m just grateful that you were able to help me. Without your help, I’d be clueless. I’m just so pleased that you had the skills and abilities to help me.”

“What are you going to do next, Mike?”

“I’m going to hire a private investigator to find out who she is having an affair with. You don’t know any private eyes, do you?” I grinned, so she’d know I was only joking about that.

She got my joke and she said: “Sorry! I don’t know any. You’ll have to Boogle or Ging them!”

I laughed at her Spoonerism joke. Spoonerisms were an in joke between the two of us that dated back to our childhood friendship. We’d seen an episode of the Two Ronnies show when Ronnie Barker took off the 19th century academic Dr William Spooner and we had played with the idea of Spoonerisms on and off for years. It had always irritated Louise. Well, BFD, bitch!

“I’ll do that,” I said.

We parted company and, back in my office, I Boogled and Ginged Private Detectives in our town. It wasn’t as easy as it seemed. Several of the local Private Detectives listed weren’t, despite their claims, really local, they were national outfits masquerading as local firms. One ship of fools actually had what they described as “blogs for their local offices” which were exactly the same blog posts word-for-word for all 50 of their so-called local offices. Even more pitiful when they all appeared on the same site.

A couple of others seemed to be fantasies run by people who had seen too many episodes of Magnum PI as kids. I was on the point of giving up when I noticed a listing for Decectif Investigations. Which actually had a genuine local address which was only two streets away from my office.

I phoned them and was fortunate enough to get an appointment for later that afternoon. Apparently they’d had a cancellation. Someone’s loss, my gain, I thought to myself.

At 3pm I was in the offices of Decectif, meeting with the principal, ex-Detective Sergeant Geoff Lithgoe.

He explained that he had spent 24 years in the local police force having started as a police cadet at the local Police Force College, becoming a Police Constable at 18, and being promoted to Sergeant at 26. After a year he had become a Detective Sergeant. Although he had passed his Inspector’s exams, he found that his progression to Inspector had been stymied because priority for promotions was being given to new recruits who, as university graduates, had been taken on under the Accelerated Promotion Programme, and were being promoted over his head.

He’d been able to wangle an offer of redundancy which virtually protected his pension and he had quit to launch his agency just after his 40th birthday. Now, five years on he employed (on a freelance basis) several of his former colleagues and one ex-Royal Military Police officer who had finished his time as a Captain in its Special Investigations Branch. Plus a technician who was an expert in covert surveillance who still worked part time for the local police.

Geoff had me sign a contract between Detectif and myself and he asked for a £500 down payment which we completed using his Sumup card reader which was on his desk.

He also asked me to fill out a questionnaire about Louise. He scanned the photograph of Louise he’d asked me to bring and printed off a copy which he attached to the questionnaire.

He then told me what he had in mind. “What I suggest we do Mr Collins is to allow us to place monitoring devices in your home to learn what your wife is doing. Placing monitoring software on your wife’s mobile phone is technically feasible but it’s not something I would countenance doing because it’s illegal under Section 1 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.

“However, placing monitoring devices, video cameras and the like in your house is perfectly legal, so long as we have your written permission to do so.” He passed me another set of forms which I signed and returned to him.

“Your wife works as a teacher at the Joan Ross Academy, you say? Presumably she’s there, what? 8.30am until 3pm?”

“Roughly, though she tends to work odd hours. Sometimes an 8am start, or even earlier on the odd occasion, sometimes she doesn’t finish until 5 or even 7pm. With Parent Teacher evenings she has to go back to school, sometimes she doesn’t get back home until 10pm or so.”