Tessa Hadley: "Late in the Day"
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London: Jonathan Cape, 2019

p.181: 

Of course, she was devastated [on hearing that her husband Alex had
slept with her best friend Lydia]. But she floated above that in her
mind, observing it wryly. This humiliated her: it was as if she'd been
stripped bare in public. And now everyone would have to condemn them
[Alex and Lydia] and be horrified by what they'd done -- Alex and Lydia,
Lydia and Alex! Their pairing seemed suddenly so inevitable, it had been
bound to happen. And Christine was bored in advance with all the
[p.182:] sympathy she would enlist, and the outrage -- she was furious
with distaste at their incurring it, those two, and at the stupid
necessity for emotion and action and reaction they had unloosed. What an
unattractively dreary role she, Christine, would have to play -- the
wronged wife! [EP]