Vin Deep

I just watched this very creepy pilot episode of a new series on ITV called "Vincent". I sat down to watch it mainly because Suranne Jones stars in it - Suranne Jones of Coronation Street fame - the woman who played the smouldering spitfire Karen McDonald.

Anyway, Vincent is P.I. and the show starts with him on the job, spying on a guy's girlfriend at a club. Vincent's hired to rat out a cheating girlfriend but things go wrong when his client asks him to confront the woman at the club, with the other man sitting next to her. In the meantime, Vincent is going through a messy divorce himself and for a split second, feels for the guy.

Naturally, fireworks ensure when the girl cottons on to what's really going on.

I'm not doing the show justice. There are all sorts of layers to this show: about obsession, about surveillance (Vincent bugs his wife's new home while she's away), about passion and lies.

The cheated bloke beats his girlfriend until she is barely alive and hides in the upstairs loft. Vincent finds her, takes her to hospital and wracked with grief and a large dose of guilt, vows to "find the bastard" (uhm, he's right there, buddy).

Another sub-plot was that one of his employees was getting her mobile phone hacked into by an ex's friend and semi-naked pics are texted to her various work colleagues, with the words "I want you". Vincent goes after him too. And gets head-butted in the process.

But how many of us are not tempted by surveillance? What happens when you come across old letters, open e-mail messages, random bits of text belonging to a significant other? When you feel like a dirty old crust for prying into someone's life and then find out that they have been less than forthcoming about what they really get up to when your back is turned.

A year and a half ago, my husband (then fiance) nearly had an affair with a co-worker. I didn't find this out by prying into his texts. It wasn't like that: they were good friends who nearly took it too far one night. He came clean 4 weeks later. The pain was indescribable. Picture feeling suffocated AND drowning AND boiling at the same time.

Three and a half months later I had a party at our flat while he was gone and towards the end of the night, some drunken sod insinuated his way into our room - for five minutes. Until I drunkenly kicked him out. But yes we fucked - and it was the worst (and briefest) shag ever. So I confessed the next day over the phone while he was still in Dublin. His immediate reaction was "So you got me back." Well, that wasn't why I did it.

So we've been married for nearly four months now, have been through hundreds of pounds' worth of counselling, loads of romantic trips and everything is just peachy. But late at night... and after a creepy program like that one... my mind wanders...