The Big Five O
JANE WENHAM-JONES

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HarperImpulse an imprint of

HarperCollinsPublishers

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www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2019

Copyright © Jane Wenham-Jones 2019

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Cover illustration © Robyn Neild / New Division

Jane Wenham-Jones asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008278694

Ebook Edition © July 2019 ISBN: 9780008278687

Version: 2019-09-05

Praise for Jane Wenham-Jones:

‘Fresh, funny and wise’ Katie Fforde

‘I love Jane’s writing!’ Jill Mansell

‘feel-good’ Woman and Home

‘The book deserves a bloody magnum – I loved it.’ Judy Astley

‘Thoughtful, insightful and often laugh-out-loud funny’ Daily Mail

‘The story you’ve always wanted to read about infidelity’ Cosmopolitan

‘A perfect read’ OK

‘Frothy and funny!’ Woman’s Own

‘Humorous, warm-hearted and full of charm. We loved it.’

Woman’s Weekly

‘Great fun!’ Heat

A great read!’ Best

‘Funny and knowing … warm and thought provoking’ Daisy Buchanan

‘Wisdom, humour and real insight … poignant and funny by turns.’ Emma Lee-Potter

‘A delightful romp … You’ll be laughing out loud! Jane Corry

‘Warm, wise and funny’ Marina O’Loughlin

‘Made me laugh … Made me think … Made me want more!’ Julie Wassamer, author of The Whitstable Pearl Mystery

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Jane Wenham-Jones

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Jane’s twenty things you find out when you’re over Fifty

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

For all those in their fabulous fifties. And beyond …

Chapter 1

Facing Fifty

Fighting Fifty

Nifty at Fifty

Shifty at Fifty

Fat at Fifty

Fit and Fifty

Fed up and fifty

Fucking Fifty!

They were all laughing like drains when we were writing the invite. So I tried to laugh too. Come to our Joint 50th Birthday …

Charlotte and Fay and Sherie and Roz. All four of us are hitting the half century this year, so it’s going to be a ball. We’ve been planning it for weeks. A big venue, lots of friends, banners, balloons, fizz and strictly no Oh-God-I’m-Fifty tears …

That’s what they tell me.

I am crying because that party is going to happen without me. I don’t know how this nightmare is going to unfold but I know in my heart it won’t end well.

I’m so afraid but I can’t bring myself to tell them. Sometimes I take a deep breath and my mouth opens but I always close it again. As if the very act of saying it out loud will make it real and I won’t be able to pretend any more that things might still be OK.

So each time we add to the arrangements, I have to keep smiling. I have to nod and look pleased and thrilled at the thought of every last bloom and fairy light.

I must be doing it well as they think I’m as excited as they are.

They have no idea at all what’s really going on …

Chapter 2

It was Charlotte’s idea, of course. Charlotte loved any excuse for a bash and she wasn’t going to let this one go.

‘Makes so much sense,’ she announced, tossing back her mass of fair curls. ‘We pool our resources, friends and legendary organisational skills and put on an extravaganza.’ She threw out her arms as if to include the multitudes. ‘I’m thinking the pavilion. Broadstairs won’t know what’s hit it.’

Wine had been taken so immediately a committee was formed. Charlotte would be Chair, because traditionally she threw the best parties. Fay would be treasurer as she ran her own business; Roz quickly offered to take the notes, grasping an excuse to say as little as possible, until she’d figured out how the hell she’d manage this, while Sherie had laughed and smoothed back her expensively-streaked blonde hair.

‘And I shall sit and look decorative.’

‘There’s a change,’ Fay had growled.

‘You can be Artistic Director,’ said Charlotte decisively. ‘Colour schemes?’

As they fell to discussing the various merits of silver and black against burgundy and grey, Roz had felt the familiar tightening in her stomach. Now, three weeks later, as she looked at the notepad on her lap where she’d rapidly listed the latest ideas tumbling from Charlotte’s mouth for a party she couldn’t begin to finance, her anxiety deepened. She could barely afford the coffee they were drinking and Fay had just waved her hand for more.

‘We need to fix this date,’ Charlotte was saying, lounging back comfortably on the squishy leather sofa in ‘Le Café’, the town’s latest coffee lounge. ‘The pav is knee-deep in weddings, of course, in June but they have got a Saturday in July–’

‘We could always do a Friday–’ said Sherie.

‘But people who are travelling a long way might be at work till six.’ Roz smiled tightly. ‘Some of us have fixed hours!’

‘The Saturday is the 28th,’ said Charlotte. ‘Shall I book it then?’

‘Depends who wants to wait and who wants to do it early,’ said Fay briskly.

Charlotte’s birthday was just four weeks away in May, Roz’s in late June. Fay’s birthday wasn’t until August and Sherie was the baby of the group, hanging on to forty-nine until late September. Or – knowing Sherie – several years longer.

‘The mid-way point,’ continued Fay, always the one they turned to for mental arithmetic, ‘is around the 20th July, so that would work. She looked at Sherie. ‘Are you OK with it being so long before yours?’

‘Absolutely! I can be smug. I’ll still be forty-nine.’

Sherie was smiling but Roz thought she looked anxious too. She was playing with a strand of her hair the way she used to at school when they had an exam looming that neither of them had revised for. Roz knew that for all the lightness of tone, that Sherie was the one struggling the most with her impending big birthday.

‘Yes, well you’re married and have children,’ Sherie had said sharply, when Charlotte had said that personally, she didn’t give a fig about age, wrinkles or being menopausal.

‘And I’ll be young for one more week!’ put in Fay. ‘I think that timing will be perfect for me – I’ll have just about got over the hangover when you all come round for cake.’

‘Cake!’ Charlotte’s eyes lit up. ‘Now what do we think? Are cupcake towers a bit passé – how about a profiterole mountain?’ She settled herself deeper into the cushions. ‘One of my clients had a sort of waterfall wedding cake with all these fish leaping down it – hundreds of them in different coloured sugar. They gave each guest one to take home. It was amazing – she’s got pictures up on Instagram if you want to see.’ Charlotte grinned. ‘It cost two grand.’

‘Lunacy,’ said Fay dismissively, as Roz shuddered.

Roz knew that if she said anything about being worried, Charlotte would pay. Charlotte had settled the bill in the wine bar last time, picking up on Roz’s unease as the evening wore on and the bottles kept coming, automatically being as kind and generous as she always was. ‘I’ve just had a fat commission,’ she’d said casually. ‘Let me.’

Charlotte always seemed to have just landed a lump of money – her one-woman estate-agency-come-house-styling enterprise was booming. Word was getting around that Charlotte could secure top prices for homes in Thanet – often from well-off city-dwellers looking to relocate, referred to locally as the DFLs (Down from London) – and her bold, de-cluttering approach to getting the property ready for sale was going down a storm.

‘Are you manic as well?’ Charlotte asked Fay now, as the empty cups were cleared.

Fay rolled her eyes. ‘Crazy. April’s always busy but we’re working flat out.’

Charlotte nodded. ‘Did a woman from Waldron Road contact you? Place stuffed with antiques – I told her you were the best in the business.’

‘Yes, thanks – I’m quoting tomorrow. Going to Sevenoaks. Thrilled with you. Thought you were bloody marvellous.’

Charlotte laughed. ‘Even though she ignored most of my advice. You’ll have your hands full moving her.’

‘Can’t be worse than Sir Wotsit with his grand piano …’

Roz felt her usual pangs of inadequacy. There was Fay with her removal business and a dozen men working for her, Sherie with her jet-setting life as an art consultant, Charlotte with not only her own success but Roger bringing in a ton as a corporate lawyer. And then there was her. Single mother, lowly gallery assistant, struggling to find her council tax let alone the French school trip Amy had set her heart on …

‘You OK?’ Sherie was looking at her.

Roz nodded as Sherie turned to the young man who’d arrived with a tray. ‘Have you brought soya milk?’

Roz saw Fay roll her eyes.

Charlotte was still talking. ‘I’m thinking of taking someone on to help with the practical stuff – especially as I’ve got a couple of empties. I haven’t got time to keep lighting flaming candles and changing the flowers–’

‘I’ll do it!’ Roz heard the squeak in her voice. ‘I’d enjoy that,’ she added, trying to sound casual. ‘If it would help you out …’

Charlotte beamed. ‘Really? God that would be fantastic – I’ve been worrying about how to find someone I could absolutely trust. Even with half the stuff in Fay’s storage, the contents in the North Foreland house are still worth a bloody mint. It’s just a case of opening the windows, changing the perfume oils, maybe a little light dusting–’

‘I can do that.’ Roz breathed deeply, not wanting to sound desperate. This could be the answer to everything. She met Charlotte’s eyes. ‘I was thinking of looking for another small job …’

Charlotte nodded. ‘I would be very grateful.’

Roz exhaled slowly. Charlotte was lovely like that – making it sound as if it were she, Roz, who was bestowing the favour. Charlotte knew things were tight for her but she didn’t know how bad it had got.

Fay was rummaging in her handbag. ‘Fag?’

Charlotte rose majestically to her feet, and stretched out her neck, pushing back her curls again. ‘I think so!’ As they both headed for the door, Fay’s tall angular frame dwarfing Charlotte’s much shorter, rounder one, Roz looked at Sherie.

‘How’s things?’ she said lightly.

‘I’m off to the States next week. Some hot young artist in Brooklyn is the next big thing and I’ve got three clients after him, and then I’ve got Mum coming at the weekend–’ She shook her head. ‘You know what she’s like – I’m not sure I can cope. And I’ve had a stream of builders round giving estimates, because I really am going to get the fireplace knocked out–’

Roz put a hand on her arm.

‘Sticks?’

Sherie shook her head.

‘Nothing.’

It was their joke. Sherie was gorgeous. All blonde hair and cheekbones and glossy lips – she spent more on facials than Roz put by for the gas and electricity bills combined – with a fantastic figure. ‘You should be beating them off with sticks,’ Roz had once said. Yet Sherie’s relationships never lasted more than a few months. She’d been internet dating on and off for years but never seemed to meet anyone with that special spark.

‘Too damn picky,’ Roz had heard Fay say. Roz knew it was more than that, but certainly Sherie had an exacting set of criteria. Mr Right had to be a good-looking, highly intelligent, kind but appropriately macho, tall, liberal cat-lover who shared Sherie’s taste in music and films, with a penchant for salad. The last hapless applicant for the role had been despatched in short order when it was revealed that he did not fully appreciate the beauty and brilliance of Cillian Murphy in Peaky Blinders and also took three sugars.

‘A sort of possible on Meet-your-match,’ Sherie said now. ‘But listed one of his interests as junk food. I really can’t be doing with–’

‘It may have been irony,’ interrupted Roz. ‘Or he might be writing a dissertation on the subject. You can’t dismiss someone before you’ve even met him, just because he might like the odd Big Mac.’

‘Hmmm.’ Sherie pursed her lips. ‘Charlotte’s putting it on again, isn’t she?’

‘She looks the same to me.’

‘She really shouldn’t be smoking.’

‘No. But she won’t stop if you nag her.’

‘Fay’s such a bad example.’

‘Charlotte would smoke anyway – if she wanted to. In any case,’ Roz was trying to be reasonable, ‘don’t they say that stress is the killer? Charlotte’s the most laid-back person I know.’

‘Well she hasn’t got anything to worry about, has she!’

Roz glanced at her oldest friend. ‘I expect she has her ups and downs like most of us,’ she said mildly.

Sherie didn’t have an awful lot to worry about herself, as far as Roz could see. She had a beautiful apartment, a fabulous job, good friends and she looked a million dollars. But Roz knew there was little point debating it. As far as Sherie was concerned, Charlotte had the husband so Charlotte had nothing to complain about, ever. Nor did Fay, who had chosen to unceremoniously kick her husband Dave out, and since Roz said frequently that she barely gave men a thought these days – too tied up with Amy and trying to keep their heads above water – Sherie reserved all her sympathy on the relationships front for herself.

Sherie could be thoughtful and funny but Roz had noticed a bitterness creeping up in her as she got older on her own. She looked again at the list in front of her. ‘Char’s certainly wanting to push the boat out for our birthdays!’

She waited, hoping Sherie would say it was all too extravagant, that they didn’t need to supply champagne on arrival or hand round the sort of canapés Charlotte was after. That the cash bar could start sooner, and a live band wasn’t essential. So she, Roz, didn’t have to.

Sherie nodded, flicking through the various pieces of paper Charlotte had left on the table. ‘Yes, when she comes back, I really must say something about the catering.’ Sherie smiled at the young man proffering a small jug, took it and began to pour soya milk carefully into her coffee. ‘It’s rather a lot to spend per head–’

Roz nodded. ‘Yes it is. That’s what I–’

‘–if we don’t accommodate all tastes.’ Sherie lifted the cup to her lips, looking disapprovingly over the rim. ‘Has she even thought about gluten-free?’

‘So, the Princess is lactose intolerant now, is she? I thought it was yeast or wheat or something that was the devil?’ Out on the pavement, Fay leant back against the bricks, inhaled sharply and blew out a long stream of smoke.

Charlotte shook her head. ‘I don’t keep up with it. When she comes to mine I let her inspect all the packets and bottles in case there’s any fatal additive lurking in the gravy that might strike her dead and then she eats what I’ve got or she doesn’t.’ She took another drag on her own cigarette. ‘Bless her!’

Fay rolled her eyes. ‘Funny how nobody had food allergies when we were kids. I can just imagine my mum buggering about with tofu on a bed of quinoa or whatever it’s called.’ She laughed. ‘Meat and two veg we had and God forbid if you didn’t finish your potatoes.’

Charlotte laughed too. ‘Becky’s a veggie now. They all are on her floor apparently. I’ve told her she’ll be cooking for herself in the holidays.’ She blew smoke out. ‘Unless it means I can finally get Joe to eat something green! If we can agree on 28th that will be great actually,’ she went on. ‘Becky will be home from uni – Joe will have broken up. Oh and so will Andrew of course. It will make it more relaxed for him and Laura – maybe they and Stanley will stay a few days. I miss Lu so much since Andrew got that bloody headship in Gateshead. I can’t wait to see them.’

Fay frowned. ‘We’re not having kids?’

Charlotte stubbed her cigarette out on the wall and dropped the butt into a litter bin outside the second-hand shop next door. ‘We’re obviously having mine,’ she said firmly. ‘And Stanley is as good as family. And almost an adult!’

She strode ahead of Fay back into the coffee bar. ‘And there’s Amy,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Come on! Let’s get this show on the road.’

‘Amy probably won’t want to come,’ Roz said, trying to keep her voice bright. ‘Far too embarrassing.’

‘Of course she’ll come,’ said Charlotte. ‘I shall tell her I’m expecting her. AND she’s got to put up with you mum-dancing.’

Roz shook her head. ‘She really will go home then!’

‘Anyway, no other damn kids apart from your own,’ said Fay, swivelling her dark glossy head round to fix them all with a stern look. ‘Plus a special dispensation for the son of Charlotte’s best friend. Because they are coming to stay,’ she added grudgingly.

‘I thought we were your best friends,’ Sherie was smiling.

‘You are – but Laura is my longest-standing best friend and fulfilled the role on her own before I met you lot.’

Fay was still on a mission. ‘Can’t be doing with them running around screaming. Did I tell you about the little bastard in M&S?’

‘Ours are all teenagers,’ said Charlotte, shaking her head. ‘Of course no small children – it’s an adult party.’

‘I gave his mother the benefit of my opinion I can tell you,’ said Fay, satisfied. ‘Offered to scream the place down, and then throw myself in the chilled chicken. See what she thought.’

Roz laughed. ‘We have some right little sods on the school trips to the gallery too.’

‘So, are you going to confirm the booking, Charlotte?’ Sherie was looking bored.

‘Yep. I’ll call in to the pav and see Dan tomorrow. Tell him the Big Bash is on!’

‘And sort some vegetarian options?’

‘He’s used to all that. You saw the list – there’ll be a selection–’

Sherie looked doubtful. ‘I think we ought to mention it. And put a note on the invitations saying to let us know about dietary requirements.’

‘Or tell them to eat before they come if they’re that fussy,’ said Fay. ‘Which is what I’m about to do. I need to get home, I’m starving.’ She got up and swept towards the counter.

Sherie put her sunglasses in their case and also stood up. She was holding a ten-pound note.

Roz felt in her bag for money, hoping a fiver would be enough, but Fay returning and putting a card back into her wallet, shook her head.

‘You get it another time,’ she said easily. Roz swallowed. As if it were that simple. Which it was for the other three. If next time, the bill came to forty quid instead of twenty, they’d pick up the tab without thinking.

‘Swings and roundabouts,’ Charlotte would declare, if she ended up paying more than her share. Not realising that if Roz got the wrong sort of ride when it was her turn, she’d have to plunge even deeper into debt.

‘Can’t stand faff about the bill,’ Fay was fond of saying as she’d swiftly divide by four, not knowing that the only reason Roz had been on water was that she was desperately trying to keep that bill to a minimum.

Charlotte scrutinised her as she said goodbye. ‘Amy all right?’ she asked.

Roz shrugged. ‘You know – fifteen!’

She thought of her daughter’s face earlier, screwed up with rage and disappointment. ‘WHY can’t we ask Granny?’ she’d said over and over while Roz tried to explain.

‘I just can’t – the boiler was different – we had to be warm – I couldn’t let you have no hot water. It was a necessity and you going to Paris isn’t. And I hated doing it even then.’

Amy had pouted. ‘Granny said she never minds helping – if only you were a bit more grateful. She said when she gave you the deposit for this house you barely said thank you.’

‘Nice of her to be so supportive,’ Roz had said tartly as Amy had banged out of the room.

One of the things Roz resented most about her mother was her total lack of loyalty and her indiscretion. When Amy went on her twice-annual visit to Carshalton to stay beneath her parent’s well-appointed mock Tudor beams, she came back with a new set of clothes and a fresh tale of Roz’s ingratitude.

‘She wanted me to abort you,’ Roz felt like saying. ‘Because they thought a single woman in her thirties getting accidentally pregnant was too low-rent for words.’

Instead she tried to explain the difficult nature of her interactions with the woman to whom her status at the Rotary and Golf Clubs was everything and who had never forgiven Roz for being the one two hours away when her sainted brother had emigrated, when it would have suited her so much better had the geography been reversed.

Roz used words like ‘beholden’ – not wanting to be – and ‘self-sufficient’, something she’d hysterically promised herself in the hospital when her mother had brought a shawl and a stiffly-signed cheque for a thousand pounds and her father hadn’t been allowed to come at all. But Amy barely listened, increasingly resentful of Roz’s low-income and her own fatherless state that she blamed for money being so tight.

‘Terrible teens,’ Roz added to Charlotte now.

‘Nightmare, I remember it well.’ Charlotte looked at Roz harder. ‘Everything else OK?’

Roz nodded, her stomach churning.

‘So I’ll text you about getting together so I can show you round both places and give you the keys, and we’ll talk dosh. I was thinking an hourly rate.’ Charlotte hugged her. ‘I’ll pay well as it’s you, love.’

Roz squeezed her back, touched and terrified. The extra earnings would be good but she needed the job for more than that. For a moment she felt lightheaded as bile rose in her throat. Charlotte was the best sort of friend. Roz dug her nails into her palms to stop her feelings of panic overtaking her. Charlotte trusted her to complete exactly what was required. What would Charlotte say if she knew what Roz was really going to do …

Chapter 3

‘I really don’t know what I’m going to do.’

Charlotte sat at her super-sized kitchen table, hands clasped around her empty mug, and stared at the piece of paper she’d been looking at for at least an hour before Fay had arrived.

Fay picked it up. ‘In itself it’s not exactly conclusive, is it?’ she said, raising her precision-plucked eyebrows.

‘There was the message as well.’

‘And are you sure that was the same number?’ Fay enquired.

‘Yes. No. I don’t know. I think it had seven, nine, five in it.’

‘So do half the mobile numbers in the country.’

Charlotte sighed. ‘I called you because you have an analytical mind and will take a practical approach. What shall I do?’ Charlotte said again, a plaintive note in her voice. ‘It doesn’t feel right.’

Fay ran a hand thoughtfully through her short dark hair and pulled her chair a little closer to the table. ‘OK. Let’s go through it again. Roger was looking shifty and then he got a phone message …’

Charlotte twisted the mug around again. ‘No, he wasn’t looking anything. His phone was plugged into the charger over there. I was right by it when the message came in and I could see the first line of it as a notification on the screen. There was a smiley face and ‘I’ll put you through your paces on Wednesday when …’ I couldn’t read any more without unlocking it. And I couldn’t do that because he was in the doorway as it beeped and the next thing he’d shot across the room and picked it up and read it. And put the phone back in his pocket.’

‘Which isn’t actually an admission of guilt,’ put in Fay.

‘So later,’ Charlotte went on, ignoring her, ‘when he’d left it on the side again, I tried to unlock it and it isn’t the same code any more! Why would he change the number, unless it was because he didn’t want me looking in his phone?’

‘Well, why are you looking in his phone?’ Fay fixed her with a searching look. ‘Why not just say: who was that from?’

‘I did – and he said it was someone from work.’

‘Well, maybe it was. You know, a bit of banter. You should hear the way my blokes go on. They–’

‘Well it clearly wasn’t,’ Charlotte interrupted hotly. ‘Because later still, I asked to use his phone – saying I wanted to WhatsApp Becky and I’d left my phone upstairs and couldn’t be arsed to go and get it – and–’

‘He didn’t want you to?’

‘He handed it over as smiley as anything!’

Fay frowned in confusion. Charlotte’s face was grim. ‘And guess what? The message had gone. He’d fucking deleted it.’

Charlotte’s voice rose. ‘And it wasn’t someone from work anyway, cos their number would be stored wouldn’t it? It would say Fred or Dick. This was just a number … It’s some woman he’s met in a chat room.’

‘Oh come on!’ Fay’s eyebrows had risen further. ‘That’s going nought to ninety a bit quick. Could be a colleague he rarely deals with–’

‘Why the banter then?’

‘Or someone he usually speaks to in person so they’re not in his phone. OR–’ Fay looked inspired, ‘– it was simply a wrong number. Which is why he deleted it. And he came across quickly because he was expecting someone from work …’

‘You’re not listening!’ Charlotte said tetchily. ‘He said ‘someone from work’, which is also odd because usually he’d say the name.’

‘Why don’t you just ask him again?’

‘Because if he is up to something, I’m going to catch him at it. I’m not going to be made to feel paranoid this time.’

Privately, Fay thought it might be a trifle late for that. She frowned again. ‘This time?’

Charlotte hesitated, still turning the mug round and round on the table. ‘There was this girl in his office,’ she said. ‘Hannah. Bit of a bunny boiler. She had a crush on him and he was lapping it up till I found out.’

‘Most men would. Did anything happen?’

‘He said not. They had some drinks … She used to text him all the time though. Suppose she’s back?’

‘How long ago was this?’

‘Six years or so. Laura warned her off initially before I got hold of it. By then Roger was panicking anyway because she wouldn’t leave him alone and eventually she moved away.’

‘Unlikely she’d reappear after all this time.’

Charlotte shrugged. ‘I’ve looked for her on Facebook but I couldn’t–’

Fay put hand on arm. ‘Don’t!’

Charlotte shook her head. ‘I know! I hate myself for being like this and I hate Roger for making me.’

Fay spoke firmly. ‘Now come on. We don’t know he has yet. If that Hannah caused him trouble before, he’d hardly engage with her now, even if she did turn up again. And this Marion could be anyone.’

They both looked at the piece of paper Fay was still holding – displaying the name and mobile number in Roger’s handwriting.

‘A client for example’ said Fay.

‘He doesn’t have clients any more does he? He’s the in-house lawyer.’

‘Who’s negotiating a string of take-overs – he told me about it when I came for the curry. CTG are snapping up all sorts of smaller wealth management outfits, aren’t they? Marion could be some hot-shot chief executive he had to phone back – or her secretary!’

‘Yes, she could be. But my gut tells me she’s the same woman who sent the sexual message. And I feel like I did last time. When I knew there was something up but I couldn’t put my finger on it.’ Her voice became bitter. ‘And he denied it of course.’

‘Well of course he did.’ Fay’s tone was matter of fact. ‘You said – he was panicking.’

‘And I have the same feeling again,’ Charlotte went on. ‘That he’s hiding something.’

‘Your birthday present?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Look,’ Fay leant her elbows on the scrubbed wood and looked hard at Charlotte. ‘You don’t have to wind yourself up like this. You simply say: Roger, I read that message and it sounded like innuendo and I couldn’t help noticing when I was having a poke about, that you’ve changed the code on your phone. Why?’

‘But then he’ll make up something plausible that makes me sound like a mad, jealous old shrew and then I’ll feel worse. And–’ Charlotte stopped abruptly and stood up. ‘Do you want a glass of wine?’

Fay looked at her watch. ‘Yeah ok. Len’s at the office. I don’t need to go back.’ She pulled out her phone and glanced at it. ‘Just one.’

Charlotte crossed her kitchen and opened the huge fridge, returning to the big pine table with two goblets of white and a bowl of peanuts.

She sat down and took a swallow. ‘What I’m going to do,’ she said, putting the glass down and surveying Fay with what appeared to be fresh determination, ‘is see what happens on Wednesday.’

She took another mouthful of her wine. ‘If he’s got a rendezvous planned then he’ll have to make some excuse to be back late. So then I’ll know. And if she – whoever she is – has been putting him through his paces, he’ll find it was nothing to what I’ll be doing when he gets home!’

‘OK,’ said Fay. ‘So that’s a plan. Sounds good. Now, how are we getting on with the party?’

She watched Charlotte, as her friend reluctantly allowed the subject to be changed and brought Fay up to date with her investigations into cake designs and balloon prices. ‘Two hundred in silver, a hundred in this sort of pale lilac, and a hundred in burgundy – they look really stylish grouped together. And the pale ones will have burgundy lettering – The Big Five-O!’

‘I like it,’ Fay nodded. ‘Helium?’

‘Of course. Long strings so they come up from the floor, with shorter ones for the tables.’

‘Brilliant.’

‘I thought we could let them all go over Viking Bay at the end. Video it!’

‘Yeah, great.’

There was a small silence. Charlotte had finished her first glass of wine and was pouring a second. Fay put her hand over the top of her own glass. ‘Got the car.’

‘If I even feel like having a party then–’ Charlotte added.

‘You will!’ Fay ate a peanut.

‘I wish I was more like you,’ Charlotte suddenly burst out. ‘You’re so, so – sure of everything.’

‘You are like me!’ Fay grinned at Charlotte. ‘First time I met you – when you were still with Wainwright’s and there was that bloody woman with the poodles whose mortgage hadn’t gone through – do you remember?’

Charlotte shook back her curls. ‘How could I forget? You had two vans of her furniture outside and she was wailing and all those damn dogs were yapping.’

‘We were already short of a driver – that’s why I was there – and we had another job to load up the same day. I was about to land her one when you turned up.’ Fay laughed. ‘I can see you now. ‘Enough!’ you said. ‘Calm down.’ And even the dogs shut the hell up.’

Charlotte smiled.

‘I knew then that you were my sort of woman,’ finished Fay. ‘We don’t fuck about. We’re toughies.’

When Fay had left, Charlotte poured another drink, pulling a face as thirteen-year-old Joe, arriving home from school and dumping his rucksack and sports bag in the middle of the kitchen floor, frowned at her. ‘You’re not drunk, are you?’

‘Of course I’m not.’

She supposed it made a change from his usual repertoire of grunts and for once he wasn’t surgically attached to his phone or Xbox either. ‘Fay was round,’ she said, aware as she said it, of the effects of the wine on her largely empty stomach. She took the last handful of peanuts. ‘Have you had a good day?’

Joe shrugged.

‘Homework?’

‘Haven’t got any.’

‘Don’t believe you.’

He grinned at her and she heard his feet thumping their way upstairs, his bags and blazer left behind where they’d been dropped. She knew she wouldn’t see him again until she called him for dinner and that he’d disappear straight after. She sighed. The house felt different without Becky. They’d done nothing but row before she left for uni – it was time for Becky to spread her wings – but Charlotte missed her daughter more than she could ever have imagined. If it had been Becky standing here, who’d seen that text, she would have tackled Roger at once. ‘What’s this Dad? Who’s putting you through your paces? Sounds a bit strange …’

Last time, she’d tried to keep it from the kids, but Becky had picked up the tail end of the hoo-ha. Knew there’d been a woman chasing her father and had been none too impressed.

Charlotte rose and opened the fridge door, pulling out a bowl of chicken pieces she’d dragged the skin from that morning.

Fay was right. It wasn’t necessarily a repeat of anything like that. Roger had promised her. They’d made a pact never again to keep anything hidden, however bad. For a moment Charlotte felt a stab of guilt. She’d had a long conversation with Laura on the phone this morning. Lu had said she should be talking to Roger …

She pulled a baking tray from the drawer next to the Aga and began to spread out the thighs.

She was fond of Fay – as Fay had said, they’d hit it off straight away. Now they often ended up with shared clients and Fay was always reliable and straightforward. Fay kept her life uncluttered. No commitments, no husband, no kids. She worked hard, played hard – saw things in black and white. Charlotte found her entertaining and she’d filled a gaping hole when Laura had moved away. Laura was emotional and sensitive and if she were here now would have listened endlessly to Charlotte’s uncertainties and doubts. Fay was a fixer, but Laura would have hugged her and allowed Charlotte to debate the situation until Charlotte felt calm again.

She took a small sharp knife out of the drawer and began to slash at the chicken in front of her – squeezing more lemon juice over the rosy flesh she’d left marinating, trickling olive oil, adding herbs and black pepper.

As she sliced onions and crushed garlic, she wondered if Fay was right and she should just tackle Roger when he got in. But a part of her wanted to test him – to see whether he would be late on Wednesday, to prove to herself that the uneasy feeling in her solar plexus was the intuition that had been right before, and not the menopausal neuroses she could see Fay suspected.

She was chopping chillies when she heard his key in the lock. Hastily shoving the piece of paper out of sight, she listened to the familiar evening sounds, the jingle of his keys as he dropped them into the bowl on the hall table, the thud of his briefcase on the bottom stair – his low call of hell-oo as he walked into the kitchen already shrugging off his jacket.

Her gut twisted as he came in, big and smiling, the way he’d come in a thousand times before. He leant round her, bending to kiss her cheek. ‘Smells good.’

‘That’s just the oven pre-heating.’

Roger looked at the tray of chicken, as she scattered the finely chopped chillies and sloshed in red wine. ‘I can see it will smell good soon then!’

She bent to put the tray in the Aga and then turned and searched his face. He looked as he always did. ‘You seem happy.’

Roger nodded. ‘Yep, all going well. I’ve got a dinner with the chief exec of AG next week but it’s all going through remarkably smoothly and–’

‘What night?’ It was out – too sharply – before she could stop herself.

‘Err Thursday I think – is that a problem?’

‘No,’ she shook her head, turning away and pulling a bag of spinach leaves towards her. ‘Just wondered. What about the rest of the week? Have you got a lot on?’ She swung back to watch his face.

He looked surprised. ‘About the same as usual. Do you need me to do something?’ Was she imagining it or had that been a flicker of anxiety?

‘I might need to be out a couple of evenings myself, that’s all,’ she improvised. ‘I want to get together with the others about the party and I’m seeing a new client – she can only do after 8pm … Just thinking about Joe …’

‘I won’t be late any other night …’

She felt the relief wash over her as she continued to gaze at him. He was looking pretty good at fifty-two. Grey hair suited him. He was a bit heavier than he used to be but he had the height to carry it off. He was still an attractive man. Women would still be interested, but he was coming home to her. He smiled again. She could see he was wondering why she was so uptight.

‘I had a funny text exchange with Bex today,’ he said. ‘She sounds buoyant.’

‘Oh.’ Charlotte pushed down the pang in her solar plexus. ‘I haven’t heard from her.’

Roger shook his head. ‘It was only because she sent me a photo. Some bloke sprawled out in front of the TV watching football surrounded by beer cans.’ He laughed. ‘She said it reminded her of me. One of the boys down the corridor is an Arsenal supporter – she said the way he went on about it was like listening to me and Joe.’ He draped an arm around Charlotte’s shoulders. ‘I’m sure she’ll be onto you soon. Wanting advice on how to cook something – what was it last time – artichokes?’

Charlotte nodded.

‘She sent you her love, anyway,’ Roger added.

‘That’s nice,’ Charlotte said brightly, wondering if this was true or her husband was just trying to make her feel better.

She smiled at him. ‘Want a beer?’

‘I’ll just get this suit off.’

His suit jacket was still hanging on the back of one of the pine chairs, when the beep came. Charlotte waited. He didn’t look towards it.

‘Sounds like you’ve got a text,’ she said lightly.

‘It’ll be Don. He was going to let me know about squash on Sunday.’

‘Oh.’

She walked to the doorway. ‘Joe!’ she yelled, hating the way her stomach had clenched again. ‘Chilli chicken!’

When she turned back, Roger had retrieved the phone and was looking at the screen. As she came towards him, he snapped it off and dropped it back into the pocket.

‘Yep,’ he said. ‘Don’s booked a court for nine.’ Roger patted his stomach. ‘It’s going to be hard work – I’ve lost fitness doing all these long hours–’

Charlotte tried to read his expression. Was this an act for her benefit? Reminding her of the demands of work so she wouldn’t question it if he came home late? Was it even really his friend Don who’d sent a message?

‘Well, don’t have a heart attack!’

‘Nah, we’ll take it easy – a couple of old gents together.’

Charlotte suddenly and inexplicably felt close to tears.

She knew how the others saw it. ‘Hostess-with-the-mostest’, Sherie always called her. She knew from the outside her life looked idyllic – the big family home in Kingsgate, the loving husband, the great kids, regular holidays and frequent entertaining. And it was good – she’d always known how lucky she was. She was the one the other three relied on to always look on the bright side, to feed and nurture everyone, to open a bottle, stick a roast in the oven and make everything all right again. She was a regular, if ageing, Pollyanna. Wasn’t she?

Except now she felt strange. Lost somehow. Even when she was talking and laughing, these days she was always touched with a low-level dread as if something terrible was about to happen. For the first time ever, she lay awake at 4.a.m. worrying about things she’d usually not give a second thought to. She dithered over what to wear, felt anxious about something happening to one of the children. Or Roger. Bloody Roger – it was all his fault she was stressed like this.

Roger was supposed to be her best friend who she’d trust with her life. She had once. She’d forgiven him for Hannah but she realised she’d never been completely at ease since.

As Joe ambled into the room, Charlotte busied herself getting the tray out of the Aga so neither of them would see the tears in her eyes.

Fay might think that Charlotte was as tough as she was, but Charlotte knew she wasn’t at all …

Chapter 4

Fay cracked three eggs into sizzling oil and expertly flipped the sausages browning under the grill, throwing a look at the young man lolling in her kitchen doorway. She remembered the evening she’d told the others about Cory.

‘It’s the perfect arrangement for both of us,’ Fay had explained, smiling at Sherie’s look of amazement. ‘I get a lithe young body in bed with me and he gets a decent breakfast. When Cory stays with Tiffany or whatever her name is, it’s chipped mugs and a biscuit if he’s lucky.’

Sherie had looked appalled. ‘You know he’s got someone else?’

Fay had snorted. ‘Of course he has! He’s twenty-three – wants to be at it all the time – and I don’t want him round more than once a week. I love to see him come–’ she gave a dirty chuckle ‘–as it were, and I’m happy to see him go again–’ Fay had enjoyed the way the others were gawping at her. ‘Confident that he will return because he gets double bacon and toast with proper butter.’

Charlotte had given her a huge grin. Roz nodded with admiration. But Sherie, as usual, persisted. ‘But don’t you want–’

‘Something long-term or permanent?’ Fay was brisk. ‘No thanks – I tried that and it didn’t suit me. Can’t be doing with someone hanging around all the time. I go through my front door and I shut it behind me and I thank the Lord it’s just me. The only bit that bothers me is why on earth I didn’t give Dave his marching orders earlier!’

‘How long ago was it?’ Sherie always wanted the detail.

‘I don’t know,’ Fay’s tone suggested she couldn’t be bothered to work it out. ‘Seven years or so. Best thing I ever did.’

Sherie had opened her mouth and shut it again.

As Cory came up behind her, and put his arms around Fay’s waist, there was a moment when she thought what she’d told Sherie might almost be true. She pictured Dave walking away from her down the path, a rucksack slung over one shoulder, a bulging bag in his other hand. She’d sat quite still on the bottom stair, watching through the still-open front door. She had stayed there a long time.

Fay jerked back to the present as Cory nuzzled into her neck. ‘Are we having hash browns?’

‘I’ve got some fried potatoes in the oven.’

‘That’s why I love you.’

‘Pah!’ She nudged him off as she crossed to the coffee machine, blowing air out dismissively. ‘Through your stomach.’

He often said things like that. The young were supposed to be thoughtless and self-absorbed and she’d have expected him to be off like a long dog once the wake-up shag was over, but he was always tactile and affectionate in the mornings. Would hang about after breakfast if it was a weekend, and talk to her about his job at the bakery, his family, his mate Josh who was earning a fortune in Canary Wharf but sleeping so little and sticking so much coke up his nose that Cory worried he would fall apart.

He asked Fay questions too but she told him little. He knew she was running the business her late father had started when she was a baby, that she was divorced, that she spoke reasonable Spanish and could knit. But she was careful about anything more.

‘Nothing heavy,’ she’d warned, when he’d first come home with her after pitching up at Green’s wine bar with a couple of pals, the night she was running the quiz. ‘We’re just doing each other a favour.’

She hadn’t expected to see him again but back he came, week after week. Now he’d suggested they spend this entire Friday to Sunday together but Fay had just laughed. ‘Do you really want to look at me sprawled on the sofa in my pyjamas with a facemask on?’

He laughed too. ‘You wouldn’t be!’

‘I would. Weekends off are my down time. You can come Friday night and bugger off in the morning. And if you’re very good, you can pop in Sunday afternoon for a cup of tea and a scone.’

‘You sound like my nan.’

‘I expect I’m older than she is.’

She certainly had a couple of years on his mother. Cory had mentioned his mum’s forty-seventh birthday a few weeks ago. No doubt she’d be as horrified as Sherie if she knew where her little soldier had spent the night. Fay gave a small chuckle to herself as she pressed the button to take the roof down on her red Mazda MX5, liking the feel of the cold air on her face as she reversed out of her driveway and headed along the Eastern Esplanade. The sea was grey and choppy today, but the sun was bright.

Fay turned into Rectory Road and down through Nelson Place to Albion Street, looking at the restaurants and cafes that now lined the bottom of Broadstairs, so many more than when she’d been a child. She swung the car past Costa Coffee, wrinkling her nose in disapproval – she had banked there when it was still Barclays! – and up York Street, headed for the Pysons Road Industrial Estate where Sternhouse Removals had its home.

She put her foot down as she left the last roundabout, finding the wind whipping through her hair exhilarating. It was a lovely cold, sharp day. She would have liked to have reason to take the car for a belt up the motorway but the office called. Reluctantly she slowed down and turned onto the estate following the winding road round until her empire stood before her.

She felt the small rush of pleasure and achievement she got every time she saw the row of distinctive brown and orange lorries, parked outside the small glass and steel reception area with the huge storage facility stretching behind it. The business had been here for nearly fifty years – but it had tripled in size since she’d taken over.

‘Morning Ma’am!’ A young man in a dark brown boiler suit, with the orange Sternhouse logo, jumped down from one of the cabs and saluted her smartly as she walked towards the main doors. Fay grinned. ‘Good morning, Toby.’

She crossed the small carpeted space with its four chairs, coffee table and water cooler, and through the door at the back. As she walked through the drivers’ room, shaking her head at the discarded cups and day-old newspapers, a stocky man in his fifties looked up from a computer screen in the corner.

‘How we doing, Len?’ Fay kept going into her own office, propping the door open for him to follow. He rose and strolled after her, a blue folder under his arm.

‘The Waldron Road woman has booked. But she wants to go on the 21st now. Which is tricky because we’ve got three other big ones the day before and her packing’s going to take a day on its own.’

Fay threw her jacket on the hat stand in the corner of her office and flicked the switch on the coffee machine. ‘Get some more bodies in from the casuals list.’

‘I already have.’

Fay nodded as Len continued. ‘We’ll have to put Toby and Will on her job – can’t trust that to just anyone – have you seen how much china she’s got?’

‘I did the quote didn’t I? Speaking of which, I’ve got three more to do this morning. I hope Elaine’s on time for a change.’

‘It was only one morning,’ Len’s tone was mild. ‘Her grandson was off school and her daughter had to get to work.’

Fay snorted. ‘Elaine needs to get to work! There are a stack of invoices to go out as well.’

‘It’s not even quarter to nine yet.’

‘Hmmm. Want one of these?’ Fay slotted a pod into the machine and pressed the button, apparently intent on the dark stream of espresso that began to trickle into her cup.

‘Yeah go on then.’ Len sat down in her other office chair. ‘How’s your mum?’

‘Still away with the fairies.’

‘But OK? Being looked after.’

‘She still thinks she’s staying in a hotel but she’s almost stopped asking when she’s going home. Says the food is mostly OK but they can’t cook liver. Wants me to have a word …’ Fay gave a sudden shout of laughter. ‘I would but offal hasn’t once been on the menu!’

‘Ah,’ said Len, affection in his voice. ‘I liked your mum. Jean was a good woman. Your dad was devoted to her.’

‘I don’t know why – she was never off his back. Always bloody creating about something.’

Len raised his eyebrows and gave a small smile. Fay removed her cup and put another in its place. ‘Don’t look at me like that. I only create when it’s justified.’

Len smiled again. ‘That was just her way. She was kind to me. Sent round casseroles when both the kids were born.’

‘I know – you’ve told me before. Are you angling for me to make you one or something?’

‘Can’t imagine you cooking anything like that.’

‘Well, you’d be surprised.’ She laughed again. ‘I’ll buy you a pint and a pie next week.’

‘By the time we’re the other side of this lot, we’ll need it. And talking of kids–’ Len pulled a large pink envelope from the folder. ‘For Matthew and Lisa. We’ve had a whip round for flowers and a toy for the baby. Just waiting for you to sign now.’

Fay fished in her handbag and then held out a twenty-pound note. She didn’t look at the cover of the card, just opened it and signed her name briskly in the bottom left-hand corner, before pushing it all back towards Len.

‘Having kids costs a fortune these days,’ Len said conversationally. ‘And Matt has shaped up good. He’s well past his probation period and I was thinking–’

‘How much?’

‘Another couple of grand a year – bring him in line with the other younger ones now he’s trained.’

‘I’ll get Elaine onto it with the next payroll. Now what have we got in the pipeline to pay for all this?’

By the time the older woman arrived, Fay had been through the next week’s job sheets with Len and he’d disappeared to round up the lads he needed for a relocation to Hemel Hempstead. Through the window, Fay watched him cross the yard.

She’d been twenty-seven when she’d been called back from her teaching job in Spain because her father had collapsed with a heart attack. Len had been thirty-three then but he’d worked with her Dad since he was sixteen and knew what to do. She thought back gratefully to how he’d taught her the ropes in those awful early months, made sure the younger men showed her respect, came in early and stayed late even when his wife was kicking off, quietly supporting her as she threw herself into running and later expanding the business.

Now she could run it herself with one hand tied behind her back. But she wouldn’t want to – she was glad Len was there to oversee the daily detail, work out the rotas, get the lorries serviced and make it all happen. He was a brilliant right-hand man, good at knowing instinctively who to employ, who to let go, not afraid to disagree with her if he thought she’d got it wrong. She’d tried to look out for him too, since his divorce, often taking him to the pub on a Friday – feigning polite interest in the pictures of his grandchildren even though–

Fay gazed at her computer screen open on an excel sheet. Elaine was tapping away in the adjoining room, her back to Fay, everyone else was out on jobs.

She hadn’t looked for days. It had been better since she’d banned herself from using the computer at home. Left her laptop at the office. And taken the app off her phone.

Fay’s eyes locked on the icon in the bottom left hand corner of her screen. She’d sworn she wasn’t going to do this any more. She hesitated, then almost robotically she double-clicked. Went through the usual motions till there it was. The mop of dark hair thrown back, the laughing face, squinting in the sun – if it were her, Fay, she’d have been wearing sunglasses. And in her arms … Fay felt the familiar tightness in her chest, she was holding herself rigidly as if by keeping very still, she’d feel nothing. She breathed out slowly, looking at the golden-haired toddler, clutching the pink plastic spade. There were no new pictures. Nothing had changed.

She’d told Len she was trying to create a proper demarcation between work and leisure. He’d been approving – said she worked too hard, that the business was flourishing and everything was under control. She should have proper days off …

He didn’t know she left the laptop here, to save her from herself.

Chapter 5

Sherie pushed open her front door, dumping her case on the polished hall floor and walking rapidly to the foot of the stairs.

‘I’m home! Where are you?’

Her heart quickened as she heard a small thump and his feet coming across the floor above her. ‘Come and see me!’

She waited while he trotted down the stairs, then she knelt down and swept Marquis into her arms, burying her face in the back of his neck. ‘You gorgeous thing – my beautiful boy – I’ve missed you so much!’

‘Well here I am.’ She straightened. Her neighbour, Nate, was standing in the doorway of her sitting room, in jeans and bare feet. She flushed. ‘Oh, I was–’

He grinned. ‘It’s OK, I didn’t think you were referring to me!’

Sherie smiled too. ‘Has he been OK?’

‘He’s been fine. We’ve been watching TV like you said. Last night he enjoyed Pointless, got a bit restless during the news and went upstairs for a kip as soon as EastEnders started …’

Sherie laughed, still hugging the silver tabby. ‘Thank you so much. I am so grateful.’

She picked up her handbag from the floor where she’d dropped it, and began to pull out her wallet. ‘How many hours –’

Nate frowned. ‘I don’t want paying. I like being here with the old chap.’ He looked around him. ‘Who wouldn’t enjoy hanging out in a place like this? The light down here is amazing with those windows on all sides – quite different from upstairs.’

‘I must give you something. It made all the difference knowing you were looking after him. I missed him but I didn’t worry.’

Nate shrugged. ‘Take me for a drink sometime.’ He hesitated. ‘Now even? I’m ready for a beer. Once you’ve unpacked. We could go over the road. We could eat there?’ He stopped as she said nothing. ‘Sorry, bad idea – you’re probably exhausted.’

Sherie shook her head as Marquis wriggled in her arms. ‘It’s not that. I am really tired but that’s not the problem – I’ve got to meet my friends in Green’s. Sorry. We’re–’

‘Oh sure – well over the weekend or something.’

She groaned, lowering the cat onto the shiny floorboards. ‘I’ve got my mother staying.’

Nate turned away, bending over to retrieve his battered leather mules from the corner of the hall. But not before she caught sight of the disappointment on his face.

‘Nate, we will go for a drink as soon as my mother’s gone – seriously, I’d really like to.’ He was pushing his feet into the shoes, feeling in his jeans pocket for his keys. The last of the day’s sun coming through the glass panels of the front door, lit up his blonde curls like a halo.

Sherie bent and stroked Marquis who was still rubbing himself round her legs, purring. ‘Hey come on, let’s have a quick drink now before I have to get ready. I’ve got some lager or wine? Or how about a G&T?’

‘I don’t want to hold you up.’

‘You won’t be. I’m shattered – the gin will perk me up. And I want to hear all about how Marquis has been and the new painting …’

She walked ahead of him down the hall into her kitchen. ‘Any more domestics from next door?’

After a moment, he followed her, perching on a stool at her breakfast bar as she opened the fridge. ‘She was crying outside on Saturday night,’ he told her. ‘I asked her if she was OK but she’d clearly had a few and then he came down so I left them to it.’

The beautiful old flint house was divided into four apartments of various sizes. Sherie owned one of the larger ones – a two-bedroom maisonette taking up half of the first two floors. The other half was occupied by the Wilsons. He worked in the city and left at five each morning for the hi-speed train, she was apparently some sort of designer who worked from home. She seemed, however, to spend a lot of her day wandering about the shared gardens with a coffee mug in her hand, which Sherie strongly suspected sometimes contained vodka.

Nate, artist and lecturer, rented a one bedroom flat on the third floor above Sherie. Something she’d only discovered when he’d dropped a card through her door, inviting her to his students’ end of year show because he’d heard from one of the Wilsons she was an art buyer.

She hadn’t been able to get to Canterbury that evening but she’d made a point of seeking out Nate, hoping if she were honest, he might turn out to be fifty, cultured and distinguished-looking instead of a slightly scruffy, bohemian and young-looking thirty-two who could easily be mistaken for a student himself.

But he had immediately endeared himself to her over his appreciation of her gorgeous Marquis, exclaiming over his unusual markings and later presenting her with a sketch of the cat attempting to catch a bumble bee down by the lilac bushes. This was now expensively framed in her sitting room, opposite her favourite small sofa near the French doors onto the garden. Nate had said more than once he would also like to paint her.

‘How’s it going?’ she asked now, dropping ice into two long glasses.

‘Slowly. I’ve had loads of assessments to do but I’ll get it finished by Easter now we’ve broken up.’

‘I can’t wait to see it – you know how much I love your work.’

‘You can come up when it’s done.’

‘Did you sell the other one?’

‘Not yet. I’m keeping it back for the show in the Old Town – did I tell you about that?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Sherie measured out gin, and sliced lemons, squeezing a little of the juice into the cold spirit before adding the segments to the glass, listening as he told her about the exhibition of local artists with the theme of seaside that was being put on just along the coast in a small gallery that was the latest addition to the arty quarter of Margate.

She smiled at Nate. ‘I’ll be tempted to buy it if nobody else does – I love those bold colours.’

‘Will you come to the preview?’ He smiled back. ‘Warm wine, bendy crisps – you know.’

‘Yes, of course. If I’m here. What sort of tonic do you want? I’ve got light, ordinary or elderflower–’

‘How posh!’

She laughed. ‘My friends would tell you I’m just fussy.’

She used a long decorative glass stirrer on both drinks. ‘There you go. Tell me that isn’t the best gin and tonic you’ve had this week!’

He sipped. ‘I think it’s the best I’ve had ever. Down!’ He added as Marquis sprang onto the surface and poked a paw at the other half of the lemon.

‘How did you do that?’ Sherie asked, as the cat jumped meekly back to the floor. ‘He never takes any notice of me.’

‘He knows you don’t mean it.’

‘You’re right.’

As Marquis jumped back up further down the counter, she reached out and cuddled him to her. She knew she would never get tired of the warmth of his thick soft fur, the little chirruping noise he made when he ran towards her. ‘I love him so much,’ she said. ‘I woke up in my hotel room and it felt all wrong because he wasn’t on my feet.’

‘He’s the most indulged cat I’ve ever met.’ Nate took another swallow of gin and grinned at her. ‘I couldn’t believe it the first time I saw that row of little pots of home-cooked this and finely-shredded that – all with his own little labels on.’ He grinned again. ‘Just in case he gets confused.’

‘He really doesn’t like cat food.’

‘I’m not surprised.’

‘No, honestly. I’ve tried all the different brands – including the expensive stuff. He’ll eat the biscuits but he just cries if I give him anything else. It has to be fresh chicken or ground steak or tuna in spring water.’

Nate shook his head. ‘He eats better than I do. He is funny though,’ he went on. ‘He loves that remote-control mouse, doesn’t he? We must have played with that for half an hour. Before I tucked him up with his cocoa and read him a bed time story, of course. Sprinkled a little lavender oil on his cushion so he’d have soothing dreams, reminded him to clean his teeth and pop his cashmere bed socks on …’

Sherie laughed loudly. The gin had relaxed her and she felt warm and mellow sitting here with Nate in the last of the fading light. She crossed the room and put the under-cupboard lighting on, adjusting the overhead spotlights so they weren’t too bright.

‘I wish I wasn’t going out,’ she said. ‘I’m bushed. I’d like another gin and a long bath and to snuggle up with my cat and hear what he’s been up to. How many birds he’s chased and what he thinks of your taste in TV.’

‘Do you have to go?’

He was echoing her own thoughts.

‘I’d better,’ she said reluctantly. ‘We’re having this party together – a sort of joint birthday thing.’ She avoided saying which one. ‘Charlotte is doing most of the organising and she’s bringing us all up to date with the menu choices and stuff. They already think I’m being a prima donna because I said it was all a bit pastry heavy, and they arranged it tonight especially so I’d be back – the others really wanted last night so if I cancel now–’

She swirled the ice in the bottom of her glass. ‘Fay gets fed up with me at the best of times, and even Roz who likes me the most – we went to school together – she won’t be impressed …’

She stopped at the look on Nate’s face, his expression of incomprehension mixed with pity, making her wish she’d said nothing. ‘Sorry I’m making them sound–’

‘Not all that kind,’ he finished for her. ‘Why do you hang out with them if they make you feel bad?’

‘They don’t really, I’m just tired and–’ She stopped. ‘I’m seeing things bleakly.’ She drained the last of her gin. ‘We have some fun times. They’re my best friends in actual fact. I like them and I need them.’ Sherie spoke firmly and then gave him a rueful smile. ‘And they’re all I’ve got.’

In the beginning she’d only had Roz. When she’d finally bowed to parental pressure and moved back here, her old school friend was the only one left she knew. Roz had met Charlotte a couple of years before when Becky and Amy had joined the same dance school and she had asked if she could bring Sherie to one of Charlotte’s parties.

Sherie remembered Charlotte’s big, noisy, crowded kitchen, the way Charlotte had thrown an arm around her – pressed a glass of champagne into her hand, introduced her loudly all around the room. ‘The more the merrier, here, Love,’ she’d said, adding ‘literally’ and going off into peals of laughter, and Sherie had been so touched and grateful she’d nearly cried.

‘So you’re glad now, aren’t you?’ Her mother, settled on Sherie’s sofa the following day in an annoying flowered frock and a droopy cardigan and clearly limbering up for the usual address, never passed up an opportunity to say ‘I told you so’. ‘If you hadn’t come back here, you wouldn’t have these new friends of yours and you wouldn’t have him–’ she pointed a finger at Marquis who was sprawled across Sherie’s lap. ‘You couldn’t have kept a cat in that poky flat.’

Sherie sighed. The poky flat had been a million-pound studio overlooking the Thames but there was no point debating it. Here, yes, she had big rooms, and high ceilings, and access to a beautiful garden and her beloved Marquis. He made it all worthwhile.

‘Mind you, I suppose you might have met someone up there.’ Her mother didn’t waste a chance to have a dig either. ‘But it’s not too late,’ she went on brightly. ‘Just because you’re too old to have children doesn’t mean you can’t find someone who’s on his second time around.’

‘Yes, thank you!’ Sherie remembered to try to slow her breath, to draw in oxygen in a way that inflated her belly not her anxious chest, to let it out unhurriedly through her nostrils, to repeat the mantra she’d been repeating since her mother arrived. She’ll be gone tomorrow. Tomorrow she will be gone …

‘And it’s so important you’re here to support Alison, especially with this move going on – she says you’re a very good auntie …’ Her mother’s tone had an air of faint surprise. ‘Strange how life goes, isn’t it? You were always the pretty one but Alison had the boys after her. And Luke couldn’t wait to marry her and start a family, could he? She was pregnant before they’d even got back from honeymoon.’

She was pregnant before they went, you silly cow. For a horrible moment Sherie thought she’d said it out loud. Her mother was still talking.

‘I know these young girls don’t bother getting married any more, but I still say it’s better for the children …’

Sherie recognised her father’s wisdom being repeated. ‘How IS Dad?’ she asked with a deliberate edge to her voice. ‘Still ruling the roost?’

‘He’s been very busy in the garden.’

‘If you moved here too, he could see more of his grandchildren.’

‘He doesn’t want the upheaval.’

No, it was OK for Sherie to be pushed, nagged and bludgeoned to move back to the town of her childhood – to be nearer to her sister when the youngest of her three nephews was diagnosed with slightly-impaired hearing, dyslexia and ADHD, but her father had managed to avoid following suit.

They were still in the cottage in Wye to which her father had wanted to retire for the walking opportunities, and from which he seldom travelled except to drive her mother to Thanet every third week and pick her up twenty-four hours later. One month she’d stay the night with Sherie, the following time the pleasure would fall to Alison. Her father would come in for a brief cup of tea when he collected her mother the following afternoon. If it had been Alison’s turn to participate in this joy he would have invited himself for Sunday lunch first.

‘What about what you want?’ Sherie enquired. ‘Wouldn’t you like to be back here where you could pop round to see Alison and the kids whenever you wanted? Do some babysitting? She could do with that. Why don’t you tell him?’

‘Your father doesn’t like–’

‘Everything is about what he doesn’t like.’

Her mother looked irritated. ‘Don’t start that again.’

Sherie couldn’t help it. ‘You eat what he wants to eat, watch what he wants to watch, you don’t drive because he wouldn’t let you, he decides how you spend the money–’

‘It’s called being married – you wouldn’t know about that.’

Sherie looked back at her mother and held her gaze. ‘It’s called coercive control – there was a very interesting programme on it the other day. You should listen to Woman’s Hour, Mum. You’d like it.’

‘You always have to try to outdo me, don’t you?’ Her mother had gone pink. ‘Show me how clever and educated you are with your history of art degree and your long words.’

Sherie was immediately, as always, washed over by rage and shame. This was also her father speaking – he had long regarded his eldest daughter as ‘above herself’ and a subversive influence. Her plainer, dumpier younger sister with her children and dutiful attentiveness to husband and offspring was a safer bet and he made no secret of who he preferred.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sherie said more softly. ‘But you really would like Woman’s Hour. They had Sheila Hancock on the other day.’

‘Your father doesn’t like the radio.’

Sherie kept her voice even. ‘Well have it on when he’s in another room. You said he spends all morning reading the paper and doing the crossword. Why don’t you listen in the kitchen? You’ve got that Roberts radio I bought you.’

Her mother’s mouth made that little twist it always did if anyone confronted her. ‘Why are you always trying to change me?’

‘I’m trying to help you have a happier life.’

‘Well try helping yourself – you’re the one who’s on her own.’

Her mother didn’t mean it unkindly, Sherie told herself as she stirred the ragù sauce she’d made specifically because her father did not approve of pasta. Evelyn genuinely thought she was the one better off because she was married and ‘secure’ – even if she was constricted in almost everything she did.

Sherie thought of the scorn with which Fay would view her mother. Sherie sometimes wished she could be like Fay – so sorted in her singleness; revelling in her one-night stands. Fay implied that all one needed to be content was sex from time to time and she didn’t seem to have any problem in getting it.

It wasn’t sex for Sherie – although that would no doubt be nice. She wanted to fall asleep at night in the curve of another’s body, to feel an arm tighten around her waist at dawn.

She wanted to feel the sort of love and devotion for a man she had only managed to sustain with Marquis. Though that wasn’t strictly true – she shuddered at the memory of the times when she had felt that devotion and it had been misplaced.

‘Too intense,’ Rick had admitted eventually, when he’d started to make excuses not to see her.

‘Didn’t know we were married,’ had been Phil’s response when she’d discovered another woman’s lingerie at the foot of his bed and dissolved into tears.

Scott, of whom she had once held such high hopes, had always been kind, even when he told her sadly, he couldn’t offer ‘that level of commitment’.

It had still broken her.

She didn’t want to think about all the men from her various dating sites who hadn’t even pretended to want anything more than sex. What was it about her? Was she too dull for meaningful conversation or a theatre trip? Too needy for someone to love her back? She’d tried being cool and aloof. They left even faster then …

After dinner, she put on a family drama because she knew her mother would like it, aware of the vague thump of Nate’s music upstairs, suddenly wishing she was in the pub with him instead. Nate would be easy to talk to – she wouldn’t have to choose her words, hopping across the subjects as if watching out for mines.

Her mother nodded as the credits went up.

‘That’s the trouble today. Everybody expects too much.’

Sherie kept her voice level and kind. ‘You didn’t, did you?’

Her mother gave that little sniff that always sent Sherie’s nerves jangling. ‘No, well, you didn’t then. You accepted your lot in those days.’

Sherie had found before that if she made her mother a large enough gin, the truth would seep out.

‘Do you ever wish it had been different?’ she asked. ‘That you’d pursued your career – been a legal secretary like you wanted to, instead of having us and staying at home? Or gone back to it later, when we were at school?’

He mother didn’t look at her. ‘No point wishing. We didn’t want latchkey children. We wanted to give you and Alison the best possible start.’ Her voice had taken on that slight drone as if reciting. ‘But I did have a brain,’ she said suddenly, in a different tone.

Sherie leant forward, almost dislodging Marquis who gave a small chirp of indignation. ‘Of course you did – you do. You’re a very intelligent woman. And it’s not too late, Mum. You’re only seventy-five – it’s nothing these days – you could do an open university degree–’

‘Poorh!’ Her mother’s lips vibrated with disdain.

‘Or take up painting, or join a writing class – you like keeping your diary. You could expand it – write a memoir.’

Even as she suggested it, Sherie wondered what would go in into such a tome. An endless account of serving cups of tea and listening silently to a catalogue of bigotry and Brexit bile?

For a tiny moment, her mother looked sad. Then she sniffed again. ‘I’m fine as I am, thank you very much.’

She looked across at her daughter. ‘I know you’re unhappy because Alison has the children and you haven’t, but it was your own choice. You wanted the big job.’ There was a note of triumph in her voice as she took back the upper hand and delivered the customary coup de grace. ‘And so you missed your chance.’

Chapter 6

‘It was too good to miss.’

Roz, sick to her stomach as she let herself into the huge seafront villa on the cliffs at North Foreland – the most expensive stretch of coastline in the area – remembered the first time her colleague had explained where she got her apparently endless money from.

Melody, tall, dark and smiling had looked Roz directly in the eyes when she’d finally plucked up the courage to ask. They did a similar job at Turner Contemporary, the iconic gallery in Margate, and Roz was pretty sure, knowing her own salary, that she couldn’t be funding her lifestyle from there.

Sure, Melody had a five-year-old who spent half the week with her dad and not a cash-draining teenager who was there full-time, and she’d been at the gallery longer so worked four days, whereas Roz rarely did more than three. But even so, working it out pro rata, Roz still couldn’t see how Melody did it.

She’d noticed the clothes and the shoes and the handbags straightway and assumed her workmate had an inheritance stashed away or a generous boyfriend, but as the months went on, it appeared neither was likely.

Melody’s parents lived in a council flat, she told Roz cheerily, and her last boyfriend was a waster she’d dumped when she caught him going through her purse.

‘You’ll be all right one day then,’ she’d said, when Roz – loosened up by the leftover wine she’d had, clearing up after a preview – had confided that she had a difficult relationship with her well-off parents and had always tried desperately hard to avoid asking them for anything – even when Amy was a baby.

‘There’s nobody to leave me anything,’ said Melody. ‘What relatives I’ve got left have got bugger all!’

So when she came in, proudly dangling the keys to her new car, and was heard announcing the booking she’d just made for ten days in Lanzarote, Roz couldn’t contain her curiosity – or desperation – any longer. Melody had to be in debt – she must have a fistful of credit cards maxed out. But as Roz knew to her cost, this could only last so long. She told herself it was concern that drove her to check out the younger woman’s finances.

‘Melody,’ she began cautiously, ‘I know it’s none of my business …’

Melody had listened in silence, given Roz a long appraising look, during which Roz had felt herself squirm, and had then broken into a wide grin. ‘I’ll tell you after work,’ she’d said. ‘Can’t discuss it here.’

They’d gone their separate ways for the rest of the day – Melody to help set up the Foyle Room for a corporate event and Roz to sit on a chair in the South Gallery upstairs, to make sure nobody was taking snaps of My Dead Dog – a gigantic plaster cast of a flattened Alsatian – or pinching the artistically scattered ‘ashes’ of said deceased hound that were mingled with the array of withered flowers, which one particular visitor – probably off his meds again – had been attempting to do on a daily basis.

By the time the two women were sitting in the Lighthouse Bar at the end of Margate’s Harbour Arm, with large glasses of rosé, Roz was in a lather of curiosity and fear. She’d decided it had to be some sort of fraud – shoplifting wouldn’t fund a new car – not unless she was stealing by the sackful and had a very good client base on eBay – and the only prostitute Roz had met in Margate was a sad, downtrodden woman who was barely paying the rent.

‘It’s totally the easiest, best way I’ve ever found of making money,’ said Melody, clearly enjoying keeping Roz in suspense a little longer. ‘I get to dress up, drink champagne, do a bit of play-acting – you know I like my am dram like you do – and I work from home, hours to suit me. I’m providing a service and I’m coining it in.’

‘You’re doing escort work?’ Roz could hear the disapproving note in her voice, despite her best efforts to sound neutral.

‘Nope!’ Melody grinned. ‘It involves men for sure – but I’m not sleeping with them.’

Roz waited.

‘I thrash ’em!’ Melody giggled joyously. ‘Oh, Roz your face. I’m a domme!’

Roz gawped.

‘You know, high black leather boots, fishnets, whip … Or sometimes tweed suit and sensible brogues if they’re having a strict teacher fantasy. I’ve got a plimsoll I use for a couple of clients and a proper old-fashioned cane if they want six of the best. Love, I only started nine months ago and they are queuing up, I tell you. One-hundred and fifty pounds an hour, two-hundred and fifty pounds for two. I’ve got more work on than I can handle–’

‘And you don’t have to–’

‘Absolutely not!’ Melody took a mouthful of wine. ‘No touching of any kind. I am very strict when I get going – they wouldn’t dare. And I make it clear in the email I send first. Everything is on my terms and quite honestly I’m having the time of my fucking life – without the fucking.’ Melody laughed. ‘I can help you get started if you fancy it … it’s dead easy.’

Roz’s heart was pounding in shock and excitement. As one half of her brain was reeling at the image of Melody strutting about with a whip in her hand, the other was calculating the income.

Eight hours would bring her in a thousand pounds. Even if she just did that once a month it would make all the difference in the world … But imagine if she did sixteen hours. There would be money for school trips galore, and she could start to pay off her credit cards …

‘I don’t think I could …’ she said, already wondering how she might be able to. ‘I mean where–’

Melody had it all sorted. ‘Well first, we’d get you an ad up on bendover.com and a Twitter account and then–’

‘I mean where would I do it? Could I go to them?’

Melody shook her head. ‘Not usually. I do it when Emily’s at her dad’s. One of my mates borrows her friend’s house when the friend is working nights. She’s a nurse,’ she added helpfully. ‘You don’t need much – just a room and a chair really. Do it on your day off when Amy’s at school.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Roz’s stomach was fluttering nervously. ‘I think I’d be too terrified.’

‘Only at first,’ said Melody. ‘The first time I did it, I was shaking all over. I hit the vodka and by the time he arrived, I’d got so drunk I could barely walk. But he was such a sweetie. Eighty if he was a day and just over heart surgery. Said a damn good thrashing was the only thing that cheered him up.’ She looked wistful. ‘I couldn’t bring myself to do it hard – thank god it was only a slippering – but he was very complimentary. Brought his own cane next time and told me what to say while he stood in the corner. That's the good thing about domestic and school discipline,’ Melody rattled on. ‘All you need is a cane, slipper, hair brush and belt – costs nothing. My friend Julie spent fifteen grand kitting out her dungeon with all the leather harnesses, cages and queening stools! Mind you, she’s earned it back threefold …’

Roz sat in stunned silence, with no idea what the latter list of equipment was or what you’d do with it.

‘But how did you know about all this?’ she eventually asked faintly.

‘I’m a bottom in my private life,’ said Melody, matter-of-factly, ‘so it makes me a good top – I understand what they want. But I don’t take it for granted,’ she went on, ‘I take it seriously. I ask all the right questions beforehand so I can give them the time of their lives.’

Roz tried to visualise herself in thigh-high black boots, hitting someone’s nether regions, and failed.

Melody sounded almost evangelical. ‘The gratitude really makes it worthwhile. And you get given lots of stuff too – flowers, booze, jewellery, lingerie. Know that Anya Hindmarch bag you liked? That was from a punter who just wanted me to tie him up and then poke him with a stick while he licked my feet.’

‘Really?’

‘And then asked me to pee on him.’

‘Oh my God!’ Roz’s hand had flown to her mouth. ‘I just couldn’t–’

‘But that’s the thing,’ Melody said calmly. ‘You don’t have to do anything you’re not happy with – that’s why you have the conversation in advance. If you don’t like the sound of it, you just politely decline. You can always hand ’em on to me, just in case it’s something I don’t mind.’ Melody chuckled. ‘I’ve got a bit more broadminded since I started … and the cash started rolling in.’

Roz’s brain was still whirring like a fruit machine. Melody was now talking about her ‘profile’ and discussing ‘specialities’. ‘Doesn’t take long,’ she was saying. ‘Come round to me one evening and we’ll set you all up. Think up a name and I’ll take a photo.’

Roz frowned. ‘But suppose someone who knew me saw my picture? There’s Amy to think about …’

‘You don’t have to show your face. I’ve just got a photo of my legs in high boots and stockings, with a whip trailing down beside me. My friend Nina has her hair down over her face – you can just see her lips. Some of the girls are shot from behind – wearing a basque or something. Here – look.’

Melody dug in her handbag for her iPhone and began tapping at the screen. ‘Some of them don’t care at all. See this Sharon? That’s her real name – she works in the Co-op.’

‘Gosh.’ Roz peered at the redhead in the low cut top staring into the camera with a stern expression. ‘Suppose her kids’ teachers saw it?’

‘Well they’re hardly likely to bring it up in assembly, are they?’ Melody grinned. ‘You’ll get loads of interest as soon as you register – the chaps are always all over someone new. Email with them first – make sure they’re not nutters or after anything too disgusting – and they’ll tell you what they want. You need to use the right words. One of my regulars likes me to say ‘smack bottom’ not ‘spanking’ and I’ve got another one who wants me to hit him with one of the shoes he’s wearing. You’ll soon get the hang of it.’

Melody drained the rest of her wine in her glass and gestured towards Roz’s glass. ‘Take the money before you get started and remember they’ve probably got more to lose than you have if anyone else found out, so don’t worry about that …’ She stood up and began to move towards the bar.

‘We can do a two-hander one night if you want,’ she said casually over her shoulder. ‘I’ve got one regular who’d love two of us going at him. Give you a taster of what it’s all about …’

As Roz walked tentatively across the spacious panelled hall of the house Charlotte had entrusted her with, and pushed open the door to the vast sitting room with its large inglenook style fireplace and sumptuous sofas, her heart pounded at the memory of that first evening.

Melody had told her to dress as an ‘authoritarian’ – a school mistress perhaps, she’d added helpfully, or some sort of forbidding character. ‘If you haven’t got tweeds,’ she’d instructed, (tweeds?), ‘then think Ann Robinson on The Weakest Link.’

Roz had looked hopelessly at her wardrobe of sweatshirts and jeans before putting on one of the simple straight black skirts she wore for work and teaming it with a high-necked blouse and some pearls her mother had given her. She still looked rather timid and mousey.

But Melody had nodded, substituting Roz’s low heels for a pair of her own perilous ones as soon as Roz arrived, and handing Roz a dark lipstick to apply. ‘You’ll do!’ she said, grinning at Roz while Roz looked wildly around her wondering which door on the landing led to the bathroom in case she actually had to throw up.

‘I’ll do the talking,’ said Melody as they went back downstairs. ‘You just follow me.’

Roz had been unable to make more than a squeak in reply before Melody, dressed in a severe black suit with her hair in a bun, opened the front door and ushered in a weedy-looking bloke called Clive, who looked as terror-struck as Roz felt.

Clive had sat in the middle of the sofa while Melody, towering above him, had kept up a ten-minute tirade about the Clive’s poor performance at work and then ordered him to drop his trousers.

Roz instinctively recoiled and looked away but Melody, handing her a leather slipper and giving her a small encouraging shove, stepped smartly forward to where Clive was bent over the arm of the sofa and brought what looked like a riding crop with a wide leather end down on his lower regions with an alarmingly loud crack.

Roz clapped a hand to her mouth as a small, shocked squeal escaped before she could stop it and Clive yelped in pain. Thwack! Melody brought the crop down hard again and Roz gasped once more. ‘Miss Sterling is very disappointed in you, too!’ said Melody, looking disapprovingly at Roz, who shook her head faintly. She looked queasily at Clive’s quivering buttocks encased in a pair of green underpants decorated, somewhat incongruously, with a pattern of holly and reindeers. ‘I’m not sure …’ she began, but Melody was issuing further instructions.

‘Upstairs!’ she roared. ‘Now we’re going to do it properly!’

Roz felt a small bubble of hysteria rise in her throat as Clive scuttled up the stairs after Melody, holding up his trousers.

‘Bare bottom!’ Melody yelled as Clive draped himself over the foot of the bed and Roz shot backwards onto the landing in alarm.

‘I really can’t …’ she spluttered, as Melody began to apply a matching leather slipper to one side of Clive’s behind, beckoning to Roz to do the same. Roz took a deep breath, trying not faint with embarrassment, before stepping forward, and giving the unappealing white flesh a timid tap with the footwear in her hand.

‘Harder,’ hissed Melody, bringing down her arm with spectacular force. ‘Please stop!’ howled Clive.

Roz immediately dropped her slipper, nearly falling off Melody’s heels, but Melody, not missing a beat, retrieved it and stuffed it back into Roz’s hand. ‘Not said the safe word,’ she mouthed, giving Clive another magnificent wallop. ‘Any more fuss,’ she said to him sternly, ‘and it will hurt even more …’

She nodded to Roz. ‘Go!’

Roz raised her arm and brought it down as firmly as she could. Clive whimpered. ‘Six more!’ said Melody, as Roz raised her arm again and they rained down blows in unison while Clive squirmed. Then it was over and Clive was dressed and downstairs and pushing notes into Melody’s hand while thanking her profusely.

Roz sat weakly on a chair in Melody’s kitchen as her friend counted out eighty pounds and handed it over. Roz looked at the four twenty-pound notes in her hand. The whole encounter had lasted barely half an hour. But she still felt light-headed.

She’d decided then that the only way she could do it again was to make an absolute rule about no exposed flesh, and to treat it like a role in a play.

Hadn’t she received rave reviews for her depiction of a wounded wife in Where Does He Go at Night? at the Sarah Thorne Theatre, when she’d gone for a part with the Hilderstone Players?

That nice lady afterwards – Sue someone – had suggested she auditioned for Mrs Gargery for the annual Dickens Play as a result. And she was a dominating sort.

Channel your inner Mrs Joe, she breathed to herself now, trying to still the hammering in her chest as she moved around the elegant rooms.

She’d had a string of part-time jobs before the position at the gallery had come up, always acutely aware that she had to fill the shoes of two parents for Amy and wanting to be there for her. She had taken the decision – perhaps wrongly, she thought ruefully – to live hand to mouth so that she could pick her daughter up from school. She’d worked in shops and pubs, as a dinner lady and a hotel chambermaid, so that the hours would fit, claimed what meagre benefits she could, just about scraping along and hanging onto the thought of finding something with a proper salary when Amy was older. Not realising how very difficult that would be, when she’d been out of the marketplace for so long.

When Amy was small she didn’t really notice how poor they were – or show any concern about her lack of a father – but she sure did now.

‘Perhaps if you’d bothered to stay in touch …’ she’d said nastily, as Roz tried to explain the limitations of just one income against a rising tide of bills and why high-speed internet could not be a priority.

Roz sighed. Didn’t Amy think her mother longed to stop the constant juggling, the endless calculations, the daily decisions over how much to allow for food so that the hot water could still go on. Didn’t she think Roz wanted to be able to give her nice things? ‘Ask Granny then!’ Amy would snarl. And so it would go on.

That was why she was doing this, she reminded herself, as she looked around for a final time, and waited – heart still banging – for the doorbell to ring.

She’d dusted, changed the flowers, rubbed a little essential oil along the tops of the radiators, so the place would smell lovely when the heating came on for its hour twice a day, and opened the windows wide in the downstairs utility room which had a tendency to damp. She’d ticked off everything on Charlotte’s list before stripping off her jeans and changing into the high heels and short, yet demure dress that she thought would fulfil ‘Colin’s’ desire for someone ‘sexy yet prim’ to beat the living daylights out of him.

She’d taken Melody’s advice and entered into a detailed correspondence with the three men who’d been in touch since her legs, neatly crossed in a pair of high heels, appeared on the website.

She’d withdrawn from ‘Mark’ quite quickly when he’d expressed a polite desire for her to smear him in peanut butter (if she didn’t mind) and then spread it on toast and eat it, and was still waiting for ‘Jimmy’ to reply with his exact requirements. So far it just seemed to involve him standing in the corner while she threatened him.

But Colin had seemed unfussy apart from wanting to have a clear view of her legs, and as long as it ‘really hurt.’ Roz looked at the cane Melody had given her and the leather slipper. Oh Christ, could she really do this?

She’d been pacing the hall for ten minutes, braced for it, but she still jumped wildly when the doorbell rang. Her palms were sweating so badly she was likely to drop the bloody stick before she could use it.

For a moment she thought about hiding in the coat cupboard till he went away, or telling him it had all been a mistake. Or even denying all knowledge and pretending he’d been the victim of a terrible hoax.

Then she thought of Amy’s face when she told her she could go on the trip to Paris after all.

Roz took a deep breath and opened the door …

Chapter 7

I left it so long because I didn’t believe it. Nothing fitted with anything I’d ever read or heard. Breast lumps – I thought – were small and hard and you discovered them in the shower. Like a pea – that’s what everyone always says. This wasn’t even in my breast really – it was above it where there’s a muscle anyway. It wasn’t even a proper lump, just a sort of … thickening … It felt like something that could have happened because I’d pulled something. Or lifted too much.

Or knocked it.

I’ve been waiting for it to go away.

But it hasn’t.

It’s got bigger. And I can no longer pretend. I’ve Googled of course. And I thought at first it was probably a cyst. Easily drained and removed. Some go away all on their own. But not mine.

But I’ve felt stressed and stress can lead to all sorts of things. It could be some sort of inflammation caused by too much cortisol.

Or a fibroadenoma. ‘A very common benign breast condition’ the website says. Describing a lump that is rubbery and moves when you touch it. I think mine moves. I’m not sure. I’ve prodded it so much it’s sore. Unless it was going to hurt anyway – in which case it can’t be cancer, can it? Cancerous lumps are usually painless – it says that on several pages.

Apart from the forum where the terminal women were talking. But everyone knows you don’t go to chat rooms with good news …

If this happened to any of the others, they’d be decisive, and go straight to the doctor and God knows they’d expect me to as well.

I don’t know what’s stopping me. It is a lump now for certain. So it’s not as if I’m making a fuss about nothing. I will phone tomorrow. I really will.

I’m just so, so scared …

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