to press my feet hard into the floor so I don’t fall over. My stomach feels like it’s got runny poos.
‘I’m going away for a while, Sunny.’ She watches me but she doesn’t move. ‘It’s for the best.’ She just watches, as the big white clouds eat the sky behind her and again in the mirror where that other mum is watching me, too.
Chapter 3
TUESDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2012
Wolf was performing his habitual morning tap-dance routine around the dog bowl when Sean gave a perfunctory knock and pushed the door open. From the way Wolf behaved you’d think my ex-husband was the love of his life, returning from the battlefield years after being declared missing in action. Maybe it was like that for Wolf. For all I knew he was still waiting for Sean to come home. I’m not projecting. Sean was wearing a charcoal suit which looked really good on him.
‘How’s the baby?’ I asked, reminding myself.
‘Good. Good,’ he repeated, squinting at me as if my question was other than innocent. As if. ‘Not so much a baby any more though.’ He reached for the little coffee pot that used to be his.
I took it off him. ‘You could knock, you know.’
‘I did,’ he said.
This little exchange pretty much sums up our relationship now: both right, both saying the complete opposite. I started the coffee-making routine while he hunkered down and ruffled Wolf’s neck fur. It wasn’t so much the suit that looked good, but him in it. He’d lost a bit of weight around the midriff and muscled up in the thighs and biceps. I thought men were supposed to go to seed when they had babies. Oh no, that’s right: it’s us, the dumb sex, who do that. I shifted my focus back to the coffee-making but not before noticing his shoulders had muscled up, too.
‘How’s Robbie?’ he asked, as if sensing my appraisal.
He was always good at reading me. I didn’t want to discuss my lover with my ex, even if they had buddied up. Especially now they’d buddied up. I put his coffee on the table and took up a defensive position against the sink bench.
‘To what do I owe the pleasure of this early morning visit?’
He brushed dog hairs off that good suit and watched Wolf shovel biscuits into his mouth. It was Sean’s way of avoiding eye contact. I can still read him pretty well too.
‘I want to talk to you about selling the house.’ He looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. ‘With Patrick and all, it’s time Sylvie and I bought a bigger place. Together, that is. Her place is tiny and anyway, it’s time I put in my share.’
I bit the tongue that wanted to say he’d obviously put his share in already, which is why they’d gone from being a twosome to being a happy little family threesome. Instead I poured myself a coffee and kept silent. It wasn’t Sean’s fault he’d left me and taken up with a little pixie of a woman he worked with at Police HQ. Well, it was his fault. But on my grown-up days I accepted some of the responsibility. When my little sister Niki was murdered I’d become obsessed with finding the person responsible. It didn’t help that Sean was a cop; in fact, it made things worse. I was on at him all day, every day about it. There was no room in my life for anything else. Sean was great at first but weeks turned into months and I kept hounding him all day and closing him out all night. Eventually he gave up on me. Some months before that I’d pretty much given up on myself. We separated. It was my idea. By the time I was ready to find my way back to him it was too late. He’d gone and found someone who was the complete opposite of me. I’m a rangy uncouth tomboy with a mean mouth and a habitual frown. Sylvie the pixie is friendly, feminine, finessed and fucking my husband. Okay, ex-husband, but still. Obviously this wasn’t one of my grown-up days.
‘Sell the house. Right,’ I said. ‘I’ll get on to it. Anything else?’
‘Diane …’
I waited for him to say more. He didn’t. He just looked at his cup and let my name hang in the air between us. Oversensitive as always, Wolf slunk under the table and dropped his head on Sean’s regulation polished shoes. I refused to take