She was worried that you’d react like this.’
‘Don’t you dare put this on me. Ginny lied to me. Patrick lied to me. And now you are trying to make out I don’t have a right to be well and truly pissed off that I’ve been tricked into looking after my husband’s son when it’s all Patrick can do to remember that his own bloody daughter could benefit from a bit of his attention now and again before she ends up in prison!’
Patrick ran over to me. ‘Jo, Jo! Don’t leave. Come on. I know you’re upset. I’m sorry.’
‘Save it. I don’t want to hear it. I’m too angry now. You keep the car and I’ll get the train home. The walk will do me good.’
He tried to take me in his arms, but I pushed him away.
‘Don’t. Just bloody don’t. If there’s any hope of us surviving this, you will stay out of my way tonight.’
I snatched up my coat and stormed out, waiting until I got into the lift to fold over and cry.
Chapter Eighteen
I walked up from the station, my head tucked inside my hood, praying that I wouldn’t meet anyone I knew. The rainy November evening was my saviour. No other wives were wandering the street, marvelling at how life could change forever on one seemingly innocuous Saturday. No, they were tucked up watching the latest Netflix series with their husbands who hadn’t fathered a child with their best friend.
I made my way along the pavement, past the church. There was something weirdly comforting about looking at all those graves, their stone crosses tilting to one side with the passage of the years. In the end, we all ended up dead, whatever our path through life. I considered walking among the headstones, searching for a woman who’d died at my age, forty-eight, with the sole purpose of consoling myself that, unlike her and unlike Ginny, I was still here. I wasn’t quite ready for silver linings yet though. I was firmly at the stage where red-hot molten fury was burning through my brain, scorching off the neural pathways that led to forgiveness and fast-tracking to the depositories for grudges, resentments and bitterness.
As I panted up the hill to our cottage, I could hear a boom-boom of a bass. I marched on, aware of the thudding getting closer, almost vibrating through the ground.
It took me a little while longer and a couple of teenagers staggering around the corner with cans of cider in their hands to realise that the music was coming from our cottage. All the lights were blazing, the windows were open and Stormzy was telling the whole village about someone being too big for their boots.
Thankfully nosy old Mrs Giles’s house was in darkness. I didn’t hesitate at the gate, didn’t ponder for a second what would be the best approach, what would allow Phoebe to save face in front of her friends. I simply walked up to the group of teenagers smoking and flicking their ash in my winter pansies by the front door and said, ‘Party’s over. Get out.’
One of them said, ‘A-ll ri-ght,’ as though I was being totally unreasonable and made a move to go in through the front door.
I grabbed him by the shoulder. ‘No, now,’ I said, pointing down the drive.
He wriggled free. ‘Just getting my jacket.’
‘Phoebe will bring it to school. Go on, get lost.’
After all the times I’d skulked about when Phoebe was FaceTiming her friends, trying not to be the uptight, frumpy mother inadvertently looming onto the screen, I suddenly found myself giddy with liberation. I was way beyond the boundary of hoot-giving about what they reported back to their parents. Mad woman forcing teenage boys out into the November evening in just a T-shirt? Bring it on.
I stomped around the side of the garage, tapping another lad on the shoulder, who took a couple of seconds to register that the girl whose bra he was jamming his face into was frantically trying to tell him that they had company. ‘Go on, out. And you, love, a word of advice. Not a good look getting your tits out in the winter drizzle for any old bod that asks to see them.’
They stumbled off down the path, mumbling. I had no idea whether they were cursing me or muttering apologies and I couldn’t care less either way.
I strode round to the front door, where news had started to spread that the ‘rents’ were home. A couple of