‘Right, let me text her so she doesn’t have to worry about you and I suggest you all go to bed. Phoebe, can you make up a mattress on the floor of your room?’ Although I was tempted to throw caution to the wind and let Georgia share a bed with Victor. What that girl needed was comfort from someone who loved her. I wasn’t sure anything in the world brought peace like someone who thought you were wonderful cuddling you to sleep. But already full bucket of shit and all that. I dismissed the thought immediately when my slug-slow brain came round to the question of consent. It was a jolt to realise that Victor needed my protection as much as Georgia, especially at the moment. It frightened me to think someone I’d considered such a close friend could turn so vicious.
Tempting as it was to leave Faye stewing in her own toxic juice, beside herself with worry about where her daughter was, I didn’t want to stoop to her level. I tapped out a text.
Georgia’s here. Gone to bed in Phoebe’s room. She’s okay. Best to let her stay till morning to give everyone a chance to calm down.
I pressed send. ‘That’s for you, Dad. Not her,’ I said to myself. The reply came through immediately.
Thank you for letting me know.
Stupid to feel an involuntary stab of sadness at the lack of kissing emojis. I’d lost my two best friends in one year. I’d be standing on the street with a placard, ‘Friends needed’, soon.
I took a bottle of wine out of the fridge. Ginny had always teased me about my rule of never drinking alone. In fact, she’d teased me about loads of things, but not in a way that made me feel stupid. Unlike now, when I felt like the thickest person on the planet. She’d told me over and over again how she was sure I’d help Victor through his grief, that our home would be the best place for him. Not because of my brilliance though. Because his dad was there.
A dad who I needed to inform pretty snap-snap that the secret had climbed out of its hole and would probably be common knowledge in the village by tomorrow. I sat in the dark, rehearsing how I was going to start the conversation. In the end, I gave up trying to find anything approaching the perfect words. I’d just have to be honest and hope I’d have a marriage left at the end of it.
My whole body was rigid as the phone rang out. I’d always been suspicious that these training workshops he talked about were an excuse for a big booze-up till the early hours, but there was a gratifying fumble and a sleepy ‘Jo? Are you all right?’ on the other end.
‘Sorry. I had to call. It’s all got out of hand.’
I filled him in, long past presenting myself in a good light. I imagined him propping two pillows behind him, sipping the water I knew would be by his bed.
‘You did what? Why would you do that?’
I stammered, trying to remember why I had shouted out to Faye that Victor was Phoebe’s brother. ‘I think it was so much on my mind that it just came out. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done it.’
‘Didn’t you think about what effect it might have on Victor, on Phoebe, even?’
And like a spark finding an elusive fuse, I lost it in a torrent of abuse that leaves not only the recipient but also the deliverer battered and bruised. The sort of words that might not end a marriage but would certainly put a severe dent in its carapace. ‘I love that you take the moral high ground when if it wasn’t for you, dithering between two best friends, trying them both out like someone at a buffet, none – I repeat none – of this, would have happened.’
Patrick tried to defend himself by pointing out that it was precisely because he’d been with Ginny that he’d realised that his heart lay with me and he’d come straight home.
There was nothing he could have said, nothing that would have appeased me. I didn’t want to entertain the possibility that it was all just a convergence of circumstance, that everyone played their part. I wanted someone to blame, to rage at.
And like that evening when I’d blurted out the truth to Faye,