The Apartment - K. L. Slater Page 0,25

mean note to school.

But you know, we really mustn’t let it spoil our exciting news about moving to Adder House.’ I squeeze her hand and look down at her.

‘But why do they want to be mean to us?’ she asks, her voice flat. She doesn’t meet my eyes.

I’m trying to work out the very same thing for myself, but now isn’t the time to dwell on it and I don’t want to frighten her.

‘I don’t know,’ I say lightly. ‘Some people can get jealous when others have something exciting happening. They can tell fibs to cause trouble. And having a pretty confetti tree outside your bedroom window is certainly exciting . . . have you thought of a name for it yet?’

‘Petra wouldn’t talk to me after Miss Smith read out the note. She said Martha Fox is going to be her new best friend now.’ She looks up at me, her eyes shining with renewed hope. ‘But it’s not true I have to move schools, is it, Mummy? The jealous person was just telling fibs.’

I smile tightly and pat Skye’s hand, pointing out things from the window I hope might distract her.

The bus trundles on and passes the bottom of our old street. I can’t help myself; I glance across at the detached house on the corner.

It’s painful, even now after everything. Even though it’s all over.

I still remember the raw feeling inside when Lewis first left us to live in that house. It belongs to Janine. I spent so many hours imagining them both entwined in that upstairs bedroom. It used to torture me to the point that I couldn’t sleep.

Someone moving in the front bay window draws my gaze. At least I think that’s what I saw. I crane my neck, but it’s so hard to see anything from this angle because the light is reflecting off the glass, rendering it opaque.

I used to count Janine as a good friend. Not any more. Now, she’s forever identified in my mind as the woman who took my husband, the catalyst for every terrible thing that would ensue.

Whatever doubts I might have briefly entertained over whether moving to Adder House was the right thing for us, if I ever needed a sweetener or an extra push to leave the area, then escaping Janine Harworth and the view of her house is it.

My husband’s lover celebrated her fortieth birthday at the beginning of the year, making her seven years older than me. I’ve heard plenty of stories about men leaving their wife for someone younger, but not once have I heard of the other woman being older. Sounds silly, but at the time, it felt like an extra slap in the face. If it was possible for things to be any worse.

During the short time they were together, Janine seemed to take pleasure in constantly stirring things up between me and my husband, often over the smallest issues. Like when he insisted on bringing Skye back home on a Sunday at 8 p.m. instead of 7.30 p.m. as I’d asked. When he sent her home one day with a large bag of Haribo sour sweets, though he knew full well I went to great lengths to keep her away from confectionary like that.

I’d have been foolish to expect Janine to melt into oblivion when tragedy struck. Still, she managed to surprise me; came out fighting like a banshee rather than shrinking back even an inch in grief.

The focus of her belligerence was Lewis’s ‘estate’, as her lawyer grandly referred to the meagre assets my husband left behind.

It soon became apparent to Janine that the only real asset worth fighting for was Lewis’s small life-insurance policy, which she claimed he was in the process of legally changing to name her as beneficiary. He was also, apparently, in the process of starting divorce proceedings, which he’d never so much as mentioned to me.

After paying off some joint debt that passed to me when he died, I’d calculated that I had enough to last me about six months at our current level of outgoings. But the smaller Adder House rent meant I could now survive financially for longer before getting a job, giving me more time to spend with Skye while she settles in.

Janine had first confronted me in the street two weeks after Lewis’s death, and when I refused to talk to her, she shouted through the letterbox and only stopped when I threatened her with a court injunction. I didn’t want