The Apartment - K. L. Slater Page 0,36

did I want Janine anywhere near the house again, and grudgingly, he agreed.

So when the door buzzer sounded early one Sunday evening just a few weeks after he’d moved in down the road with Janine, I was somewhat surprised to see Lewis’s broad shoulders and his face pressed up to the glass.

He’d taken Skye for the weekend and it was only four o’clock; they weren’t due home for another couple of hours. As I approached, he knocked impatiently and loudly announced he needed to come inside.

Still achingly raw every time I saw him, I opened the front door with a strained smile and wide arms to greet Skye. My smile soon faded when I saw Janine hovering just behind him on the doorstep.

Skye dashed past me into the house, giving me a super-quick hug on the way. ‘I’ve got to go and get something, Mummy,’ she said breathlessly, before disappearing up to her bedroom.

‘Sorry to spring a visit on you like this,’ Lewis began. At least he had the decency to look a little bashful while Janine glowered behind him, clearly unrepentant. ‘I wondered if . . . if we could just have a quick word?’

I took a breath, ready to square up to Lewis, to say that Janine wouldn’t be setting foot inside the house; but I felt mindful of my daughter despite the guidelines we’d agreed to.

I didn’t make a scene about Janine coming in. Instead, I took a few steps back into the hallway to give them both room to come inside. It was important to set an example, to be civil and tolerant.

Lewis looked around, as if he’d completely forgotten the fact that he’d recently lived there.

Janine, on the other hand, gave a cursory sweeping glance at the slightly shabby hallway together with a disparaging sniff.

Lewis’s eyes met mine and I instantly recognised the ‘silent pleading’ look he’d always favoured using when trying to urge me not to kick off in company. This unnerved me a little, made me wonder exactly what was coming.

But I didn’t ask. I simply folded my arms and waited.

Those nights in the weeks before he left, Lewis would be continually late home, and I’d spend hours watching the clock worrying. Then I’d start repeatedly calling him when he still hadn’t arrived home from work at nine o’clock at night, and his phone repeatedly went through to voicemail.

Like a fool, I’d feel sick with worry that he’d had an accident. He told me he spent a ludicrous number of hours driving around the country.

Little did I know he was just down the road, screwing my posh new best friend.

Janine closed the front door behind her and Lewis shifted his weight, one foot to the other. It all felt painfully drawn out, but I wasn’t in the mood for playing the perfect hostess.

‘Could we . . . just go through for a moment?’ Lewis nodded to the lounge door. ‘It won’t take long, but I want to explain everything to you properly, make sure you understand.’

Understand what, exactly?

A slow grinding started in my lower abdomen, but I didn’t let on I felt worried. ‘You’d better come through,’ I said in my best snooty voice, and I led them into the lounge.

21

You are delighted the child will be moving schools earlier than expected. It will be so much easier to monitor the reactions of the mother and child.

They’re trying very hard to be happy, anyone can see that. The woman has a toughness about her, a shell she’s clearly built around her in reaction to her environment.

She has also got an air of entitlement to her, as if she has claimed a better life and nothing can stop her self-proclaimed ‘fresh start’.

She likes to listen to music, to enjoy a drink on her own at night. She is more alone in the world than anyone you’ve ever met.

She could not be more perfect for what you have in mind, but everything will be ruined if you rush. Slowly does it.

You put on the gloves, open Beatrice’s old journal, and begin to read.

Leaving via the front entrance of the hospital, I pull my coat closer, glad of my hat because the fine day had gradually become cooler until now, at the end of the late shift, I am positively chilly.

I long to get home, where my sister, Dorothy, minds little Douglas until I finish my shift.

‘I’ll make us some cocoa,’ Dorothy says when I get home. ‘Douglas is sleeping.’

I slip off my coat and look