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THIS TIME DOROTHY TOOK a large swig of the brandy and felt the spirit slipping down her throat and warming her from within. Now she had told them the worst part, it was becoming easier to talk. The tension in her shoulders eased a little and she shifted her position on the cushion to get more comfortable. She had not realised how taut her muscles had become until she began to feel them relax.

‘Good tactics, Boss,’ Jack murmured. ‘You lulled the fucker.’ He stroked her hair tenderly then remembered Simone was in the room. When he glanced at her, she seemed neither shocked nor surprised by his actions. Her brow was furrowed and her eyes were riveted to her friend’s face.

‘I guess I did,’ Dorothy was saying. ‘By the time the course ended, I was pretty sure I had lulled him into believing I was staying for keeps. I even made a point of obsessing about a primary school for the twins, and kept asking him to go with me and put their names down for the best ones. After we had been to see four different schools in the area and met the principals, Declan’s attitude changed even further and he became positively mellow.’

‘Do you mean he quit being such a gee-bag?’ Jack stared at her.

‘Lord, no,’ Dorothy replied cheerily. ‘He shifted up a gear. He had himself totally convinced I was entrenched in the marriage and was staying put. He took my co-operation as a sign he could do whatever he wanted.’

‘Like what for instance?’ Jack probed.

‘He started dropping hints about moving Brenda into the house to act as a fulltime nanny to the twins.’

‘You are shitting me, Dottie!’ Simone exclaimed. ‘How did you react to the suggestion?’

‘I told him it was an excellent notion and said he should decorate the spare room and have it fitted out with a double bed and new wardrobes so Brenda would be totally comfortable.’

‘I’m a little confused,’ Simone glanced at Jack helplessly. ‘You knew she was his mistress, yet you had no problem with her living under your roof?’

Dorothy eyed her friend over the rim of her glass. ‘You don’t understand, Si,’ she said gravely. ‘Brenda adored Declan, and he seemed to reciprocate her affections to a degree. I think it was mainly obsession on his side. I think that maybe she was the kind of girl he would have liked to date, but somehow ended up with me by default. She was full of energy and had a wonderful sense of humour. She had a real zest for life which was incredibly attractive to everyone who met her. Whatever Declan’s motivation, Brenda was the main reason he left me alone for most of that year. I was grateful to her. I would have been more than happy for her to move in with us even though I knew it wasn’t likely to happen.’

‘Why not?’ from Jack.

‘Because I knew Brenda far better than Declan did,’ Dorothy sighed sadly. ‘He only saw what he wanted to see, but I knew she wasn’t the sort of girl to move into her lover’s house and play second fiddle to his wife like some sort of weird Mormon family. I prayed she wouldn’t dump him when he suggested it to her, but my prayers went unanswered.

‘On the run-up to Christmas that year he asked her to come and live with us, and the result was a huge fight between the pair of them. A few days later she finished with him. I knew the exact moment she had done it as well. I was standing at the kitchen sink and my stomach sort of dropped and sank into the floor. What a Charlie Foxtrot that was. He was furious about being dumped and I also believe a part of him genuinely missed her. Maybe she was the one person he was capable of loving. Who knows?’

Simone squirmed on her stool with discomfort but made herself speak. ‘Once Brenda was out of the picture, did Declan start acting like a psycho again?’

‘Not right away,’ Dorothy shook her head. ‘By the time she broke off the affair I was working a few hours every week and had managed to buy a car and pass my driving test. It cost every penny I had to do that, which meant I was in no position to take off at a moment’s notice. Declan kept a very close watch on the household finances, ergo I wasn’t able to sneak any more than a few pounds.

‘I wasn’t quite sure how to escape without funds, although I knew something bad was on the cards because he was irrational and hostile without Brenda to keep him steady. Christmas was just around the corner and I was so desperate to get away, I began to seriously consider the possibility of coming clean to my family once I was safely back in Ireland.’

‘Something tells me the evil one scuppered that plan,’ Jack looked bleak.

‘Declan decided we weren’t going home for Christmas that year. He told his family it was because the twins were getting older, and we wanted to spend a family Christmas in our own home. He made me tell my own parents the same thing, and I was too scared to defy him. I never got home that Christmas, and I began to wonder if I would ever get away from Highbury, period.

‘I was dreading the holiday season because I knew Declan would be hanging around the house more than usual. As the day drew closer he seemed quite calm, and I thought perhaps he had met another girl. I began to hope that maybe things wouldn’t be too bad and he might even make an effort to be civil for the sake of the twins. Then Christmas morning arrived and I knew I had fooled myself yet again. There was a huge box under the tree with Josh’s name on it.’

‘Please tell me it wasn’t a Vizsia puppy,’ Jack suddenly growled.

‘How did you know that?’ Dorothy stared at him. ‘I’ve never told a living soul this story. Except for Horace, of course. Did he say something?’

In response, Jack picked up her nearest hand and buried his face in the palm.

‘Gosh,’ Dorothy gawked at him. ‘Am I missing something?’

‘You had a flashback at Barns one day when you saw a picture of a Vizsia pup on Roy’s iPad,’ Jack raised his face from the hand and met her eye. ‘Was it Tetley?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I had a flashback?’

‘A full-blown one,’ he replied steadily. ‘I tried to get the truth out of you that day, but you fobbed me off. You lived a lie for so many years, you would have taken the truth to your grave if the bastard hadn’t put in an unexpected appearance again.’

‘I guess I would,’ Dorothy said wretchedly. ‘This is a worrying development.’

‘There’s no sense in stressing over something that might never happen again,’ Jack told her in his most reasonable voice. ‘They’re few and far between. The one you had earlier tonight was pretty minor in comparison.’

‘How can you be so certain?’ she asked in a small voice.

Jack tapped his own chest. ‘Do you really need to ask?’ he quirked an eyebrow at her. ‘I almost went into full cardiac arrest that day. The pain I felt when you were away in France wasn’t a patch on it. I’m pretty sure you don’t get them regularly.’

Now that Jack had broached the subject, Dorothy was sorely tempted to go totally off topic and open up a dialogue about the Space Ache.

Careful Dottie. An intense conversation about twin flames might not be what you need right now. What if it scares him off? Are you going to tell Simone all about it?

Jack saw the doubt flicker in her eyes and cursed his own stupidity. That’s right, dumbass. Scare her off with talk of the Space Ache just as you’re on the verge of getting the ball over the line.

‘What are you two talking about?’ Simone demanded. ‘What has France got to do with anything, and why would Jack be having a heart attack?’

‘I have a condition,’ he regarded the tall woman levelly. ‘Let’s not discuss it right now. I think the boss should tell us about Tetley. I guess the kid was only two and a half at this time. Strange how he still remembers the pooch.’

Grateful to have averted a dangerous conversation about their shared soul, Dorothy grasped at the opportunity to change the subject. With a sense of relief whose irony was lost upon her, she continued with her horror story.

‘Declan was conscious of leaving marks on Tetley. Physical abuse was never his intention when he brought the puppy home. What he really wanted to do was terrorise him, and show Josh how it was done. I think that’s why Josh remembers Tetley even though he was only little. He was hardly more than a baby himself, yet he knew something was terribly wrong. Of course, he didn’t understand what was happening.

‘It didn’t matter how kind I was to Tetley when Declan wasn’t around, as soon as he came through that front door, the poor little mite almost peed himself with fear. After three months of watching him being terrorised I was at my wits end, and decided to take him to a vet based miles away from Highbury.

‘I lied when I saw the man and said the dog had never been well adjusted since the day we first bought him, and I was concerned about him attacking the children. The vet was quite understanding, all things considered. He put Tetley out of his misery and charged me a fortune to do it. Then he advised me not to get any more pets until the children were at least seven. When Declan came home that night I told him what I had done.’

‘That went down well,’ Jack growled.

‘It was definitely a tactical error,’ Dorothy sighed. ‘In hindsight, it might have been better to sacrifice Tetley. If I had left well alone, he might have been the only animal to suffer.’

Dorothy explained how furious Declan had been at what he perceived as his wife’s power play, and decided to teach her not to cross him again by shifting things up a gear. The very next day he brought home a kitten called Cindy.

‘He used to burn her with cigarettes,’ Dorothy told Jack with a face full of sorrow. ‘He didn’t care about leaving marks, and I think it was his way of making sure I didn’t take her to a vet. He knew I wouldn’t run the risk of being reported to the police for animal cruelty. At least, I think that’s what was going through his mind. I’ll never really know if he had a plan, or if he just did whatever he liked with no thought to the consequences. The twins didn’t witness any of the torture, but they knew their kitten was always in pain, which totally confused them. They got really upset because they couldn’t play with Cindy and it almost drove me out of my mind. I had to do something.’

‘Drink more brandy,’ Jack ordered and handed her the glass. Dorothy obediently sipped at it and smiled at him wanly. ‘I’m grand,’ she said. ‘It all happened a long time ago. As you rightly pointed out, Commander, I smothered Cindy one evening when the twins were in bed and Declan was out of the house. It looked as if she had died of natural causes. It sounds hideous, although it was surprisingly easy after what I did to Fizzypop.

‘Declan was usually the first one up every morning and he was the one who found her. I pretended to be upset and said I would bury her in the garden before the twins saw her. Declan didn’t say much about it. He just went off to work and left me to it. She was small enough to fit in a child’s shoebox, so that afternoon when the twins were napping I took her down to the bottom of the garden and buried her in the rose bed. The previous owners had planted loads of flowers, which meant there were plenty of plants for me to choose from. I told the kids she had run away, and they believed me. I hoped that might be the end of it, and it was for three or four weeks. Then Declan brought home a puppy called Pancake and the whole thing started all over again.’

‘Lord a mercy,’ Jack mumbled. ‘I never met such a magnet for trouble.’