MARCUS

He’d never seen Vanessa like this. Her sunny face had iced over. Not that he could blame her—she had every right to be furious with him.

‘I want the truth. Did you know that Charlotte would be here?’

Her tone reminded him of his mother in one of her rare moments of rebuke: ‘I’m disappointed in you, Marcus.’ He’d always hated disappointing Shirley, and it seemed he hated disappointing Vanessa too. He felt himself squirm.

‘I’m sorry, you’re right. It had occurred to me that she might be here, but I thought that with the stress of the case, it’d be unlikely.’

Of course, that wasn’t the whole truth, but he could hardly tell Vanessa that when Lotts announced her engagement he’d been consumed by a need to hurt her in any way possible. When she wouldn’t take his calls, all he could think of was turning up here and rubbing Vanessa in her face. But confessing that would hardly play to his advantage. Not that his pitiful plan had, either. But what had he really imagined would happen? ‘Cop this, Lotts. I’m sleeping with the woman who’s suing you and together we’re going to destroy your gilded life.’ And Lotts would … what? Fall sobbing at his feet? Send Kasch packing? Go mad with jealousy over Vanessa? Perhaps he was hoping for all those reactions—but what he received instead was contemptuous laughter, which was entirely predictable if he’d been bothering to use his brain. Back upstairs he still felt searing humiliation, but at least Vanessa was accepting his word.

‘Okay. I wish you’d told me she might be here, but I appreciate your honesty.’

Marcus pulled her into his arms, but she stepped free of him and frowned. ‘What did you mean when you told Ned that you knew why Charlotte stole my book?’

He suppressed a twitch of irritation.

‘I didn’t mean anything. I was just trying to mess with the guy’s head. Barrister games.’

She bit her lip and studied his face.

He held up two fingers. ‘Scout’s honour.’

Her features softened into a smile. ‘That’s all I wanted: the truth. Thank you.’

He felt a wave of relief, immediately followed by the sting of resentment. Who was Vanessa to absolve him of his sins? She wasn’t his mother. He felt like one of her kids, bloody Jackson and Lachie. Sure, they were nice enough kids, but they were so damned ubiquitous. Would it kill her to forget them occasionally and put him first? Apparently. He even took second place to the damned dog sometimes. He probably should find it funny, but he was still smarting about going to the theatre alone last week because the dog had swallowed a Mars bar.

‘So what?’ he’d made the mistake of saying. ‘Is it on a diet?’

‘Chocolate’s toxic to dogs!’ Vanessa had cried in a flap. ‘Daisy could die!’

So don’t leave a Mars bar lying around. And, of course, the dog hadn’t died, and Vanessa had missed out on a Pulitzer Prize-winning play. Whatever way you looked at it, her life was the full suburban nightmare.

His gaze fell on her faux leather handbag lying on the bed and his irascibility rose. He remembered how she’d held her knife like a pen at dinner tonight and then placed the curved edge facing outwards instead of inwards when she’d finished her meal. He’d had to restrain himself from reaching over and fixing it. He’d wondered if the waiters had noticed, and he’d found himself glad that Lotts was too far away from their table to see. Charlotte Lancaster, she of the perfectly aligned cutlery who’d been dining in exclusive restaurants her whole life. Charlotte, who’d gone out of her way to avoid spending one second alone with him tonight and had laughed when she learned about him and Vanessa. But, of course, she’d laughed. Vanessa’s lack of sophistication might be refreshing to him, but to self-obsessed social piranhas like Lotts it was grounds for disdain. As was he, it seemed. Her words reverberated around in his brain: ‘You can take the boy out of Kalgoorlie, but you can’t take Kalgoorlie out of the boy.’ Bitch.

It was as if she’d never rolled over and reached for him at night or walked into functions with her hand in his and a smile that said, ‘Eat your hearts out.’ She was trying to erase him with that limpet Ned Kasch, flashing that crassly oversized rock at so-called A-list events and on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TV. The woman’s need for validation was pathological, and the sycophantic public seemed happy to oblige. Meanwhile, he was watching kids’ soccer matches in the burbs and being sucked back into the working-class vortex that he’d fought so hard to escape. He felt a sudden clutch of panic followed by the bitter pill of relevance deprivation.

‘Marcus? Vanessa was looking up at him, her face creased with concern. ‘Are you okay?’

He wondered how many times Charlotte had asked him that question—he could probably count them on one hand. She never thought of anything beyond herself. It was like being married to a concept, not a flesh-and-blood person.

‘I’m fine. Are you okay?’

Vanessa nodded. ‘I am now that you’ve been honest.’

She smiled, and grace glowed out of her like light. Marcus felt his tension ease. She was so sweet and trusting, just the refuge he needed from the slings and arrows of post-marital life.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he said, and he meant it.

She smiled and raised her rosebud lips for his kiss. Ardour grew and soon he forgot everything else and lost himself in her goodness.