KATE: Friday afternoon,
five days after the split
Kate is called in to see Alice, the practice manager at the health centre where she works.
‘I am sorry,’ she says, even before Kate has sat down.
Alice is sitting behind her desk. She has faded, strawberry-blonde hair, streaked with grey, which she is wearing in a plait. And pink cheeks that always look as if she has just come inside from somewhere very cold. She takes off her black-framed glasses and tips her head to one side. Her brown eyes are full of concern.
‘It’s so unlike you, Kate,’ Alice says. ‘All these years you have worked here, and this is the first complaint.’
‘She was being so difficult,’ Kate says. ‘I’d offered her a three o’clock with Dr Davis, or a three-twenty with Dr Patel, but she kept insisting that only Dr Fox would do.’
‘But Mrs Hayes is always difficult. And you are usually so good with her. What is going on? How are things at home?’
Kate can feel herself blushing. ‘Fine. Well, not fine. But OK. Jack seems to have accepted that we are splitting up. It’s just …’
But she cannot think of how to finish the sentence. She cannot put into words the strange atmosphere in the house, the creeping sense she has of things not being right. It should be a relief, now that everything is out in the open, but instead they all seem so on edge.
Tom calls her while she is waiting to catch a bus home from work. He wants to meet her.
‘I can’t. I need to be home for the kids.’
‘Can’t your husband …?’
‘He’s working.’
‘Come on. It’s Friday. They are old enough to do their own thing.’
Kate hesitates. She thinks about spending another evening at home, arguing with Amy. Then she imagines how it would feel to have Tom’s arms around her.
‘You’ve twisted my arm,’ she tells him.
But all the time they are out together she feels something nagging at her like a mild toothache. Tom is funny and kind, but one time when she goes to the loo she almost walks past him when she comes back. She is so used to Jack, Tom seems like a stranger.
When he asks her to come back to his flat she says she has to get home. It is true, but it is not the entire truth. She has made excuses to her family in the past so she could stay out. She could do so again.
She hears the music from way down the street, blasting out through her living room window. When she bursts through the door she finds Amy and four friends from school, including a boy called Max, who she suspects is Amy’s new boyfriend. She doesn’t trust Max. He has hair that he sweeps to one side across his eyes, and he grins at her as if he is part of some big joke that she isn’t in on. The place is trashed with crisp packets and Coke cans all over the floor, and even two bottles of beer. And when she goes into the kitchen Kate is sure she can smell cigarettes.
‘Time to go,’ she tells them, snatching Amy’s phone from the speaker so that the music cuts out suddenly. The silence is brutal and two of Amy’s friends giggle nervously.
After the teenagers have left, Amy bursts into tears.
‘You just want to ruin my life,’ she says. ‘As if breaking up my family isn’t bad enough. Now you don’t want me to have friends either. I’m calling Dad.’
‘He’ll be driving,’ says Kate. ‘He won’t pick up.’
Amy runs up to her room and slams the door. When Kate goes up to bed, Amy is still in there, refusing to talk. When Kate walks past the door of the box room, she turns her head away so she can’t see all Jack’s things. But she feels guilty all the same.
In the doorway of her bedroom she stops. Something is wrong. She looks around the room, which still feels so strange without Jack’s shoes lined up neatly under the bed or a history book on the table on his side of the bed, with a bookmark keeping his place. Someone has been in here. She knows it.
Kate looks closely at the bed. She is always careful about making it in the mornings, tugging down the bottom corners of the duvet so it is completely smooth. Neatness has become a habit, a result of living with Jack all these years. But though the bed is made, with the duvet pulled up, it is creased, as though someone has been lying on it, and there is a dent in one of the pillows.
‘Amy, get in here!’ she yells.
‘Why?’
‘Just do it.’
Seconds later, Amy is standing in the doorway with her arms folded and a scowl on her face. She looks heartbreakingly young, and Kate is flooded with sadness and doubt.
‘Someone has been in my bed while I wasn’t here. I need you to be honest with me, Amy. Was it you and Max?’
Amy’s eyes grow wide.
‘What? No. Ew. What do you take me for?’
‘Well, who then?’
‘No one. We stayed downstairs all the time. All of us.’
For a moment Kate wavers. Amy’s outrage seems so real. Then she glances again at the dent in the pillow and her resolve hardens.
‘I don’t believe you. You’re grounded this weekend.’
‘You can’t do that! I haven’t done anything! It is so unfair.’
Amy’s voice is becoming ever more shrill.
‘And if you’re not careful, you will be grounded the weekend after that, too,’ adds Kate.
‘You are literally the worst. I hate you.’
After Amy has rushed back to her room and slammed the door once again, Kate lies in bed and thinks of all the ways she could have handled things better. She should have talked to Amy quietly and calmly. Made sure she knew she wasn’t in trouble. It was just such a shock, that’s all. Amy is a child still. To think that she might have … Well, Kate doesn’t want to think about it. That’s the thing.
As the hours tick by without her being able to sleep, Kate lies in the dark and listens to the house creak and sigh. She tries to make herself think about Tom and how he looks at her, so she can find again the happiness of a few days ago. But every time she tries to picture his face, she sees Jack’s instead. She sees his expression when he turned to her in Julie’s counselling room and asked if she was seeing someone else.
Amy isn’t the only one in the family telling lies.