I return his smile and take the envelope from him, peering inside at the wad of cash there. ‘Very kind of you, Jack. Looks like a healthy amount of money.’ I stand up straight and look deep into his eyes. ‘Except of course, I’m not going anywhere. Unless you want me to march straight back to that school and show them the photos of your indiscretions? And after that, I will pay a visit to social services, although I think the school will probably have contacted them well before I do. Or I could just go straight to the local newspapers and tell them what you get up to in your spare time. You’re a local property developer, a man of some standing. They would snap my hand off. They love to drag local wealthy people through the dirt, see their soft underbelly exposed, let everyone know that they’re only human after all and not some sort of wondrous, God-like person.’

His gaze never wavers; I see a darkness in his eyes that is bottomless and vaguely threatening.

‘Or I could just cut to the chase and call Elizabeth, tell her about that receipt. Completely up to you…’

My words hang there, shards of ice between us until he purses his lips and spits the words at me.

‘From now on, you come around here and knock to get inside. I’ll be working from home for the foreseeable future so I’ll be here to let you in. Now if you wouldn’t mind handing over your key?’ He holds out his hand, his eyes never leaving mine.

I could easily refuse, but I’m prepared to go along with this new turn of events if it makes him feel powerful and restores some of his control. I can’t push things too far. That would be foolhardy. I’m enjoying this extra bit of cash. My wages are all fine and well but this is something else, a way of injecting some excitement back into my life.

I place my key in his palm and we walk round to the front door together in silence, the atmosphere thick with his bubbling resentment and anger.

Once inside, he barks out a list of chores for me to do. Cleaning windows, washing floors, even disinfecting door handles. As long as he keeps paying me vast sums of money, I will do anything he asks. He thinks he is punishing me when in reality, he is doing me a favour, keeping me in a job and paying me large sums of cash for cleaning a house that doesn’t need cleaning and keeping my mouth shut.

Jack Downey is a fool. He is a fool for getting caught out and he is a fool for allowing me to continue with this charade. It makes me wonder what it is he is really hiding. Many men would tell me to fuck off and slam the door in my face, ignoring my threats, refusing to cave in to my demands. There is definitely something else going on here. Something sinister. I’m certain of it. Perhaps he’s a dealer? Somehow, I doubt it. It doesn’t fit. So, what else is he hiding and is that why he no longer wants me in the house? Are there more secrets lurking? The thought of unearthing more of his dirty laundry fills me with glee.

The cash in my pocket is heavy, its weight giving me a warm glow somewhere deep in my abdomen. I head into the utility room, leaving Jack in the living room, and open the envelope, counting through the notes whilst flicking my gaze to the doorway in case he decides to follow me. The study door slams shut and I relax, kicking the utility room door closed and jamming a chair up against it.

The amount of cash he has given me makes me feel faint. Unless I’ve miscounted, it appears he has given me £5,000. No wonder he tried to give me my marching orders. I slump down onto the chair, wondering how long I can keep this little game going for. Jack is a businessman. He isn’t about to carry on handing over vast sums of money. He will find another way to bring an end to this; I just know it.

I stuff the envelope in my bag and push it under the counter, hiding it behind a bucket and mop and an array of cleaning equipment and then think better of it and retrieve it, shoving it deep in my pocket, touching it lightly to make sure it isn’t too bulky. The thought of Jack Downey sneaking in here and stealing back his cash while I’m on my hands and knees scrubbing the floors of his house makes me go cold. It’s got to the point where we are both looking over our shoulders, watching and waiting for the next bit of conflict. Besides, the way the Downeys have treated me, forcing me to do tasks that are beneath them, makes me think I have earned this money a thousand times over.

It has a limited life, this racket I’ve got going. Soon he will tire of it, will start making threats, perhaps even become violent in an attempt to scare me away. I will have to think long and hard about my next move, be one step ahead of him.

The day passes quickly. I scrub and clean and rinse and wipe, smiling and thinking of the cash in my pocket and how far I can make it stretch.

After I collect Fionn and Yasmin, he tells me again that he can manage and gives me permission to leave.

‘I don’t want Alice to go!’ Fionn rushes at me as we stand together in the hallway and wraps his arms around my legs, sobbing into the fabric of my trousers.

Jack steps forward and tries to extricate him from me, unpeeling his arms and pulling at his waist. Fionn holds firm, screaming and kicking, tears and snot smearing over my clothes. In my peripheral vision, I see Yasmin roll her eyes, her jaw stiff with annoyance. I flash her a smile and tighten my mouth to a grimace. Almost immediately, she changes her stance and drops her gaze to the floor, her flesh colouring up to a hot shade of pink. I found very little in her room. Either she is very good at hiding her secrets or she simply doesn’t have any. I’ll keep on looking. I’m not about to roll over and play dead.

‘Tomorrow,’ I say softly, reaching down to little Fionn and gently removing Jack’s grasping hands from his son’s small body. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow. Now be a good boy and go with Daddy.’

Jack hates me. Not just because of the money but also because he needs me to care for his children in his wife’s absence. It must be eating away at him, having me here in his house, having his youngest child think more of me than he does of him. I suppress a smile and place my hand in the small of Fionn’s back, propelling him towards his father, who is standing with his face set like stone, his spine rigid with barely concealed fury.

‘I’ll see you all in the morning. Fionn, you be a good boy for your daddy. And make sure you keep your room tidy.’ And with that, I am gone, stepping outside into the late-afternoon sunshine, thinking that everything is as perfect as it can ever be.

27PETER

He’s driving home from Coventry when Lauren calls. It’s been a pig of a week with demanding customers, late meetings and management breathing down his neck about sales figures and the constantly shifting targets that he has argued are unrealistic and unattainable. His neck is aching, his head stuffed with engineering problems about a particularly complex machine he has just seen and is supposed to solve by tomorrow morning. He is tired and in need of a strong coffee and a hot bath. And then a whiskey or two.

Peter presses the phone connection on the dashboard and does his best to not sound irritated and exasperated as an HGV overtakes him on the inside, splashing a wall of water up his side window.

‘Hi, what’s up?’ Lauren rarely calls when he’s on a long drive home. Coventry and back in a day is a five-hour round journey with a stream of snotty customers jammed in between.

‘Hi, Dad. Are you okay to talk?’

He wants so much to say that no, he is not okay to talk, that a huge lorry has just nearly wiped him off the road, that he is travelling at 70 mph on the M1 in the pissing rain and that he is aching and exhausted, but he doesn’t. Instead, he tries to sound light and cheery like he hasn’t got a care in the world. Images of coffee and whiskey and a large plate of something stodgy that will fill his aching belly loom large in his mind.

‘Yup, not a problem. Fire away.’

‘Right. It’s just that I’m doing some research and studying for my English exam.’

‘Okay,’ he says wearily, wondering where this is going. He is still over fifty miles from home, his stomach is now howling, crying out for sustenance, his eyes heavy.

‘I thought I would use some of Mum’s books to help me out. Have you read any of them recently or had them out for any reason?’

Peter suppresses a sigh. Why would he now choose to read any of Sophia’s books? She was a fan of the classics – Dickens, Shakespeare, the Brontë sisters. Fine writers for sure, but not his cup of tea. ‘No. They look good on a shelf but that’s about as far as my interest in them goes. Why?’

He pictures a sickening, stomach-plummeting scenario – a note stashed in there from a secret lover – another one – and pictures of the two of them together on a sun-kissed beach. He thinks of the times he worked away in Ireland and Denmark and ruminates over how it could be a possibility, how there could have been a string of romances, too many to count, then shakes his head and runs his fingers through my hair, weariness gnawing at him. He has to stop this. She had a lover. There is no way he is about to turn this into something it isn’t. Sophia was unfaithful the once. She wasn’t a serial philanderer. Was she? She didn’t have a store of secret men in her past, men she was deeply intimate with. One was enough to contend with. Thinking about any more would be more than he could handle.

‘They’re ruined, Dad. Pages torn out, some of them shredded into bits and then placed back inside. Others have been scribbled on, as if a child has got hold of a pen and gone crazy.’ Lauren’s voice dips.

He feels himself go soft and pliable, his grip loosening on the steering wheel, then straightens his back, a refusal to cave into this latest mini catastrophe forcing him upright. ‘Right. I’m not sure what’s gone on there, I’m afraid, sweetheart. I’ll be home in just under an hour, weather permitting.’ Right on cue, the downpour increases, water streaming down the windows, blanketing the car and limiting his vision. He clasps his fingers around the steering wheel again and leans forward, peering through the blur of water to the road ahead. ‘Look,’ he hisses through gritted teeth, ‘I’ll sort it when I get home. It’s really bad driving conditions at the minute. The heavens have just opened and I’m struggling to see. If you fancy ringing up and getting a takeaway, that would be perfect.’

‘A takeaway?’ There’s a slight edge to her voice.

‘Yes, Lauren. A takeaway. I’ve had no lunch, driven almost 300 miles and the rain is so heavy, I can barely see. So if you wouldn’t mind ordering our usual and using the credit card I keep in the box on the dresser in my bedroom, I would be very grateful.’

He ends the call, Lauren harrumphing at his words. He knows what this is. She wants him to be outraged at what has happened to the books but he refuses. He has enough to be going on with without her throwing some minor problems his way that he hasn’t seen and cannot possibly control. Besides, maybe Sophia did it before she died. Anything is possible. He didn’t check every item she owned after her death. Maybe he should have. Maybe he should have scooped it all up and chucked it into the nearest skip.

The rest of the journey takes longer than he hoped, with yet more rain falling like bullets onto the windscreen and slow-moving traffic hindering his progress. He arrives home, hungry, exhausted and all out of patience.

The takeaway sits on the kitchen table, still bagged up, cutlery positioned across the centre of the plate that is placed next to the bag. This is a message from Lauren that he is out of favour because of his reaction to her reports about her most recent finding. A small amount of anger builds in his chest. He will not kowtow to somebody who is upset over a couple of books and refuses to keep playing this game – the one where Sophia is portrayed as a perfect wife and mother and they don’t speak about her many faults. Peter’s job keeps this roof over their heads, puts food on the table and although they don’t have a particularly lavish lifestyle, they do okay, and this is due to the hours he puts in. Lauren knows this. He has no idea what happened to the books and doesn’t particularly care, but having a discussion about it while driving at breakneck speed on a busy dual carriageway in torrential rain with an empty stomach isn’t the ideal time to do it.

Peter slumps into a chair and opens the bag of food, scooping it out onto the plate and heating it up in the microwave. Lauren appears in the doorway as he shovels forkfuls of it into his mouth like a man who hasn’t eaten for a month, her shadow spilling over the floor like a portent of doom.

‘Long journey?’

‘The longest,’ he replies, shaking his head in exasperation at the sheer amount of traffic on the roads. Sometimes, he is sure the whole of England will sink under the weight of the all the concrete roads and the vehicles that pass over them and everyone will disappear into the surrounding sea. There are days when it is all too much: work and its constant demands, the traffic, the crowds and the noise, and today is one of those days.

‘Right. I’ll let you get on with eating your food then. I’m going to have a shower. Maybe we can speak later?’

Uneasiness stirs within him. He is all at once racked with guilt but also infuriated at Lauren’s lack of understanding at his position. Can she not see how tired he is? How long a day it’s been for him? And yet she still wants to corner him about those fucking stupid books – a handful of old books that have probably fallen apart with age.

He lays down his cutlery and dabs at my mouth. ‘No. I’m almost done here. I’d rather do this now and then I can relax for the rest of the evening.’

Lauren nods and raises her eyebrows as if to tell him to calm down and that he is being sharp and unreasonable with his gruff manner and voice, and then sits down opposite, her elbows resting on the table.

‘So,’ he murmurs, impatience rising within him. He thinks of a hot bath and visualises a pint of beer while formulating the next sentence in his head. He also thinks of Alice and pictures her naked in his bed. ‘You wanted to chat about Sophia’s damaged books?’

‘They’re ruined.’ Lauren’s words are sharp, cutting through the air like a knife being thrown his way. ‘There is no way they can be salvaged or repaired. I didn’t do it and I’m pretty sure you didn’t do it. And it definitely wasn’t Grandma on her last visit here. So how did they get like that?’

He tries to suppress his sigh, closing his eyes briefly while searching for the right words. ‘Maybe they’ve been like that for ages? When was the last time you opened any of them?’ He wants to tell her that maybe Sophia did it after one of their monumental rows, that in a rage, she took it upon herself to ruin her own belongings, just because she could. Just because she was Sophia, the killer of marriages. The destroyer of hearts.

‘A month ago. I look at them on a regular basis. I’m reading one of them at the minute. It’s on my bedside cabinet.’