1
JESS
3a.m.
I stared at the ceiling wide awake, heart beating too quickly, breathing out of control.
Be careful what you wish for. Well, I’d wished for him back home after his eight-month dalliance away, and now I knew I no longer wanted him. Knew I didn’t love him any more. Wasn’t convinced I even liked him much.
I turned, moving away from any contact with his well-muscled thigh, reaching for the very edge of the bed, desperate for some semblance of sleep before the alarm sounded its pernicious call at 6a.m. Dean moved with me, flinging a heavy and tattooed arm over my breasts, burying his early morning shadow scratchily into my back, muttering something I couldn’t catch before emitting neat little snores, each accompanying a puff of air down my spine only adding to the tension.
Jesus.
Square numbers: that usually worked. I’d reached and worked out 324 (18x18) when the first notes sounded from the blackbird that lived and sang in the eaves right underneath the bedroom window.
‘Jesus!’ I muttered the word out loud this time, wrapping the pillow round my ears. ‘And you can shut up, you little fecker. Not you, Jesus, sorry…’
Roused from wherever his slumbers had taken him (probably back down to The Green Dragon with the barmaid there, or, more likely now that he was schmoozing with what he saw to be the upper echelons of society at Beddingfield Golf Club, anticipating a hole in one), Dean pressed a particularly healthy but unwelcome erection in my direction. ‘No hole in one for you here, matey.’ I tutted crossly and, sliding out of bed, made my way downstairs to do the ironing.
* * *
‘You can get straight back upstairs and take that little lot off your face.’ I looked up from the eggs I was scrambling for Lola’s and Dean’s breakfasts.
‘Everyone at Beddingfield High wears make-up,’ Lola retorted, admiring her handiwork in the convex curve of my best serving spoon.
‘But you’re notatBeddingfield High until September.’ I shook my head. ‘Go on, back upstairs right now.’
‘I’m at the high school all day today,’ Lola reminded me. ‘Iknewyou weren’t listening when I told you.’
I had, with everything else going on in my life, totally forgotten this fact.
‘Everybodyelse will be wearing it. D’you want me left out? Ostracised?’
‘Been swallowing a dictionary again, Lola?’ Dean pulled out a chair – the chair he’d reclaimed as his own once he’d moved back in a month earlier – and sat expectantly, waiting to be served, while scrolling through his phone.
‘I hadn’t forgotten, Lola,’ I lied. ‘You need to make a good impression on this taster day. You know, stand out to the staff who’ll be teaching you in September.’
‘Well, I’m not going to make a good impression if I don’t look good,’ Lola argued, eyeing the toast and eggs I sat in front of her.
‘Why’re you looking at your breakfast rather than eating it?’ I asked my eleven-year-old, irritation mounting as Dean continued to scroll rather than starting on his own food.
‘Eggs are high in cholesterol,’ Lola said calmly, picking up her knife and fork and cutting off a small amount before popping it into her – lip-glossed – mouth and chewing contemplatively.
‘Rubbish,’ I snapped. ‘They’re full of protein. And don’t you start having food issues when you’ve not yet even started high school.’
‘By your mentioning issues with food, I’ll probably end up with one,’ Lola said. ‘We’ve been doing anorexia in PSHE. Drugs and alcohol last week,’ she went on, attacking her eggs now with relish. Lola, like me, had always adored her food. ‘Sex next!’
That raised Dean’s head from his phone like nothing before.
‘Sex?’ Dean stared before reaching for his fork and shovelling food one-handed into his mouth. God, I wished he’d use a knife and fork properly. And wipe his mouth on the napkin I always provided. Food was something to be revered, to be eaten slowly and relished even if it was only eggs and toast on a Friday morning. Brought up by my mum, a single mother who’d insisted on exemplary table manners for me and my younger sisters Robyn and Sorrel, I found anything less than my mum’s – and now my own – exacting standards highly irritating.
I swallowed my irritation and sat down at the table with my own plate while contemplating this man I’d been married to for eleven years. Being so in love with Dean Butterworth when meeting him during my first year of A levels, I’d made the decision – an utterly stupid one – to forgo my place at university because Dean hadn’t wanted me to leave him. Mum had implored me to take up the place at Newcastle to study food sciences, to leave home and take the fantastic opportunity offered to me, but I’d been adamant I wanted only to be with Dean. I was always a home bird, anxious at the very thought of leaving Mum, Robyn and Sorrel to go away to study, and it had been a relief to know Dean wanted me to settle down with him. He’d encouraged me to get a job in the Sattar brothers’ local frozen food factory – Frozen – instead of taking the opportunity to study the food sciences I’d worked so hard for and, when the cottage next to Mum’s had come up for sale, I’d been off like a shot to the Halifax with Dean.
For heaven’s sake, what had been the matter with me?
Finding myself pregnant with Lola at not quite twenty, I’d married Dean and we’d moved into the cottage. He appeared to like the idea of settling down with someone who was going to have his tea on the table and his socks washed. But I’d learnt the hard way, his seeing no problem in continuing the single life of going clubbing with his mates, constantly down The Green Dragon and offering every girl who came to have her car serviced at his garage in the village, any other servicing they might require. There’d been few unable to resist his seduction techniques, his stocky, gym-toned body, his dark curls and olive skin, the contrast of those quite amazing blue eyes (blame my Irish-Italian heritage, he’d boast) and easy patter. I’d fallen for it myself for years. How could I blame these girls, especially the more uptown ones who appeared to relish the idea of a bit of rough trade? Since he’d relinquished his beloved footie for golf, while searching out Ralph Lauren at the local designer outlets, I knew he fancied himself a little more upmarket these days. (All golf gilet and TK Maxx knickers, Robyn had scoffed and, whereas a few years ago I’d have been offended, now I had to agree.)
Always Dean in and out of my life. Dean, who’d constantly cheated on me throughout our eleven-year marriage. Was I doomed to be like my mother, always making herself available for just one man? In Mum’s case, Jayden Allen, the charismatic – and let’s face it, exceptionally good-looking – reggae singer and prolific womaniser who despite having fathered all three of us Allen girls had rarely been a presence for either Mum or us.
