PROLOGUE
Kate
Before I realise what’s happening I’ve hoisted myself up onto the bathroom windowsill.
The window is already open. Gratefully, I take in a huge breath of damp evening air. The windowsill is an especially wide and sturdy one. But it’s still quite a manoeuvre to push my straight navy-blue work skirt up over my ample hips without toppling off. Now my knickers – the ones my husband refers to as ‘those massive drawers’ – are visible through my sheer tights. I couldn’t care less. The bathroom door is locked and there’s no one in here but me. Slowly and steadily, I feed a leg through the open window.
Briefly, I glance down at my white blouse, the kind my boss at the hotel insists on as part of our uniform, and wonder what she’d think if she could see me now. If she’d reckon I’m ‘projecting professionalism’ as I find myself stuck with one leg in and the other dangling outside. The ‘window straddle’, I think you’d call it in yoga – attempted only by the drunk or insane.
Pull yourself back in before you rupture something you idiot!I tell myself.
Right leg in, or left leg out to join it? I picture me and George, my little brother, doing the hokey-cokey around our living room back in Glasgow, singing and laughing then stopping abruptly when the front door flew open, signifying that Daddy was home.
The dancing stopped then. We scurried, quietly, to our rooms.
Now I glance back, my gaze skimming our bathroom fittings. The bath, washbasin and loo are the precise, lurid shade of a blackcurrant Starburst sweet. ‘How about we change them?’ I suggested recently. ‘The colour’s getting to me a bit.’
‘They’re kitsch,’ Vince insisted. ‘I love them.’
My mother does too. She loves everything here – my husband especially. ‘Oh, you’re so lucky to have a man like Vince,’ she’s gushed more times than I can count. ‘You really landed on your feet there, Kate!’
My name is Kate Weaver, and I’m forty-nine years old and not so sure that I have. Yes, I’ve landedhere, in this quiet cul-de-sac – by default. But it feels like I am flailing in space. Which I am, kind of. At least, flailing on a windowsill in a 1960s bungalow. I look out at our garden and all the other, virtually identical bungalows surrounding us in the fading evening light.
The final straw, they call it. The thing that made her snap. And suddenly, this leg in/leg out dilemma feels enormous, and it’s crucial that I make the right choice.
It feels like the most important decision of my life.
CHAPTER ONE
Two days earlier
Being married to a comedian is no joke.
You might think it would be. Maybe you imagine life being hilarious all the time. Undoubtably, Vince’s materialisfunny – but living with him is not. If our marriage were a comedy show I’d regret even buying a ticket.
If that sounds harsh, here’s what happens as I lift a tray of gnarly brown lumps from the fridge.
‘What the hell are they?’ he asks in surprise.
‘Easter nests,’ I reply.
‘But it’s not Easter, is it? Unless they’ve shifted things around this year? It does get me,’ he rattles on, smirking, ‘that Easter’s this moveable feast. Imagine if Christmas was like that. How would turkey farmers manage it? You’d have fattened birds in February—’
‘Vince,’ I cut in. ‘I do know it’s not Easter, okay? So I’m renaming them Chocolate Clusters.’
‘Genius,’ he enthuses. ‘Because they don’t look like nests. More like the deposits of a medium-sized dog with digestive issues—’
‘Yes,okay. Thank you.’ He’s right, though. I’d chosen to make them because they didn’t need any cooking. (They’re just melted chocolate, butter and bashed-up Shredded Wheat.) But I didn’t have the chance to buy any mini eggs to fill them with, and they look pretty gross.
Vince pats my shoulder. ‘Never mind, Kate. People will buy any old crap at a bake sale just to shut up their kids.’
‘Thanks!’ I exclaim. ‘That’sreallysupportive...’
‘Aw, stop making a fuss. It’s not a competition, is it? It’s the taking part that counts...’ What does Vince know about these fundraising events? He’s never ‘taken part’ in one in his life.
‘I just don’t want to let them down,’ I mutter. In fact it’s not simply a matter of producing something that people will pay good money for. It’s also about fitting in. I’ve been to every drinks do and coffee morning going since we left London nine months ago. Now it seems I’m trying to woo myself some new friends with offerings that could have been made by an unsupervised five-year-old.
‘What are you doing for the bake sale?’ For weeks now the question has reverberated around this genteel Buckinghamshire town. It’s a well-established feature of Shugbury’s book festival, and initially – thinking it would get me off the hook – I volunteered to be a general helper. But one bright afternoon, when my guard was down: ‘You’ll be able to knock up something, won’t you, Kate?’ Chief organiser Deborah swooped on me in the street.
