‘Pack it in!’ William yelled, locking in his arms at ten to two so the car didn’t swerve when she didn’t stop. ‘Are you trying to get us killed?’
‘I’m not going to stop until Sophie rejects the internalised misogyny that has been propped up by our patriarchal society and the expectations placed on her by our parents,’ she shouted back, the strap of my Chanel handbag, which was currently hanging across her body, clanging against my seat. ‘Why are you hitting yourself, Sophie? Sophie, why are you hitting yourself?’
‘Because I’ve internalised misogyny and something about the patriarchy,’ I squeaked as I wrestled my wristfree, rubbing it gingerly with my injured hand. ‘You are so much stronger than you look.’
‘I don’t expect you to undo a lifetime of emotional self-harm overnight,’ she said, flexing her miniature biceps. ‘But you will need to figure it out before you do your first-ever author event at my bookshop.’
‘Charlotte.’ William met her eyes in the mirror. ‘Leave it.’
But she wasn’t about to give up that easily.
‘As her agent, you should be behind this. Do you have any idea how many views my video from the party last night got?’
He sucked in his cheeks and I could see his commission senses starting to tingle. ‘How many?’
‘Last time I looked it was a hundred and thirty thousand.’
‘Seriously?’ He turned his head all the way to stare at her for a second before remembering we were doing eighty in the fast lane of the M1.
‘Half of those might be watching it for the whole bouncy castle bit, but your confession has been stitched literally thousands of times.’ She really went out of her way to hit every syllable of the word ‘literally’. ‘It’s out now, everyone knows who you are. You’re a superstar, Sophie, like it or not.’
‘I’m an idiot,’ I countered, checking my phone again as the endless grey of the motorway blurred by.
Fifty-two unread texts.
While the majority of them were from the same number that had been blowing up my phone for the last two hours, there were others from my friends, co-workers, the beleaguered head of PR at MullinsParker, and the woman who came round to steam my carpetsonce and ruined a rug but I didn’t have the heart to tell her and paid anyway. Good news travelled fast. Salacious gossip moved like wildfire.
‘Is she still talking about the book or is this about Joe?’ she stage-whispered to our brother whose face took on a grim expression.
My phone lit up again, same number, one I refused to assign a name to, not even William’s suggestion of ‘Wanker the Weasel Do Not Answer’. I was so upset with myself for being so stupid and ignoring my instincts. It was a genius play when you thought about it, present yourself as an arsehole, surprise the woman by being a halfway decent human, then, once she’s on the hook, briefly remind her you are in fact an arsehole so when the truth comes out and she finds out she was right in the first place, you’re off scot-free, leaving her behind to wonder how she could ever have been such an idiot.
And by her, I meant me.
‘Please answer it,’ Charlotte begged as the phone kept ringing. ‘Miscommunication is my least favourite trope. You’re killing me with this.’
‘It’s not miscommunication, it’s secret wife,’ I reminded her. ‘Which just replaced instalove as my personal least favourite.’
‘Then let me talk to him,’ she demanded. ‘I’ll end him in under a minute. Or I could post something? Set up a couple of finstas, ruin his life?’
‘Imagine getting read filth by an eighteen-year-old.’ William grunted behind the wheel as she opened an app on her phone I couldn’t identify in the mirror. ‘It would be easier to put your head in the oven.’
‘No one is creating finstas or reading him to anything,’I ordered. ‘His name is not to be spoken ever again by anyone in the car and that includes on the internet.’
In the backseat, Charlotte grunted something under her breath and kept her finger pressed on the delete button.
‘Secret wife in New York.’ William blew out a long, surprised sigh. ‘Not even stashed away in the attic.’
‘Did you hear anything yet?’ I asked, not really wanting to know.
His eyes flicked over to his phone, showing our route but nothing else. I knew he’d made some subtle enquiries before we set off for home, poking around some of the industry’s more reliable gossips for details.
‘Not yet,’ he replied, gently smacking the heel of his hand against the leather-covered steering wheel. ‘I just can’t believe he’s married. It’s shocking. I am shocked. It’s one thing to be a bit of a shagger but going out your way to get in someone’s knickers when you’re married?’
‘Sociopath behaviour,’ Charlotte, with her as-yet ungraded A level in psychology, agreed. ‘Targeting someone like Soph as well. It’s not as though she’s going round hopping on a different dick every weekend, is it?’
William and I both turned around at the same time to stare at our little sister.
‘What? We all know you’re not a casual shagger. I don’t think you were like, oh go on then, I’m DTF for the weekend then we’ll never see each other again.’
