‘Well, I don’t understand!’ she explodes and Ivy looks up at her with shock. ‘You lied to me. To all of us! You manipulated everyone and only befriended me so you could . . .controlme. Do you know how familiar that sounds? It’s what John’s done to me for years! Controlling me –usingme! You’re just like him!’ The anger feels unfamiliar but hot and good in her belly. She whirls around on her heels, looking for the front door. Her mind is racing. She has to get out of here, away from these women. Tilly was right all along: there was – there is – something wrong and weird about this group of women. And it’s not just that they’ve won the lottery and killed their husbands. Some of them haven’t even done that! She trusted them. She trusted Audrey! She thought they were her friends. She thought that she finally had a safety net, a security blanket that she could— Goddammit, where’s the front door? She’s all disoriented in this absurdly giant place.
‘Pauline . . .’ Ivy stands up, too, her face full of regret and upset. She steps towards her, reaching for her friend, but Pauline puts up a warning hand.
‘Don’t!’ she says, her voice high and choked with emotion.
‘I agree with Pauline,’ Teddy says furiously. ‘You’re a liar, Audrey. The whole point of this group was that we could trust each other – rely on one another – when we’d all been screwed over time and time again. You lied about so much. You lied about your own name, for God’s sake! How would we ever believe anything you ever said again?’
Audrey hangs her head. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Sorry isn’t good enough!’ Pauline explodes again. ‘I’m done with this, and I’m done with you.’ She finally locates the right corner of the room, storming towards the door to leave. She’s almost shouting as she reaches for it – something Pauline can’t remember ever doing before. ‘Don’t message or call me,’ she yells. ‘I don’t want to hear from any of you. Justleave me alone. I’m done with The Lottery Winner Widows Club. For good. Stay out of my life.’
She slams the door behind her, hoping they heard every word, because she means it. She’s never meant anything more in her life. She’s done. She’s done with all of it.
37
Pauline checks into a hotel five minutes from her house in Surrey, where she stays, avoiding the world and ignoring her problems, for the next few days. All the bravery she’d found on the trip to Saint-Tropez – all that New Pauline energy – has deserted her. She is absolutely wretched; bereft, broken, hollowed out. Paula again.
She still has her luggage from the holiday, though she barely changes out of the hotel bathrobe, moving from the bed to the door to fetch occasional room service food. And then back to the bed again.
She sees there are messages and calls coming in on her phone. Lots of them. Some are from Teddy, Audrey and Ivy, but most are from John, demanding she return to the house immediately. He wants to make a plan, relaunch his life, to start spending their millions. His impatient tone gets more and more shocked. His disbelief at her defiance gets more and more pronounced.
On day four, John decides to take matters into his own hands, having had enough of his silent, defiant wife.
He calls a press conference.
Pauline reads the message from the hotel’s king-sized bed, horror growing with every passing word.
It’s time to come home, Paula. I’m announcing my return to the press today. It’s happening outside our house in an hour. I know your new little group of friends are supporting you, wherever you are, but enough’s enough. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that you told me all about those women in your emails to me? All about Teddy, Audrey and Ivy. I know all of it. I don’t want to have to talk about what I know and what they did. It’s time to come home, Paula. We’ll be waiting for you.
She throws the covers back, feeling proper feelings for the first time in days.
She told John everything about the group! She wrote it all down! How could she be so stupid, so thoughtless? She thought it was safe, that he was dead, that those emails were just for her. She had no idea he could . . . that he was . . .
Pauline frantically pulls on her clothes, her heart pounding in her chest. She has to get home; she has to speak to John; she has to stop him saying anything.
She reaches for her belongings, throwing them back into her suitcase and looking around for any errant items. However angry she is – however let down she feels by her friends right now – she has to protect them. She can’t let John put them in danger.
She has to go back to him.
The press conference has already started when Pauline pulls up outside the house. She parks her new car behind arow of vans and climbs out, her whole body shaking. Slowly, she makes her way along the pavement, catching glimpses of John between the parked vehicles. Behind rows of men holding cameras.
There he is.
John. Standing in front of their home, smiling widely.
Her deceased husband is announcing his return to the world. Floating above her own body, she can just about make out his voice as she crosses the road towards him. He was not dead after all, he’s explaining, as cameras flash. He was merely ill and misidentified. He lies smoothly to reporters, describing months spent stuck in a hospital in the Austrian Alps. He had a vent down his throat preventing him from telling the doctors who he really was. Thank God he finally recovered enough to be sent home to his loving family . . . and to the surprise twenty-one million pounds waiting in his bank account.
He talks about how relieved he is to be back, and how thrilled he is to be suddenly wealthy. No one questions the veracity of his story, instead they ask him what he’ll buy with the Lotto millions and he jokes about getting a new tie. With a kindly, serious face, he adds that the truth is, he’s planning on spending it all on his beloved family. Every last penny.
He is flanked on either side by a pale Tilly and a red Seb. They look beyond shell-shocked.
‘Where’s your wife today, Mr Sheldon?’ one of the men calls out and something flickers across John’s face. Irritation. He opens his mouth to respond and then he sees her. Standing there, thirty feet away, at the end of their driveway. A smile spreads across his features.
‘Speak of the devil.’ He reaches an open palm in her direction and the swarm of journalists turn en masse. The flashes begin and Pauline covers her face with the back of a hand.
‘Please!’ John calls out. ‘Leave her be! All of this has been a lot for my little Paula.’ He continues with emphatic concern, ‘My poor, fragile wife, finding out her husband was alive all this time and stuck in a hospital eight hundred kilometres away! It’s been very hard for her.’ He frowns. ‘Especially after so many online armchair detectives made all those cruel comments about her. Unfounded, evil comments from social media investigators who had no right.’
He says this last part with such fury, shooting angry looks at the journalists who have provoked it, like he is a loyal and devoted partner.
