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  Jo laughed long and hard. “Oh God, I’ve heard everything now. My husband is leaving me for a woman named after a vaginal infection. Appropriate though, because she sure as hell irritates the fuck out of me.”

  Jeff scowled. “Can we just try and have a conversation for once, without you taking the piss? That’s another problem with you, you’re so cynical about everything.”

  She ignored his criticism and decided to have one more go at making him see sense. This was no time to give up, she was fighting for her marriage.

  Consciously softening her expression, she walked across and sat next to him on the sofa. She spoke evenly, trying to sound as rational and reasonable as possible.

  “Look, of course this girl has time to give you. She’s twenty-three with no kids. She can watch a film uninterrupted to the end, read a book, go down to the pub at a moment’s notice—all the things we could do when we first met. But the minute she has kids that will all change and she’ll be as knackered as I am most of the time. Being with her won’t be better, it will just be different. I know that seems appealing, but it’s not enough to walk out on your kids for.”

  She looked at him pleadingly, but the leaden feeling in her heart told her it was hopeless. There were tears in his eyes, but his body language was screaming, “Let me out of here.”

  “I understand everything you’re saying Jo, but it’s totally out of my control. I have never felt this way before and I hate myself for it, but I have to be with her. I lie in bed at night thinking about her, I lie in the bath thinking about her until the water goes cold around me, and—”

  “And you lie to me,” Jo interrupted before he said any more. Her mind was furiously rewinding through all the occasions she had thought he was working late but was probably with her.

  She was absolutely convinced Jeff’s new relationship wouldn’t last—the inevitability of it depressed her. But most of all she felt anger and humiliation. She had trusted this marriage, this man. She had always felt that whatever life threw at them, they would weather it. And she had always been absolutely certain they would be together forever. Why? Because she had two ace cards—the children he adored. She had been so convinced he would never leave them, she had barely given any thought to what was going on between him and her. Then The Cliché comes along and he walks, simple as that. How wrong could she be?

  She studied him as he sat next to her, wiping his tear-stained face with the back of his hand. Tears of self-pity, tears of guilt.

  Too tired to feel any more anger, all she felt was an overwhelming sadness that the man she loved could be so bloody stupid. He suddenly looked old, defeated almost, and Jo realized it was a long time since she’d actually sat down and taken a long hard look at the man she married.

  Her mind drifted back to the first time she’d met him. Tall with broad shoulders and a washboard stomach, he had a nose that was slightly too big for his face, but in some strange way it suited him.

  And those eyes. They were electrifyingly sexy and she had known immediately they were about to embark on a passionate relationship. He had “rogue” written all over his face. Jo had fully expected to wake up one morning and find an “It’s been nice” note on the pillow next to her. But he just kept on coming back.

  They’d been quite the golden couple for a while. Attractive, healthy, pretty well-off, flitting from one party to another or taking last minute flights to somewhere hot. Then they had Thomas and their wings were clipped.

  It had hit Jo hard, physically and mentally. In a way it was harder for Jeff because he still felt like the same person, but suddenly the woman he’d had so much fun with was constantly exhausted, irritable and tearful. He tried his best, but some days nothing he could do or say would be right.

  Jo dragged her mind back to the present.

  “I do love you, Jeff. But not in the needy, obsessive way you clearly want.”

  She knew that whatever she said or did right now was fruitless. Jeff was going. It was “hasta-la-bye-bye-wife-and-kids” in pursuit of firm thighs and a soft nature. Well, fine. It suddenly hit her that she pitied him. He was the bad guy, the one who was leaving his children. And he clearly had no idea how much guilt he was going to have to cope with. He and Candy.

  But Jo gained no comfort from that, because she knew Thomas and Sophie were going to be devastated. So devastated it pained her even to think about it.

  Jeff stood up. “I’m sorry, Jo.” He made a move as if to hug her, but she shrank away from his touch.

  “Don’t. Just get out.” She kept her voice calm.

  “If that’s what you want.”

  Jo let out a bitter snort at his transparent effort to turn things round and make it look as though it was her decision he was leaving. “What other option is there?”

  But he had already walked out of the room.

  She heard the floorboards upstairs creaking as he crept around, probably packing a bag. Her chest tightened and she felt the telltale pinpricks of imminent tears in her eyes. She was determined not to cry again in front of Jeff, but needn’t have worried as the next sound she heard was the front door clicking shut.

  One small click, one giant step for her marriage.

  Usually, Jo loved the evenings when Jeff went out and the kids were asleep upstairs. She would putter from room to room relishing being alone. But this was a different kind of “alone.” Jeff wasn’t coming back and she felt her chest contract with terror at the silence around her. This was no longer a happy family home. It was a broken home.

  She walked into the hallway. Jeff’s overcoat had gone, but his green wellingtons were lying where he’d kicked them off after a particularly muddy walk at the local park that weekend. Thomas and Sophie’s discarded boots lay next to them. Jo bent down to tidy them up, God knows why. As she straightened up she caught sight of herself in the hall mirror.

  She looked old. Bloody old.

  Her hair was scraped back from her face in a rather haphazard ponytail, and her eyes had dark circles under them. Eyes that had once seduced Jeff, and a few others, were now dulled by the misery of the past few hours.

  “She’s twenty-three.” Jeff’s words rang in her head. Jo was thirty-three, and right now felt twenty years older than that. No wonder he left.

  Hot tears of self-pity began to run down her cheeks, falling onto her old college sweatshirt. Everything she knew and trusted had suddenly been ripped from under her.

  She wanted to curl up in a corner and stay there forever, but she couldn’t even do that. She had to hold things, herself, together. Because in a few hours’ time the children would be up, sublimely ignorant of how their lives were about to change.

  Trudging back into the sitting room, she stared at the clock. 1 A.M. and all’s hell, she thought ruefully. Would Jeff call tomorrow and say he’d changed his mind? Unlikely, at least in the short term. The prospect of regular blow jobs would render him incapable of making any rational decision. Nope. This was it for now. Jo Miles, single mother of two. Back on life’s overcrowded shelf of thirty-something women.

  This time, there was no one to hold back for, so she let it all out. Great, racking sobs engulfed her and she fell to her knees on the carpet, head bowed like a prisoner awaiting execution. She had never felt emotional pain like it, a mixture of hurt, anger, frustration and the feeling of total, utter failure.

  Ten minutes later, her eyes swollen with crying, the sobbing subsided into an exhausted whimpering. Mustering what little strength she had left, she pulled herself to her feet and found herself face to face with a graduation photograph of Jeff looking remarkably like Forrest Gump.

  Picking it up, she hurled it at the far wall, where it made a loud splintering noise as the frame separated from the Perspex front. Walking over to where Jeff smiled up at her from the carpet, she ground her foot into his smug face until his features were unrecognizable.

  “Now you know what it feels like to be walked over,” she said, flicking off the sitting room light.


  3

  end of her nose. She opened her eyes to find Bridal Barbie dancing on the duvet.

  For one wonderful moment, life was normal. Then last night’s showdown snapped into the present and a blanket of depression enveloped her, as though someone had turned her body power switch to “off.”

  “Where’s Daddy?” asked Sophie, doing a forward roll across the end of the bed.

  Jo wanted to scream, “He’s dumped us to go and shag some bimbo,” but instead she just lay there and watched her six-year-old daughter as she bounced up and down on the vast brass bed Jeff’s parents had bought them as a wedding present. Oh, for the years when nothing mattered except whether Scooby Doo would catch the villain or what was for tea, that blissful time when all responsibility and major disappointments were still years ahead.

  “He had an early meeting at work,” said Jo, dodging a head-on collision as Sophie bounced toward her.

  It was amazing how easy it was to lie. Sophie, with her bobbed white-blond hair and almond-shaped brown eyes, was innocence personified. She still believed in Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy. The older, more cynical, Thomas had been forbidden from telling her the truth.

  Now here was Jo telling her daughter a blatant lie. But that conversation was something she just couldn’t face right now.

  The doorbell rang. It was the cavalry, otherwise known as her best friend, Rosie. Jo had called her an hour ago at 6 A.M., in a terrible state of panic.

  “Jeff’s gone. He’s left me,” she’d sobbed into the receiver. “I don’t think I can cope with the kids.”

  There had been no need to say any more. She knew Rosie would rally round and there would be plenty of time for them to talk details later on.

  “That’s your Aunty Rosie at the door.”

  “Aunty Roseeeeee!” shrieked Sophie, and hurtled out of the room.

  Jo’s head thudded back onto the pillow and she stared at the ceiling. There was a little brown patch right above the bed from when she and Jeff had opened a particularly explosive bottle of champagne on her birthday a couple of years ago. I wonder if he was unhappy then, she thought miserably. Her eyes were raw from yet another crying session in the small hours and her head ached from lack of sleep. She had eventually managed to drop off after taking a couple of Melatonins, but a damn car alarm had gone off at 3 A.M. and that was that. It was the same one that had disturbed her and Jeff on numerous occasions and they had left several snotty notes on the windscreen.

  “I don’t know about you, but they clearly want to know if someone is walking past their car,” Jeff once said. It had made her laugh, and while the alarm shrieked in the background, they had made love in a flurry of duvet and giggles. The memory of it brought her emotional nausea flooding back. The thought of getting dressed, eating, or even moving from the cocoon of the king-size duvet felt impossible. She wanted to ignore the nightmare her life was about to become.

  Rosie popped her head round the door. “I’m here. I’ll sort the kids out and take them to school, and we’ll talk later. You OK?”

  “Better now you’re here.” Jo managed a weak smile before Rosie headed back downstairs.

  She turned her head and stared at Jeff’s side of the bed. He’d always claimed the right-hand side, even on holidays. Her bedside table was cluttered with old tissues, a dust-covered glass of water, earplugs, books, and various half-empty jars of “miracle” creams. She could do with a miracle in her life right now. By contrast, Jeff’s side housed just two items: a framed photograph of him and the kids at Alton Towers, and Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road, a nostalgic look at the author’s carefree years as a young man. Another clue to the mid-life crisis Jeff was clearly going through. I wonder if The Cliché recommended he read this, Jo thought, reaching over to pick it up. Tucked inside was a bookmark Sophie had made at school with “I love you Daddy” scribbled on it. Tears pricked at the corner of her eyes and she threw it on the floor. “Bastard!”

  “Don’t swear Mummy.”

  She sat bolt upright to find Thomas standing in the doorway clutching a mini-box of Coco Pops. He had a milk mustache and his Batman pajama top was unbuttoned.

  “I’ve told Aunty Rosie that I’m allowed to have these for breakfast, but she still says I have to come and ask you first.” He raised his eyes heavenward.

  Jo smiled and swung her feet onto the floor. She reached for her slippers and put on the first dressing gown that came to hand on the back of the door. It was Jeff’s. The smell of him enveloped her as she put it on. Well, not him exactly. More that Fahrenheit aftershave he always insisted on wearing despite her protestations. She had always hated it, but now it seemed like the most precious scent in the world, evoking memories as swiftly as a favorite record.

  Thomas had run back to the kitchen, so she followed the distinctive smell of burning toast down the stairs. Sophie and Thomas were sitting at the kitchen table while Rosie rushed around looking flustered.

  “I don’t know how you do this every morning, I really don’t,” said Rosie, as a thin wisp of black smoke rose behind her from the toaster.

  Jo raised an eyebrow at it and Rosie swung round in panic. “Shit! I mean sugar. That’s the fourth slice I’ve burned.” She poked a knife into the charred remains and tried to extract them.

  “Don’t you have a toaster at home, then?”

  “Ha bloody ha. What I don’t usually have is two children distracting me with an endless stream of questions. So far this morning, I have been asked why the sky is blue, and what is the difference between perhaps and maybe.”

  “Do enlighten me.”

  “How the hell would I know? You’re the one with the degree. Not to mention the slim figure and the good looks,” said Rosie with a grin. “Actually, why am I friends with you?”

  Sophie let out an ear-piercing shriek as Thomas stuck Bridal Barbie’s foot in a jar of peanut butter.

  “For God’s sake Thomas, grow up,” snapped Rosie, grabbing the doll and wiping it clean.

  Jo smiled. It was almost pleasurable to see someone else struggling with the arduous routine she went through every morning. Jeff was no help.

  “Thanks Rosie. I couldn’t have faced this morning without you. I don’t know what normality is any more,” she said, pouring herself a glass of milk. The fridge smelt like something had died in it.

  “What does normilliaty mean?” asked Sophie.

  Rosie swiftly changed the subject by handing back her Barbie doll. “How many of these things have you got now young lady? There’s a Barbie for everything these days. Whatever next? Klaus Barbie?”

  “I want Bicycle Barbie. She comes with clothes and a real bicycle,” said Sophie, her eyes wide in wonder.

  “Have you heard about Divorced Barbie? She comes with all Ken’s stuff,” said Rosie, looking over at Jo and laughing. “Oh God, sorry. Me and my big mouth. I wasn’t thinking.” Tact had never been her friend’s strong point.

  “Don’t worry about it.” Any further conversation would have to wait. Big Ears and his friend Even Bigger Ears were quietly digesting every word. But she was itching to sit down with Rosie and talk. She could think about nothing else. Rosie had always been good at giving relationship advice, even though her own were always disastrous. She had only had one long-term boyfriend, but it ended abruptly after six years when Rosie discovered he had a child he’d never told her about. It wasn’t the child that bothered her or even that he’d not told her about it. It was because he’d disowned his daughter, now seven.

  “I couldn’t be with a man who didn’t acknowledge the existence of his child,” she said at the time. “What kind of person must he be? I’ve been living with a stranger all these years.”

  Jo had first met Rosie at sixth form college in Oxford. Rosie had been in the area since the age of seven, whereas she was the gauche new girl whose parents had moved there from Worcestershire when she was just sixteen. She remembered feeling terrified as she’d stood at the front of the class while the teacher aske
d someone to look after her. No one had put their hand up, so the teacher had instructed Rosie to be her guide. Rosie had made it very clear she wasn’t impressed to be saddled with her, but after a couple of weeks they had become firm friends. She studied her friend. Rosie wasn’t unattractive, but Jo had found herself in many arguments throughout those all-important teen years, when boys had referred to her pal as “the ugly friend.” She knew it had taken its toll on Rosie’s confidence. They’d spent hours trying to straighten her wiry brown hair and had both supported each other through several emotional disasters too, but Jo knew she’d never needed Rosie more than she did now.

  Somehow, with Rosie’s help, she managed to go through the morning routine of getting the children washed and into their school uniforms. The state school they attended was just five minutes’ walk away, so at least she didn’t have to join the morning merry-go-round of mothers double parking their ridiculous four-wheel-drive jeeps with bull bars.

  Rosie walked the children to school, and Jo dragged herself upstairs to get dressed. Even the simplest task felt beyond her. She stood staring at the contents of her built-in closets for what seemed like hours. Inside was an impressive collection of clothes ranging from the long silk gown she’d worn to Jeff’s last company Christmas party, to a couple of business suits and several casual outfits. She reached inside and grabbed jeans and a T-shirt from one of the shelves. Clipping her hair back with a couple of Sophie’s flowery slides, she checked her face again in the mirror. Yep. Still looked 105. Felt it too.

  Can I blame him for leaving me for a younger model? she thought, placing both hands on her cheeks and pulling them toward her ears. “Yes I bloody can,” she said aloud, scowling at her reflection. Her insides felt like they were on a constant spin cycle.

  Tea. That’s what she needed. The British cure for all ills. She headed downstairs to put the kettle on. Ten minutes later Rosie arrived back to find her staring at the floor. The kettle was empty and cold.