The Other Woman

Brookfield Amanda

Description

'An engaging, emotionally-charged and intriguing story' Michelle Gorman

No one gets to the heart of human relationships quite so perceptively as Brookfield.' The Mirror

On a normal day, in a normal house, on a normal street, wife and mother Fran has had enough. She packs a case, leaves a note for her bullying husband Pete, and one for her beloved twenty-year-old son Harry, and heads to the airport - and freedom.

In another house, on another street, Helena is desperately baiting her husband Jack into a fight. These days it feels like the only way to get Jack to take notice of her. Passionate, volatile, increasingly fragile, Helena is fast running out of hope.

What Helena and Fran don’t know, is that soon their lives are going to collide in ways neither expect nor understand. And if Fran and Helena are going to change their own futures, then first they will have to change each other’s.

Amanda Brookfield is back with a triumphant, crackling story about love, marriage, lies and fate, and how our destinies can be changed by the smallest decisions. Perfect for fans of Sheila O'Flanagan, Jane Fallon and Jane Green.

Praise for Amanda Brookfield

'Unputdownable. Perceptive. Poignant. I loved it.' bestselling author Patricia Scanlan on Before I Knew You

'If Joanna Trollope is the queen of the Aga Saga, then Amanda Brookfield must be a strong contender for princess.' Oxford Times

Sujets

• Vie de famille
• Parentalité et Éducation des Enfants
• Relations familiales
• Mashups
• Feminist
• Siblings
• Women
• Motherhood
• Coming of Age
• Friendship
• Contemporary history
• Dating
• Sibling
• General officer
• Parenting
• Woman
• Feminism
• The Women
• General
• Holiday
• Contemporary
• Topic
• Family Life
• Romance
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Boldwood Books
• Date de parution: 13 octobre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781838895914
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE OTHER WOMAN

AMANDA BROOKFIELD

For Grace and Ali

The art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us.’

? G LORIA S TEINEM

Part One Chadter 1 Ii Iii Iv V Vi Vii Chadter 2 Ii Iii Chadter 3 Ii Iii Chadter 4 Ii Iii Iv Chadter 5 Ii Chadter 6 Ii Iii Iv Part Two Chadter 7 Chadter 8 Chadter 9 Ii Chadter 10 Ii Chadter 11 Ii Iii Part Three Chadter 12 Ii Iii Iv Chadter 13 Ii Chadter 14 Ii Iii Chadter 15

CONTENTS

AcknowleDgments Book Club Questions

More from AmanDa BrookfielD About the Author About BolDwooD Books

PART ONE

FRAN, MARCH 2019

CHAPTER 1

I

After the front door has slammed, I do all the usua l things. I take it steady. I make the bed, load the dishwasher, wipe the kitchen surfaces , pat some life into the sofa cushions, tidy the mess from Pete and Harry’s footb all-watching the night before – the cans of beer and pizza boxes – and run the hoover a long the passageway to suck up any stray mud-crumbs. It is only when I pile Suki’s bowl with extra food – her tea as well as breakfast – that I realise there is a wobble inside me, ready to red uce me to a jelly if I let it. I am not a risk-taker – life – Pete – has not allowed for that – and yet here I am. I breathe as much air into my lungs as I can and ex hale slowly. Suki appears, threading her black tail between my shins, mewing. I bend down to touch her and she headbutts my hand, hungry for love, as always. Her head is hard as a coconut and her whiskers prickly. ‘You’ll be fine, you’ll see,’ I whisper, glad she’s just a cat and can’t hear the catch in my throat. Upstairs, I set my phone to Jack’s last message and place it beside the suitcase as I pack. I love the shortness of the list, the simplicity, the certainty.

Passport. Phone. Money. Some clothes. Yourself. We can do this. I love you. Until tomorrow.

Before leaving the house, I check the street like a spy from behind the sitting-room curtains. If Mrs Dawkins is taking Alfie, her dodde ry Frenchie, out, or chatty Dave across the way is on his front step having a fag, t hen I’ll have to be ready. I have thought of this, of course – between us, Jack and I have done our best to think of everything, which is why it’s taken so long to get to this moment. If the station wasn’t so close, I’d splash out on a taxi, but money will be tight for a while and the drama of baggage-loading into a strange car, all that revvin g and motion outside the house, would draw attention in itself – crazy, after all the months of taking so much care. Better to slip out and brave the gauntlet of the st reet. Better to have ready my prepared story about visiting Rob and Jo, my brothe r and his wife, and their motley crew of children and animals in the wilds of Kent.There’s their new baby still to meet, five-month-old little Marcus, and, of course, it’s always lovely to see the twins. All morning, I have been practising in my head what I’l l say if someone asks, the tone I’ll use – jolly and affectionate. Twenty years of marri age to Pete has taught me that at least – how to put on a show, how to say what needs to be said, do what needs to be

one. By the time the truth comes out, I’ll be gone. � If it weren’t for the suitcase, it would be a doddl e. But a suitcase invites questions, even from strangers, and despite having learnt to l ie, it still takes nerve and grit and all the things I do not naturally possess. That this te rrible necessity of double-living, thirteen months of it, is about to end is one of th e things that has been keeping me going. I am free to make my own choices. My life is my life. Jack has opened me up to such daring thinking. We are all just tumbleweed otherwise, he said once, getting blown nowhere, for nothing. I chose the suitcase from the dusty heap in the lof t for its large size; not used for years and with wonky wheels, I know it won’t be mis sed. Only after I have finally left the house, passport and phone treble-checked, the note for Pete propped on the mantelpiece, the one for Harry half under his pillo w so Pete can’t get to it first, the front door double-locked, do I discover that the pull-out handle on the suitcase no longer extends properly either. But I am already in the st reet, sweating inside my overcoat, and it is too late to go back. The coast, mercifull y, remains clear. I set off at a brisk pace in the direction of the h igh street, the case making a horrible rumpus over the paving stones behind me, shouting f or all the attention I am trying my best to avoid. I’m off to Rob and Jo’s,I chant inside my head, matching the words to the p ace of my walk,to meet my new baby nephew; dum-dum-de-dum-de-dumdu m.My brain butts in with an image of Harry twenty years ago, snug in the spotty blue baby carrier, a bag of stale crusts for the pigeons dangling from my fi ngers; days when I still believed becoming a mum would solve everything. A man in paint-spattered overalls jumps out of a pa rked white van, making me start. ‘Morning.’ ‘Morning.’ ‘Going somewhere nice, I hope.’ Behind him, a kid on a bike, bare knees purple-blue in the mid-March chill, does a wheelie, throwing a glance sideways to check for an audience before whizzing off. ‘Yes, thanks.’ I cast a side-look at Annie Smith’s front window as I hurry on, grateful to see it empty. I think about her leg ulcer and the carer-ro ta that keeps changing and have to shove them to the back of my mind. Just as I do Har ry, aged just twenty and his father’s son these days, but still my boy, and Suki , bless her, found by me in a soggy box under a lamp post a decade before, her black ve lvet coat sodden and mouldy grey. That selfishness takes courage has been a new disco very. The bloody suitcase fights me like a sumo, threaten ing to unbalance us both during its thunderous progress in my wake. But I turn the corner and suddenly there’s the postbox on the high street, a red beacon, something to aim for. I slide my resignation letter with its bold, brief outline of the reasons behind my decision into the slot, pausing just long enough to hear the quiet thwack as it lan ds. I do not let myself think of Camille opening it. There is no going back now. All the big stuff is done. Jack’s voice slides into my head.Precision planning, my darling Fran, and we shall prevail.us huskiness on the bottomgot such a voice; low, sonorous, with delicio  He’s notes. The moment I heard it, just over a year ago in the auction house, I thought, here is a man who never flaps, who never hurries, who’s easy in his own skin. Here is a

voice that I could listen to all day. Sometimes, I’ ve teased him about his untapped talent as a voice-over artist, all the money he cou ld earn promoting washing powder and describing four different bits of a cooked rabb it on a plate for a TV cooking competition. He could make a bomb, I’ve joked, more of a bomb than he’s clearly managed from his painting, that’s for sure; though I never say that bit. I adore what I have been able to see of Jack’s work – he’s always reticent about showing me stuff, but it’s obvious how brilliant he is. Five dashes o f a pencil and he can capture anything; and his paintings, translucent seascapes, burning g reen countryside scenes, willowy people, are dazzling. But earning money as an artis t is hard graft, and he is understandably sensitive about that, given Helena’s family millions and how little he and I are going to have to live on. I’ve tried to worry about money too, but I can’t. F or a start, there’s my ten grand from Mum, still safe with Santander and in my name, desp ite Pete’s best efforts. And then, between us, Jack and I have vowed to find work, no matter how menial, until some of the new portraits he’s been working on – the Rogues Gallery, he calls it – find buyers. A friend of his called Brian is going to look after a ll of it while we are away, hopefully finding some takers among his rich banker contacts. Jack already speaks some Spanish, which will give h im a head-start, and I’m going to have lessons when we get there. I’d have had a s tab with evening classes, but Pete’s never easy with things that take me out of t he house after working hours. Winning the battle to join Camille’s book club for school staff took weeks of pleading and holding my nerve. It’s a long time since he rea lly flipped, but the threat is always there, always to be navigated. Even so, each monthl y book gathering never fails to cause a rumpus.Abandoning me, are you? Aren’t I interesting enough any more? Best of all, Spain means Jack will have the paradis e he says he has always dreamed of for his painting: the electric southern sunshine, the big blue skies, the old Moorish towns, the hillside groves of oranges, lemo ns, olives – in close moments during our few, treasured chances to be properly to gether, he has talked to me in raptures about such things, his voice a whisper of passion, his strong arms holding me close while his big hands cup my head and his long slim artist fingers comb my hair. Just to recall such times makes my skin tingle. But the far bigger joy is to have found someone whose happiness and self-fulfilment I yearn for even more than my own, with the added luxury of knowing that Jack wants the sam e for me. Love, in other words, of the sort I had stopped believing in. With Pete, just using the words ‘happiness’ and ‘fu lfilment’ is like pulling a trigger. ‘Sorry I haven’t been as successful in life as Madam would have liked. It hasn’t all been the proverbial rose-bed for me either, in case you haven’t noticed. Have you noticed, Fran? Do you pay any attention to me – ever?’It can go either way then, but the old list of life blows will come out during the course of it : the knee injury that wrecked his youthful sporting hopes, the two business partners who somehow both turned out to be backstabbers, the hateful sports-shop management jo b that was supposed to be a stopgap, Harry dropping out of uni… and somehow, ev ery time, by that last item, I’m the one to blame for it all. I can feel the old fear and anger rising and I don’ t want it, not today of all days. My arms and shoulders are starting to throb. Who would have thought a half a mile could feel so long? I divert myself by picturing ‘Casa Ma ria’, the gem of a guesthouse that