Page 11 of The In-Laws

Frank looked over at Melanie. ‘Oh, my God, you don’t know?’

‘Know what?’ Melanie asked her overexcited husband.

‘Spit it out, Frank.’ Ross was impatient.

‘Sloane has just been shortlisted for the Goldstone Prize.’

‘WHAT?’ Melanie grabbed her phone, which she had placed face-down and on silent for the meeting. It was blowing up. ‘Oh. My. God,’ she gasped.

‘This is huge.’ Jamie beamed at her.

‘Fantastic news. This will catapult her, and us, into a whole new stratosphere.’ Nancy clapped her hands.

‘It’s good news. It’ll be better if she wins, though.’ Ross tried to dampen their buzz.

‘Well done, you.’ Frank hugged his wife.

‘Thanks. I have to call Sloane. She won’t know.’ Melanie rushed back to her office to tell her favourite writer the amazing news. It was also great news for the agency. Sloane’s sales would really take off now and if she won theprize … Well, it would be a total game-changer. All of her years of hard work were paying off: Melanie had found a golden goose.

She closed her office door and allowed herself a minute to soak in this incredible news. The agency had never had an author listed for the Goldstone before, and it washerauthor who had broken the mould. She took a deep breath and had picked up her phone to call Sloane when Ross flung open the door and strode to her desk.

‘I’d like to sit in on this call. It’s a good opportunity for you to introduce me to Sloane.’

Melanie stared at him. Was he for real? ‘Ross, this is a very special moment between me and my author. Please step out of my office.’

‘It’s a special moment for the agency, Melanie. We all work as one, remember? We’re a team. Your success is our success.’

Go to hell, you arrogant prick. You’re ruining it for me.

‘Ross, can –’

Jamie came to the door. ‘Ross, let Melanie have some privacy.’

‘But –’

‘Leave it.’ Nancy waved him out. ‘It’s Melanie’s moment, let her have it. We’ll all benefit from the sales hike.’

Melanie tried not to look smug as she shut the door in Ross’s face.

4. Amanda

They sat in the car outside the school gates. Theo fidgeted with his phone.

‘Go on in, Theo. You’ll be late.’ Amanda had a splitting headache from another sleepless night. She kept having the same nightmare over and over, then waking up and realizing it wasn’t a nightmare: it was her life. The shame of it all still threatened to overwhelm her.

‘I hate it here in this stupid country,’ Theo complained. ‘I get slagged for myposhEnglish accent. All the guys have friend groups and no one really speaks to me except the geeks and freaks.’

Amanda wiped her nose with a tissue. It was freezing in Nancy’s house and the cold had seeped into her bones. As beautiful and stylish as it was, it was old, with draughty windows. Amanda reckoned Nancy must be part-Inuit: she didn’t seem to feel the cold, and when Amanda had suggested switching on the heating, she had snapped her head off and told her to put on a jumper. Amanda missed their modern, warm, uncluttered, Jo Malone candle-scented apartment. She felt like an intruder in Nancy’s house, someone who was not really welcome but whose help was required. Amanda knew Nancy had never really liked her.

Her mother-in-law had been suspicious of her from day one. Who was this small-town girl dating her eldest? Ross, the bright son, the independent one, the son she had the most respect for. Nancy had interrogated Amanda on that first meeting like an MI6 agent. Where was she from?What did her parents do? Did she have siblings? What was she studying? What were her life goals? It had gone on and on. But if Nancy thought she was going to scare Amanda away, she had been sorely mistaken. Amanda was not letting go of Ross.

In fact, Nancy’s coldness had just made Amanda all the more determined to marry him. She’d doubled down, and within a year Ross had proposed – prompted by Amanda being pregnant. She hadn’t exactly planned it, but she had conveniently (and privately) stopped taking the pill and then,oops, she was expecting a baby. But she had known Ross was the man for her. She just had to persuade him to take the next step. Nancy had underestimated her, and she was incensed when she’d found out Amanda was pregnant and had done everything to push them into having an abortion.

When Amanda saw that Ross was wavering, she feigned shock and hurt and sobbed into his shoulder about the cruelty of aborting their precious child. This baby was her ticket to a better life. She told Ross that if they were married, his mother would have to stop bullying them about the abortion. Within a week they were married in a registry office. It wasn’t the big white wedding Amanda had dreamt of, but she’d got her man. She didn’t, however, get the baby. She miscarried at seventeen weeks with complications that affected her ability to get pregnant again. It had taken her many long years and a lot of fertility treatment to conceive her miracle baby, Theo. He was her world.

‘There’s no point in complaining, Theo. You just have to give it your best and find some people you like.’

‘Easy for you to say,’ Theo grumbled, not making any move to get out of the car.

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