Page 60 of One in Three

He leaps up from the table, Tolly in his arms, and pushes the two girls towards the door. I fling myself across the room to join them, and the five of us watch from the doorway in disbelief as the ceiling finally bursts, releasing a confetti of browned pipes and splintered wood. The air is filled with choking plaster dust, and belatedly Andrew shoves us into the hall and slams the kitchen door shut. We listen with something akin to awe to what sounds like the end of the world.

Finally, it falls silent. ‘Wait here,’ Andrew warns the children, putting Tolly down.

Gingerly, the two of us peer around the kitchen door. The entire ceiling has come down, destroying half the kitchen. China and glass and broken timbers litter the floor. The collapse has even brought down a section of wall; rainwater is already blowing in through the gap. It looks like we’ve been bombed with a rocket-propelled grenade.

Andrew puts his arm around me as we survey the wreckage in shock. ‘It’s going to be OK,’ he says.

I can’t help but let out a half-sob. Never mind the financial implications, or the threat from the farmer; this kitchen has been our home for sixteen years. On the wall now pouring with water, the pencil marks charting our children’s growth are being washed away. Tolly took his first steps across tiles now buried beneath a foot of rubble.

Andrew pulls me against him, just as I lift my tear-stained face. For a moment, our eyes lock. He bends his head towards me, and kisses me, and every nerve ending in my body lights up with remembered passion. We fit together. We always have.

I press the flat of my hand against his oh-so-familiar flannel shirtfront. ‘Stay,’ I say.

Chapter 14

Caz

He’s gone all night. All night, without a phone call or text. I almost hope he’s had an accident on the way home, rather than think about what he might have been doing withher.

The irony isn’t lost on me: this must be how Louise felt when she knew he was with me. I toss and turn in my empty bed, consumed by acid jealousy. It was bad enough when Andy went back to her four years ago, after she got pregnant with Tolly. But in those days, despite Andy’s promises, I’d known he wasn’t entirely mine, not really. There had still been a residual guilt on my part, the sense that somehow I deserved the uncertainty and agony of wondering if he’d ever come back to me.

But it’s a thousand times worse now. I’m hiswife. We have a son together. How can he do this to me?

The same way he did it to her, I suppose.

‘Go round there,’ Angie demands, when I call her at midnight, unable to sleep. It’s Saturday night; she’s out clubbing somewhere, and I can barely hear her overthe pounding music in the background. ‘You’re not some sad sack wifey, barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Go over and sort her out.’

‘I can’t. I’ve got Kit.’

‘Stick him in the back of the car. He’ll sleep through it.’

‘I’m not dragging Andy home like a bloody fishwife,’ I say crossly. ‘I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.’

‘Well, change the locks, then. I would.’

Easy for her to say. Angie’s never really liked Andy, though she hasn’t said a word against him since we got married. But she hated it in the months when he ping-ponged between us, despising a man who wasn’t content with making just one woman unhappy, but rendered two miserable. Those months I spent waiting for Andy to decide between us were the worst of my life, like having my skin flayed from my body in tormented, bloody strips. When he finally walked out on Louise, hurt and bitter and angry, he swore he was done with her for good.

Despite what she thinks, I wasn’t the one who screwed her out of a decent divorce settlement: that was Andy. He wanted to make her suffer. He was the one who insisted on us getting married the minute his divorce came through, too. I’d wanted to wait, to put some clear water between one marriage and the next, but he was determined. I knew even then it had less to do with loving me, and more to do with punishing Louise. He hated her so much, he didn’t have room for anything else.

But hatred is exhausting, and takes too much energy to feed. And there were the children to consider. We all needed to find a civilised way to behave with each other, for their sake. Hard to believe now, but I actually felt relieved when Andy stopped referring to Louise as That Bitch, and started talking to her when she picked the children up from our house on Sunday evenings. For a brief moment, I thought we might be turning into a modern, blended family, able to get on with our own lives.

I should’ve known better: Andy isn’t capable of just having a cordial relationship with Louise. It’s all or nothing for him. Love and hate are opposite sides of the same coin. She’s always been able to get under his skin, and nothing I do seems to change that. And so here we are, with Louise pulling his strings, and Andy running over to her house every time she needs a lightbulb changing. For four years, she’s just been biding her time, waiting for her moment. And now here it is.

I stare up at the ceiling, my stomach churning with anxiety. I can’t imagine my life without Andy in it. If he’s gone back to her, I don’t know how I’ll put myself together again.

I must fall into a fitful sleep, because I wake with a jolt, and it’s daylight. I sit up abruptly, my heart pounding, listening to the sound of movement downstairs. For a moment, I wonder if someone’s broken in, and then I hear Andy’s voice.

My initial relief that he’s back is instantly swept away by the urge to leap out of bed and storm downstairs,demanding to know where he’s been. I have to force myself to lie back down, breathing deeply until I can get my emotions in check. I can’t go in swinging. He’s come back, which means it’s not over yet. And I can hear Bella and Tolly’s voices, too; surely he wouldn’t have brought them here if he was planning to go back to Louise?

My pulse slows. Perhaps I’ve been overreacting after all. In the clear light of day, my rabid jealousy seems less rational. Itwaspelting with rain all night; the storm was fierce enough to bring down trees. Louise lives in the middle of nowhere. Mobile reception there is spotty at best. Perhaps he didn’t want to risk driving back in the middle of the night with branches down on the roads, and couldn’t call to tell me. The lane might have flooded. Or—

‘You awake?’ Andy whispers, sticking his head around the door.

Arranging my expression into one of welcome, I swing my legs out of bed. But my measured request to know why my husband has been out all night dies on my lips as I clock the hideous lumberjack flannel shirt and dad jeans. ‘What the hell are you wearing?’

He glances down at himself. ‘My clothes were soaked from the rain. We put them in the tumble dryer, but then we lost power, so I had to wear some old clothes I’d left at Louise’s.’

I can’t bear to see him in them. It brings back too many unhappy memories. ‘Let me get you something decent to wear,’ I say, opening the wardrobe. ‘You can’t go around looking like that—’

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