the face wasn’t listening. They used to watch programmes like that together. Jerry Springer. At the weekends. They loved trash TV. They’d laugh smugly at all those pathetic people airing all their hilarious, dirty laundry in public. The affairs, the drama, the grubby awfulness. Awful Jerry. The terrible people with mullets and missing teeth. Those appalling beefed-up bouncers hamming it up and marching around. It was the sort of programme you could really enjoy for an hour or two, before it started making you feel ill.
She now felt really ill: sicker than she’d ever felt. A terrible, grubby drama had played out in her own kitchen and James’s dirty laundry had flapped everywhere like filthy pigeons’ wings, whacking her in the face and making her fight for breath.
He’d talked to the back of her head as he’d packed his bag. Each time he’d tried to wheedle his way out of things, she’d turned her body. Every time he tried to say it wouldn’t happen again, she’d edged further away. Eventually, she’d found herself in a corner of the kitchen, by the bin, facing the tiles and thinking they needed a good scrub.
She’d heard the front door close. She’d turned round to find James gone and Daniel standing by the fridge, with his football bag. Grace had to find a way to tell him.
That his father had done the dirty on her and wouldn’t be coming back.
Grace smiled again at Charlie’s mum and nodded at a story about the funny thing Charlie had said at dinner last night. Her silent scream was nowhere near loud or long enough.
The Wednesday before, at about half past seven in the evening, she had grabbed James’s phone to check the weather for Daniel’s district cross-country rally the next day. She needed to know exactly what to bring: fleeces or raincoats or both. (James wasn’t coming of course; too busy.) She wanted to get the bag of water and energy-boosting snacks packed and ready for the morning. She wanted to be organised.
Grace kept a pristine, and ridiculously tidy and organised home. Everything had its place. If things didn’t work or weren’t needed, they were gone. If there was a mess anywhere, it was eradicated immediately. Her friends always teased her and said that you needed to hold on to your handbag in that house; if you put it down on a table for longer than five seconds, Grace would chuck it out.
Her phone was upstairs. James’s was on the hall table. As she’d picked it up, she saw there was a thumbnail photo on the screen. It looked like a breast. A naked breast! She quickly clicked on the photo and made it full-size. Yes, a breast. A big one. Bigger than hers, certainly. With a really dark, erect nipple. It was just the one. Not a pair. Sender: work. The breast looked like it was lying on a bed, on its side.
Grace had been so startled. What the hell was this and who’d sent it? Work? That was a bit vague. She swallowed and threw the phone back down on the table. Oh God. Was James cheating?
‘What the hell’s this?’ she’d said, furious and unnerved, as James came out of the downstairs loo, fiddling with his tie. He’d looked at the phone and laughed.
‘It’s nothing,’ he’d said. He said a friend had sent it to him, that it was just a photo doing the rounds: one of those photos blokes pass around ‘for a laugh’. Hilarious, she’d thought. He did always think it all a laugh, that sort of thing – looking at girls on the street, gawping at Baywatch-type beauties on the telly. She’d catch him at it and he’d say, ‘What?’, all laughing innocence.
She accepted his explanation, but still, she wondered about it, after he’d slid his phone into his briefcase, kissed her fleetingly on the lips and left the house. He had a very important meeting that day: he was high up in oil. They’d met when he’d been further down in oil and Grace had worked in the millinery department at John Lewis in Oxford Street.
The photo wasn’t especially porn-y. The breast wasn’t edged in black lace or peeping out of red PVC. It didn’t look sensational enough to be something shared over and over, however pervy and childish the men were. It looked like a real woman’s breast, on a real woman’s bed; it looked personal. But, she’d really wanted to believe him. She liked a quiet life. Her, James and Daniel. The three of them. She was desperate to believe him and for life to carry on as normal.
So it had. For four days she’d bought it.
Until this morning. Way before her alarm was supposed to go off so she could wake Daniel for football, Grace had been woken by a random truck clattering down the road. She couldn’t get back to sleep so lay there for a while. James was sound-o. Over his sleeping body she could see his phone on his bedside table. He’d been a bit funny with that phone since the breast episode – protective. He’d even started taking it into the bathroom with him.
She’d got up and, careful to avoid all the annoying creaks in their new-build floorboards, had tiptoed round to his side of the bed and picked it up. She knew his password, tapped it in and swiped. There was a message on the screen.
Bleach!
Bleach? How strange. What did that mean? And who would send that? His mother? Why? James didn’t clean – and neither did his mother, actually. Was it a random message sent by mistake?
Then she saw it was from ‘Work’.
Her heart pounding, she clicked open the message thread. From the top of the screen, in their jaunty speech bubbles, the messages went like this:
Great night on Thursday!
Mmm. Great, great night! Thank u 
Did you get that gravy off your blouse?
Blouse? When was I wearing a blouse? ;-)
At dinner, sexy!
Oh yes I remember! Briefly. Yes, I managed to get it off.
With a lot of scrubbing? Friction?
Funny. Ha.
Then in the same grey reply bubbles:
No.
Bleach!
James stirred in his sleep, made one of his little noises. Grace carefully placed his phone back on the bedside table, walked into the en-suite bathroom and quietly threw up.
When she’d staggered back into the bedroom, her face red, her eyes bloodshot, her hands shaking and an awful taste in her mouth, she’d paced, left to right, right to left. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening.
This was happening.
She’d sat on the bed, on James’s feet.
‘Ow!’
‘Wake up.’
He harrumphed, turned over and pulled the duvet over his head.
‘Wake up!’
‘What?!’
‘Wake up, NOW!’ She was hissing;
