of normality began to creep back into Juliet’s household – the stomp of Violet’s feet on the stairs, an argument breaking out on the landing, the tinny cacophony of a cartoon show somewhere on a television …
‘Your dad’s going to be here at seven thirty,’ Juliet yelled up the stairs. ‘Make sure you have your stuff together by then.’
And, miraculously, they did. By the time Greg rang the doorbell four overnight bags were lined up in the hall and four children were in various stages of getting their winter coats on.
Greg looked tense when she opened the door. ‘Are they ready?’
Juliet nodded. It was odd, her standing here and him standing there. She hadn’t quite got over the shock of it each time he arrived to pick up the kids for his allotted weekend. She still wasn’t really sure what had gone wrong between them. They’d thought themselves the perfect couple, and this their perfect house, and then their four perfect children had come along and they’d been so happy … But now she could see how smug they’d been in the middle of all that perfection, how complacent.
She hadn’t seen it coming. Not in the slightest.
It was as if on her rigidly maintained To Do list she’d forgotten to reserve a tick box for ‘prepare for the disintegrating of your life and a painful divorce’. How stupid of her. She was never normally that disorganised.
‘Can I open the car, Dad?’ Josh said, pushing past Juliet’s legs and reaching for the key in his father’s hand.
‘No, I want to!’ Jake said, trying to nudge his brother out of the way.
Greg handed the key over to Josh. ‘Josh can open the car up now and you can lock it when we get there,’ he told Jake. Both boys ran off in the direction of the drive. At least Violet and Polly stopped to give their mother a kiss on the cheek before they went out the door.
She ran after them, hugged them to her, one under each arm, and gave them a proper kiss. ‘Love you,’ she said, squeezing them, ‘and I’m sorry about earlier on.’
Violet shrugged.
Polly gave her an unblinking stare. ‘You know, as shock tactics go, it was really rather good.’
Juliet couldn’t help but smile. She ran after the boys and kissed them as she helped strap them into their booster seats in the back of Greg’s car.
When the doors were closed, the kids effectively sound-proofed from their conversation, Greg looked at her across the top of the car.
‘You look tired, Juliet,’ he said as he knocked on the window and signalled for Josh to return his keys. ‘Maybe you should try to chill out a little instead of doing the whole Christmas rigmarole this year?’
The smile immediately dropped from Juliet’s face. Oh, he sounded so polite and reasonable. So polite and reasonable she wanted to knock his block off. He still thought he had a say about how she behaved, or could comment on how she looked? Seriously? He’d given up that right when he’d moved out and moved on.
And there was nothing wrong with wanting to make Christmas a happy time, when nothing went wrong and everything was perfect. Greg’s surprise exit had put a blight on the festivities two years ago and last Christmas had been their first one living apart, the poor kids ferried from pillar to post and feeling very unsettled, so Juliet was determined this year should be extra special, especially as their father was being totally selfish about the whole thing.
‘Goodbye, Greg,’ she said through teeth so tightly clenched her jaw was starting to hurt, and then she bent and smiled brightly and waved to their children in the car. They didn’t need to know their mother and father were arguing again.
She kept it up as he shook his head and climbed into the driver’s seat and pulled away, but the effort of keeping that smile in place as they pulled out of the drive started to make her head pound. Once the Mercedes had rounded the hedge and joined the traffic on the road outside, she let it all out in a most colourful and unladylike word, the sort of thing she’d trained herself out of saying when the kids had been small, and then she hugged her arms around her to stave off the cold and marched back into her empty house in her slippers.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so galling if Greg hadn’t found it so easy to move on. They’d split, he’d grieved and now he had a new girlfriend. Easy as that. Sometimes Juliet wished she could find someone else, just so she could show him she wasn’t lagging behind, that he had no reason to pity her.
As she stalked into the kitchen and reached inside the fridge for a bottle of Pinot Grigio, she spotted her phone lying innocent and silent on the kitchen counter and her thoughts turned from one self-absorbed family member to another.
She kept eyeing her mobile while she emptied a generous amount of wine into a wine glass and took a large slug. And then she flexed her texting fingers.
When Gemma eventually fell into bed she didn’t even bother to put her pyjamas on. She just stripped down to her T-shirt and crawled under the covers. She picked her phone up off the bedside table and squinted at it. Two twenty-five. She had to be up in – what? – three hours? It was positively inhuman.
She flumped back heavily onto the soft down pillows and stared at the ceiling as tiredness rolled over her, but instead of sinking beneath those glorious waves, she was tossed and turned on them, feeling the pull of gravity on her eyelids but not quite able to surrender to unconsciousness.
Grunting, she reached for her phone and swiped the screen to wake it up. As usual, this was the only time she’d had all day to check her messages. The little badge on the app told her there were five waiting. It wouldn’t take a genius to guess who at least one of them was from. Her eyes rolled back in her head as she stared at the screen, promising a reprieve, but then, rather annoyingly, they refocused themselves again.
It had been the day from hell. Toby Thornton had had one of his legendary meltdowns and Gemma hadn’t even had the time to eat, let alone sit down in the last twenty-four hours. It was her job to sort things out again, to charm their star into setting foot on set again, and it was taking every last ounce of her resources to make that happen. Millions of dollars were at stake. She didn’t have time to indulge Juliet’s petty moans about the right kind of ivy or whether they should have a red or gold theme for the Christmas table settings.
She couldn’t deal with her sister now. She needed a bit of down time first, so she decided to check Facebook instead.
Cute cats who couldn’t spell … Sick-making chain-posts about how wonderful women friends were … Her cousin Shelley’s dog dressed in a party hat … Yada, yada, yada.
But then Gemma stopped scrolling and blinked. Holding her breath, she went back up and had a proper look at the photo in her timeline.
It was Michael. Damn, he looked good. Even though it had been seven months since they’d split, she still felt a little jolt go through her.
He’d look even better if he wasn’t wrapped around some trollop with glossy brown hair and a wide smile. Well, not wrapped around wrapped around. He was hugging her from the back, his arms draped over her shoulders like he was a preppy cardigan. Their cheeks were pressed together and they were laughing at the camera.
Cow.
Even though she knew she shouldn’t, she tapped
