My Husband Kissed His Girl Best Friend in Front of 200 People, So I Filed for Divorce novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Partner

Steph put the cake down on the table so hard that three candles fell over.

"Partners," she said. "Over my dead body."

"It doesn't need your body," I said. "It needs his signature. He's given it."

She rounded on Alfie.

"You gave her your shares? At your mum's birthday?"

"Dad made me."

"Your dad," said Steph, "is sixty-three and drinks shandy."

Alfie's dad picked up his glass of shandy and drank it, looking straight at her.

I left them with the cake burning.

On Friday at eleven I walked into the Gold Hound before opening.

The front door was on the latch for the deliveries.

The young barman was stacking glasses. The older barmaid was polishing the brass rail where Steph had climbed.

They both froze.

"I'm not here to cause trouble," I said.

The barmaid put her cloth down.

"That'd be a first for this week, love."

I laughed. So did she.

"I own forty percent of this pub now," I said. "I'd like to see the books."

The barman looked at the barmaid.

The barmaid looked at the office door at the back, behind the bar.

"She's not in till two," she said. "She never is."

"Then I'll be quick."

The office was a cupboard with a desk in it.

Receipts in a shoebox. A laptop with the password on a sticky note on the lid.

It took me forty minutes.

I've seen messy books. Florists, plumbers, a man who ran a dog-grooming van out of his own wages.

I'd never seen this.

Steph had paid herself forty-one thousand pounds since November.

The pub had paid its loan twice in eight months.

The pub card had paid for a hot tub, a car lease on a white Fiat, a hen weekend in Ibiza that wasn't hers, and ten days in a villa in Marbella in August.

Two guests.

The booking said Ms. S. Yeo and guest.

I printed everything.

When I came out, the barmaid had made me a cup of tea and put two biscuits on the saucer.

"How bad?" she said.

"Bad."

"Will we get paid this month?"

"You'll get paid," I said. "If I have to do it myself."

The barman whooped.

At two, Steph came in through the back with her sunglasses on her head.

She saw me sitting on a bar stool with the printouts in front of me.

She saw the staff standing behind me.

"Get out of my pub," she said.

"Sixty percent of your pub," I said. "I'm sitting on my forty."

I held up the Marbella booking.

"Ten days. On the pub card. While the bank writes to me about my gran's house."

Steph snatched at it. I moved it away.

"From now on," I said, "I see every bill. Every wage. Every round you buy your mates. If you pay yourself a penny before you pay the bank, I'll know by teatime."

"You can't do that."

"I'm a bookkeeper, Steph. It's literally the only thing I can do."

The barman snorted.

Steph turned on him. "Something funny?"

"No, boss," he said, and kept grinning at the glasses.

That evening, Nathan picked me up from Gran's in a car far too small for him.

"Where are we going?"

"Mine," he said. "I'm cooking. Lower your expectations."

His flat was the top floor of a tall cream house in Clifton.

You could see the suspension bridge from the window, lit up over the gorge like a string of pearls.

He'd made spaghetti. It was quite bad.

I ate all of it.

I told him about the books, the hot tub, the barmaid's biscuits.

He laughed so hard at the hot tub he had to put his fork down.

"You're going to take that pub off her," he said.

"I'm going to try."

"No. You're going to do it." He reached across and moved a strand of hair off my face. "I've watched you do three things this week that I couldn't have done with a whole back four."

I put my fork down too.

The flat was quiet.

The bridge glittered outside.

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