My Husband Kissed His Girl Best Friend in Front of 200 People, So I Filed for Divorce novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Lemon Drizzle

I opened the front door with the album under my arm.

Sandra's Honda was parked across the road, outside number twelve.

She was sitting in it with both hands on the wheel, in her cardigan, at seven in the morning.

She'd been waiting to see if I'd come out.

I stood on my step and looked at her.

After a long time, she got out of the car.

She came up the path slowly. No cake tin this time.

"Kitchen," I said.

She'd sat at Gran's table a hundred times.

She sat at it now, knees together, handbag on her lap.

I put the kettle on, because some things are older than being angry.

I put the album on the table between us.

"You helped choose the photographs," I said.

"Yes."

"Show me."

She opened it with shaking fingers.

Alfie and Steph at nineteen, in fancy dress. Alfie and Steph in Seville, sunburnt. Alfie and Steph at Sandra's Christmas table, in paper crowns.

Every photo had a little caption in Steph's round handwriting.

Halfway through there was a page with a photo cut in half.

Our wedding.

Alfie on the steps of the registry office, laughing.

The half with me in it was gone.

Sandra closed the album before I could turn the page.

"I'm sorry," she said.

The kettle clicked off.

I didn't get up.

"For what?"

She looked at me.

"For the album. For the papers. For saying what I said on the North Street page." Her voice wobbled. "I wanted Stephanie for him. I always did. I thought you'd go away if we waited long enough."

"Six years is a long time to wait."

"I know."

"And when I didn't go away, you put your name under mine on a loan for her pub."

She flinched.

"She said it was just a formality. That it'd never come to anything."

"It came to my gran's house," I said. "The house my dad was born in."

Sandra started to cry.

Quietly, properly, not the way Steph cried for cameras.

I let her.

When she'd finished, I passed her the kitchen roll.

"Thank you for saying sorry," I said. "It isn't enough."

She looked up, red-eyed.

"What do you want me to do?"

"You told the whole street a lie about me," I said. "On the North Street page and at the cake stall, with the flower rota listening. You told your husband the loft papers were the loft."

I leaned forward.

"So you stand up in front of the same people. At your church fete, next Saturday, when the whole flower rota's there. And you say what you witnessed, in your own words. Out loud."

Sandra went white.

"In front of everyone?"

"Everything you did was in front of everyone. Except the one thing that mattered."

She stared at the album.

"I'll lose all my friends."

"You'll lose the ones who'd have stayed for the lie," I said. "That's not the same thing."

She stood up.

She didn't say yes.

She didn't say no.

She went to pick up the album.

"Leave it," I said.

At the door she turned round.

"You were always cleverer than him," she said. "I used to hate that."

Then she went down my path to her Honda and drove away.

I threw the album in the recycling bin outside, on top of the wine bottles.

Number twelve saw me do it and gave me a thumbs up from her bedroom window.

That evening, Nathan came round to cook.

He had a carrier bag and a look of total confidence.

"Shepherd's pie," he said. "My nan's recipe."

"Did your nan write it down?"

"She told it to me once, in 2003."

It was a disaster.

He forgot to drain the mince and the potato sank into it.

The kitchen filled with smoke.

Nic let herself in halfway through and stood in the doorway waving a tea towel at the alarm.

"Has he set Gran's kitchen on fire?"

"He's cooking," I said.

"Same thing." She looked at the pie. "Oh my God. Is that a soup?"

"It's rustic," said Nathan.

"It's a crime scene."

We ate it anyway, with three spoons, at Gran's table.

It was the best thing I'd eaten in a month.

I laughed until I cried, at nothing, at the alarm, at Nathan bowing when Nic said the gravy wasn't the worst she'd had.

I told them about Sandra.

Nic went quiet for once.

"Will she do it?"

"I don't know."

"She won't," Nic said. "That woman would rather die than look small."

"She already looks small," said Nathan. "She just hasn't noticed yet."

Nic left at ten, taking the last of the pie for "scientific research".

It had started raining.

The house went quiet.

Nathan stood at the sink, washing the dish, his sleeves pushed up.

I came up behind him and slid my arms round his waist.

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