My Husband Kissed His Girl Best Friend in Front of 200 People, So I Filed for Divorce novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Live

"Put me on with her," I said.

Nathan looked at me over the phone.

On the speaker, the producer stopped talking.

"Who's that?"

"The Wife," I said. "Tomorrow night. Same studio, same hour. She gets her chair and I get mine."

There was a long pause.

I could hear him doing a sum of his own.

"That's a better show," he said.

"It is," said Nathan. "And I'm sitting in the audience."

"You're suspended."

"Then I'll buy a ticket."

The studio was a converted warehouse on the harbourside, all black walls and hot lights.

Forty people on folding chairs for the live audience.

Half of them were in Spain shirts. A few had brought rubber ducks.

Nathan sat in the front row with Nic, his knees up round his ears again.

I wore my good jeans and a white shirt.

No scarf.

Steph came on first, in a red dress, and the audience clapped politely.

Then I walked on, and the clapping changed.

The Sunday presenter was a tidy man with very white teeth who'd clearly been told to keep it lively.

"Steph," he said. "You say you've been bullied out of your own business."

Steph turned to the camera.

She probably had.

"She came into my pub with my ex-husband's shares," she said.

"He wasn't your husband," said Nic, from the front row.

The audience laughed. The presenter shushed her.

Steph pressed on.

"She went through my private laptop. She put my personal finances on the screens in front of my customers. She turned my own staff against me. She's taken everything I built." Her eyes filled up on cue. "I was just a girl who loved football, and she couldn't stand it."

It was good.

I'll give her that.

If I hadn't been there, I'd have believed half of it.

The presenter turned to me.

"Natasha. What do you say to that?"

I didn't make a speech.

I'd sat in Nic's salon and watched what speeches did.

"I've got three questions," I said. "Steph can answer them."

Steph rolled her eyes.

"One. Whose house is the pub's loan secured on?"

She hesitated.

"The bank's paperwork is confidential."

"It's on the Land Registry for six pounds," I said. "It's my gran's. Two. Who signed the guarantee?"

"You did."

"Thank you. Three. What did Alfie tell me I was signing?"

The studio went quiet.

Steph opened her mouth.

She looked at the presenter.

He was leaning forward now.

"I don't know what he told you," she said.

"You told a pub full of people last Sunday that he said I'd never read it."

"Well, you didn't!"

The audience muttered.

Steph heard it and went red.

"Every pub needs a loan," she said, too fast. "Every loan needs security. Alf had half a house. She'd never have agreed, she never agrees to anything, so he called it the loft papers, and his mum signed as witness, and it was fine! It was all fine until she went on the internet!"

She stopped.

She heard it.

The whole studio heard it.

The presenter, very quietly, said, "He called it the loft papers?"

"That's not what I meant."

"You just said it."

"I meant..." Steph looked round for help. There was nobody behind her. "It's not my fault she can't read!"

Somebody in a Spain shirt threw a rubber duck.

It bounced off the desk and landed in her lap.

Steph stood up, knocking her microphone off, and walked off set in the middle of a live broadcast.

The red light stayed on.

The presenter looked at me, then at the empty chair, then at the camera.

"Well," he said. "We have forty-five minutes left."

"I'm happy to stay," I said.

The audience laughed and clapped me so hard the lights shook.

By the time Nathan drove me home, the clip had six hundred thousand views.

By the time we got to Gran's door, it had a million.

His phone buzzed while I was finding my key.

He read it on the step and started laughing.

"What?"

He turned the screen to me.

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