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She’d blown it earlier, though, before he’d taken Josh and the twins to school. She simply hadn’t been able to stand watching him laughing and joking with them as if nothing was wrong, when as far as she was concerned nothing was right.

“Are you planning on doing a disappearing act again today?” she’d demanded as he’d checked for his keys and phone.

His eyes had immediately turned flinty.

“Is that like a magician does?” Wills demanded excitedly. “I didn’t know you could do that, Dad.”

“It would appear that Mum thinks I do a lot of things I’m not actually capable of,” Jack had responded, staring at her hard.

“Dad goes places without telling anyone where he is,” Jenna had informed them. “I’d call that sneaky, not magic.”

“For God’s sake,” he’d muttered.

“Don’t ‘for God’s sake’ me! I’ve had enough of your—”

“Mum! Don’t shout,” Flora cried, blocking her ears.

“It’s all right,” Jenna soothed, going to comfort her.

“Mum?” Josh whispered.

“Everything’s fine,” she assured him and an anxious-looking Wills. “You’re right, I shouldn’t have raised my voice. I’m sorry,” she said to Jack for their benefit, certainly not his.

“It’s OK,” he replied, “it’s all better now,” and after dishing out the lunch boxes they’d helped prepare, he told them to find their satchels and coats and be in the car by the time he’d counted to twenty.

He’d left without as much as a goodbye—no kiss, no
see you later
or
I’ll call.
He’d just picked up his briefcase, gone for his coat, and walked out the door. Goddamn him, he was behaving as though she was in the wrong, and she couldn’t be sure whether it was that or his continued refusal to explain himself that was making her angrier than ever.

After taking a couple of aspirin, she resisted the urge to call him again, and returned to the office.

“Feeling better?” Bena asked gently.

Jenna nodded, sighed, and shook her head. The words began tumbling out almost before she realized she was speaking them. “I think Jack’s having an affair,” she stated, and immediately regretted it. It was as though voicing her fear was lending it power, somehow turning it into a truth that she knew she wouldn’t be able to bear.

Bena’s eyes rounded with shock. “I’m sure you’re wrong,” she declared, sounding as certain as Jenna had hoped she might.

Their eyes met, and Jenna looked away.

“What’s making you think it?” Bena probed gently.

Taking a shaky breath, Jenna told her about the lengthy phone calls, the disappearances, the refusal to say where he’d been on Saturday. The more she listened to herself the more convinced she was becoming. “It’s been there, staring me in the face for I don’t know how long,” she said brokenly, “and because I trusted him, because I thought he loved me and that he’d never…” Dread cut off her words.

“He does love you,” Bena assured her. “If I’m sure about anything, it’s that.”

Jenna regarded her helplessly. “You haven’t suspected it?” she asked, desperate to hear Bena say that she hadn’t.

Bena shook her head. “I mean, he’s a flirt and a bit of a charmer, but everyone knows that and no one takes it seriously. It’s just a harmless bit of fun—” She broke off as Jenna’s eyes went down. “Who do you think he’s having an affair with?” Bena ventured.

Jenna swallowed. “I—um…It could be Judy Ritch.”

Bena’s jaw dropped in astonishment.

“He admitted he was with her on Friday night, down at the pub,” Jenna told her. “He came back reeking of perfume. He even admitted it was hers.”

Bena was shaking her head.

“I understand that you want to defend him,” Jenna said, “and I appreciate it, really I do, but it’s hard to think anything else after the way he’s behaved. He’s angry with me now for catching him out, that’s what’s going on, although he thinks I can’t see it.”

“Sweetie, he’s not seeing Judy Ritch,” Bena told her carefully, “or let’s say he certainly wasn’t with her on Friday night, because I was at the pub myself and I didn’t see him. She was there, but he wasn’t.”

Jenna’s heart turned over as she looked at her friend. “But if he wasn’t…Why would he say he was there when he knows I’d be bound to find out he wasn’t?”

Bena had no answer for that.

“He wants me to find out,” Jenna said shakily.

Looking almost as wretched as Jenna felt, Bena said, “Have you actually asked him if he’s having an affair?”

“Not in so many words, but he knows it’s what I’m thinking. He keeps saying I’m paranoid, or telling myself stories, but the one thing he’s not doing is denying it.”

“Then you have to ask him straight out. I know it won’t be easy, but until you do you’re going to keep putting yourself through this, and there might not be any need.”

Though she could feel herself recoiling from the confrontation, Jenna knew Bena was right. She had to make herself face it, somehow deal with it if it was true, yet how was she going to do that if he was serious about whoever it was and wanted out of their marriage?

—

“Oh my God, oh my God,” Charlotte was gasping excitedly as she checked her phone. “We’re in! She can see us at five on Friday.”

“No way,” Paige cried, a bolt of nerves shooting like splinters through her own excitement.

“I swear, look.” Charlotte passed over her mobile.
Appointment for 2 people confirmed for 5 pm on Friday. Thank you for your enquiry. Jasmina is looking forward to meeting you. Please see our website for further information and directions.

They looked at each other, round-eyed with awe, and burst into girlish laughter. “We have to do it,” Charlotte insisted.

“Definitely,” Paige agreed. “I mean, she won’t tell us anything bad, will she?”

“I don’t think they’re allowed to. My cousin said she was brilliant. Told her loads of things that were true that she couldn’t possibly have known.”

Hearing the bus doors hiss open, Paige led the way on board, choosing two seats close to the front. Kelly Durham and her gang would be bound to sit at the back, but they had to pass Paige on the way, so Paige kept her head averted and nudged Charlotte about the fortune-teller, trying to make it look as though she hadn’t even noticed the Durmites were passing.

“It’s going to be totally amazing,” she whispered to Charlotte.

“I know, I know,” Charlotte whispered back. “She might tell us if we’re going to get married, how many babies we’ll have, how many husbands even.”

Kelly’s voice cut across their giggles. “Oh my God, it’s laughing. Please someone tell it not to—it only makes it look even uglier.”

As the Durmites snorted and guffawed, Paige’s cheeks flamed with embarrassment.

“Oh, get her with the filthy looks,” Kelly mocked as Charlotte treated her to daggers. To Paige’s relief she moved on through to the back.

“Well, we know now,” Paige commented as Owen followed the Durmites without as much as a glance in her and Charlotte’s direction, “who managed to convince him that it was me who put that post on Facebook.”

Casting another of her vicious looks in Owen’s direction, Charlotte said, “I should have realized on Saturday, when he told me he knew for a fact that you’d done it, that Kelly bloody Durham had got to him.”

“You know what really gets me?” Paige declared, trying not to be upset. “It’s that he could never stand her before.”

“I know, and I’d love to see her face if she heard some of the things he said about her.”

Paige would too, though she knew neither she nor Charlotte would ever repeat them. She didn’t imagine Hayley, Courtenay, or Nicole would either, though not out of loyalty to her, but because they too seemed to be getting friendlier with Kelly lately. It was unnerving Paige considerably, the way the Durmites were drawing in all her friends, though she couldn’t imagine they’d ever succeed with Charlotte. She and Charlotte were solid; nothing and no one was going to come between them.

Hearing a text ping into her phone, she decided not to read it. It would only be something vile from Kelly again, such as:

Faggot basher.

Homophobe.

Two-faced bitch.

Sad fucking loser.

Ugly fat cow.

These were only some of the names she’d been called by text or email over the past twenty-four hours, and not only by Kelly Durham but by Owen and others too. Though she was putting a brave face on it, determined that no one should think they were getting to her, each text that arrived upset her more than the last. Worst of all were the messages that said things like,
You’re just a fucking nobody with no right to live, so why don’t you do the world a favor and die?
Or
It’s no wonder your family can’t stand you, no one can.
Or
You make everyone feel totally sick the way you think you’re so much better than everyone else. Filthy swot! Teacher’s brown-noser.

“Oh my God,” Charlotte suddenly gasped as a text dropped into her phone. “I don’t believe this. Please tell me I’m not dreaming.”

Paige took her mobile and read the message.
Hey you, going to send me a Snapchat? Liam LOL
.

Paige turned to look at her, envious and confused. “Why ‘laugh out loud’?”

Charlotte shrugged. “Do you think he’s taking the piss? Maybe it’s not even him.”

Paige looked at the text again.

“Shall I answer it?” Charlotte ventured.

Paige was trying to make up her mind. “I know,” she decided, “ask him to send you one first.”

Charlotte lit up. “Genius.”

A few moments later, as Miss Kendrick, a stocky yet glamorous young woman, joined the bus, a shot of Liam blowing a kiss appeared on Charlotte’s phone.

Charlotte looked like she might pass out. “Oh my God. It is him,” she murmured. “I am so going to shag him.”

“Phones away now,” Miss Kendrick instructed, “and take out your copies of
Under Milk Wood.
We’ll have a rehearsal during the journey.”

“Oh no!” Charlotte panic-whispered. “I have to Snapchat him back.”

“Do it when we get there,” Paige advised. “We can go into the loo or something.”

Since the alternative was having her phone confiscated, Charlotte managed a quick
In bad situation, more later Cxxx
before switching it to silent.

As Miss Kendrick gave the driver the go-ahead to start the fifteen-minute trip into Swansea, Paige stared fixedly out of the window, willing her teacher to pick on anyone but her to lead the rehearsal. She might as well have kept her telepathic energies to herself, because they’d gone no more than half a mile before the microphone was being thrust into her hand and Miss Kendrick was saying, “Get us in the mood with the opening lines, Paige. Go up to ‘Schooner House dreams of.’ Then we’ll have a little discussion on the syntax. I take it we all know what
syntax
means? Ruby, can you tell us?”

“Uh, it’s kind of like grammar, miss.”

Miss Kendrick sighed. “I suppose that’ll do for now. Paige, off you go.”

Trying not to think of the others pulling faces and gagging behind her, Paige steeled herself and started, very quietly, “To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless—”

“Speak up, we can’t hear,” someone shouted from the back.

“It’s meant to be spoken softly,” Miss Kendrick reminded them, “but perhaps you could give it a little more volume, Paige.”

Wanting only to thrust the mic back at the teacher and tell her to get someone else to do it, Paige forced herself to start again. This time she got as far as “blind as Captain Cat,” when a small chorus of voices began howling and meowing.

“That’s enough,” Miss Kendrick snapped. “Whoever’s responsible, put your hand up.”

No one did.

She waited, eyes shining with outrage. She adored Dylan Thomas—practically wet herself over him, Cullum had once said—so to treat his work to this kind of mockery would be seen as nothing short of a capital offense.

“I don’t know who was making the noise, miss,” Kelly Durham piped up sweetly, “but it’s not the play that’s the problem, it’s Paige’s voice. It’s making people want to howl—you know, like dogs do when they hear music that’s out of tune.”

As the others laughed and Paige flushed to the roots of her hair, Miss Kendrick said to Kelly, “For such an inane and unpleasant remark, you have just earned yourself a report. Now kindly keep quiet,
everyone,
while Paige finishes the opening.”

Somehow Paige got through it, mainly because she managed, by some miracle, to lose herself in the words, as though she were in the dawn hours of Llareggub rather than trapped amongst enemies on the school bus.

“Miss?” a boy’s voice called out from just behind her. “Did you know that Llareggub, the name of the town, is ‘bugger all’ spelled backward?”

As everyone snickered, Miss Kendrick rolled her eyes. “Do you have to tell us that every time we read the play, Michael?”

Clearly proud to have got away with swearing again, Michael Preddy stood up and took a bow.

“I think Paige ought to carry on reading,” Bethany Gates called out.

“Yeah, definitely,” Kelly Durham agreed. “All the voices this time.”