I woke up on Monday morning and finally let myself exhale. It was a relief to be back in my own bed,
even though I’d never have admitted it to Nick: I pretended that I adored the hushed luxury of our
Parisian suite, that I’d loved sipping champagne out of elegant coupe glasses and sucking oysters from
their shells. The truth was, it felt like we were performers in a dodgy am-dram production of a Noël
Coward play, the set wobbling, our lines hard to recall. All I could do was silently seethe about Amber,
about the way she’d stolen my most important role from me. I barely cared about my business now, and
celebrating Nick’s financial triumph felt tasteless. I was Rachel’s mother. I had no idea it was a job I
could be fired from, a job where a new recruit could slip into my seat.
Nick had bounded out of bed as soon as the alarm went off, and was now singing Bruce Springsteen
tunelessly in the shower: his relentless positivity, as sincere as an American game show host, was really
starting to grate. His phone started up, and I let it ring out, but as soon as the message be ep had sounded,
it began to ring again. On the third cycle, I swung myself out of bed and went to find it. Maybe he really
did mean it about this new start: it wasn’t like him to leave it in such easy reach. The number was
regional and didn’t come with a name.
‘Nick Appleby’s phone,’ I said tersely. ‘I need to speak to him,’ said an equally abrupt Northern man.
‘He’s not available right now,’ I said, clipped. ‘Who shall I tell him was calling?’ ‘You need to go and
find him,’ demanded the man. ‘This is urgent.’ ‘He’s not available,’ I r epeated. ‘I’m his wife. I can give
him a message.’ ‘He needs to take this call,’ he said. ‘I’m calling from Carter & Lyle solicitors.’
Before I had time to tell him about his lack of manners, Nick emerged from the en-suite, a white towel
wrapped around his middle-aged spread. ‘There’s a very rude man on the phone for you,’ I said, holding
it out to him, ensuring my voice would carry. Nick rolled his eyes, part amusement, part irritation.
‘Hello,’ he said. Then his face turned to stone, and our life turned upside down all over again.
The entire transaction for the Hutton sale, all three million, had disappeared from the client account
before it had reached the vendor’s solicitor. Of course we assumed at first it was a mistake, Nick making
phone call after phone call, telling people his professional r eputation had been stained and angrily
demanding answers. All the while, Sophie was calling me. At first I let the calls drop, but then I thought
how comforting it would be to hear her voice. My sweet, biddable youngest girl.
‘Darling, we’re having a nightmare,’ I said when I picked it up. ‘That big property sale of Dad’s we’ve
been celebrating has had some weird glitch. The money’s gone missing and—’ Sophie cut across me. ‘I
need to talk to you, Mum,’ she said. ‘I saw Rachel at the weekend.’ My heart plummeted. She’d invited
Rachel – in all her vicious, drunken glory – to her hen night, and left me out in the cold.
‘Oh, did you?’ I said, icy. ‘Yes, and I need to talk to you face to face about what she told me. You’re
home, right? I’m driving over now.’ Before I had a chance to remind her who the parent was in this
scenario, she’d hung up on me. I stood there, holding the phone dumbly, watching Nick go beetroot red
as yet another person refused to let him off the hook.
So much for letting myself exhale. Sophie marched past me when she arrived, heading straight through
to the kitchen. Nick was still barking into the phone, and she cast him a look of such
uncharacteristic contempt that my blood ran cold. She was barely looking at me at all. She turned the
lock on the French windows and st epped out into the garden. All I could do was scuttle after her. ‘A
“hello” might be nice,’ I said. ‘An enquiry after what your father’s dealing with.’ Sophie’s face was so
screwed up with rage that she was almost unrecognizable.
An angry Gollum in a navy winter coat. ‘I don’t owe you anything,’ she hissed. ‘None of us do.’ I tried
to quell the dread that was welling up inside me. Sophie was as malleable as plasticine. I’d made her
that way. ‘Darling, what are you talking about?’ I said, ke eping my voice deliberately warm. I breached
contact, touching her arm through her sleeve. ‘We all know that Rachel’s unwell right now. It’s
destabilizing for every single one of us in this family. That’s why we need to take such good care of
each other.’
Sophie slowly backed away from me, like a rescue dog trapped in a cage. ‘I don’t think Rachel’s the
mad one anymore,’ she said, her face devoid of love, and my heart plummeted. ‘I know what you did,
Mum, and I know you’re going to go through the whole rigmarole of denying it – flattering me and then
trying to scare me – but it’s too late. She found out the truth. Esther told her.’
I crumpled backwards, my body hitting a bare pine lounger that we hadn’t bothered to pack away at the
end of summer. ‘What did she say to you?’ I whispered. ‘That Dad and Esther did have an affair...’ Her
hands angrily sliced the air. ‘If you can even call it that, considering she was virtually a fucking child!
That you found out from Rachel, like she’s always said, and you did know it was true.
And then that Esther was...’ she choked on the words. ‘You know what happened – we both do.’ It
sounds like a cliché, but as my life ended, time stopped. My gaze was dragged to Nick, my husband,
bent over his phone, still disbelieving that the world wouldn’t cleave to his will, the way it had always
promised him that it would. The way I had, too, cleaning away his mess like an indulgent owner with a
poop bag. I looked back at my daughter, flooded with so much love that it
almost tranquillized me. Surely it couldn’t be too late for her to be soothed by that? I couldn’t lose her
too. ‘Everything I did, I did for this family,’ I said. ‘I know how it looks to you, but imagine how it
would have been. It would have destroyed you, knowing that about your dad. You adored Esther so
much too. You’re this bright star – this kind, optimistic being who loves her life. Not like me or Rachel.
I promise you, you wouldn’t be that way if I’d let everything break down. I protected you!’
Sophie’s finger was stabbing at me now, and I glanced through the French windows, hoping that Nick
wasn’t witnessing her display. There was no need to worry – he was still obliviously cocooned in his
self-righteous rage. ‘Don’t you dare try to push the blame onto me!’ she shouted. ‘I’m not—’ ‘No! It’s
over now, your control over us. You’ve made Rachel carry the can for this for years – making her feel
like she was making up lies, telling her she was selfish. No wonder she went off a fucking cliff! And I
believed you, not her.’ Her face collapsed with an agony that I couldn’t risk feeling too de eply. ‘You
made me into a terrible sister!’
‘Sophie, you need to calm down...’ I said, risking a st ep towards her. She shook her head, eyes wild.
‘No, I don’t. You need to take responsibility for what you’ve done. What you’ve enabled. How many
lives you’ve ruined.’ Rage welled up in me at that. My fists balled up into stones. ‘You were a child,
Sophie. It was a very different time. It wasn’t all #Me Too and victimhood.
That girl came into our house – a cuckoo in our beautiful nest – and systematically tried to destroy it.’
Sophie looked utterly disgusted, turning towards the windows that framed her father. ‘For God’s sake,
Mum, listen to yourself. He abused a teenager! She was a victim! And you covered it up. Paying her off
– Jesus, you virtually turned her into a sex worker. She’s been left relying on you.’ Her features
shrivelled with contempt, her face suddenly more Rachel’s than hers. ‘And, God knows, no one needs
that.’
My body arched backwards, tears erupting. I buried my face in the crook of my elbow, trying to stifle
my sobs.
‘How can you say that to me? I love you all so, so much. You’ve got no idea, because you’re not a
mother yet. I’ve sacrificed myself to ke ep this family intact!’ I risked a look upwards, convinced that
Sophie’s face would have softened at my distress, but she was like a statue. ‘Just stop lying to yourself,
Mum, okay? We don’t believe your bullshit anymore. You shouldn’t either.’
‘Why did Rachel even decide to talk to Esther?’ I said. ‘She’s always been so hostile to her.’ It
should’ve been my first question, but I’d been fatally weakened. If I’d been stronger I would have found
a way to trash them both before we got anywhere near to this catastrophe. ‘I don’t know,’ said Sophie
wearily. ‘It’s not really the point, is it, Mum?’
Before I could dissect how this disaster had happened, Nick noisily threw open the doors into the
garden. I quickly tried to rearrange my face. ‘We need to talk about this properly, Sophie,’ I hissed.
‘Don’t say a word to him until we’ve talked.’ Sophie scowled at me. ‘Don’t even bother trying to tell me
what to do.’ ‘You won’t fucking believe this,’ yelled Nick over the top of both of us, still oblivious to
our distress. ‘It’s not a mistake. It’s Rachel. Rachel’s taken all that money!’