Eventually, Mrs Elvery walked past. ‘Lovely day for a drive!’ she said as she passed, rapping her hard knuckles on the glass, as she always did, and Jules wanted to kiss her.

‘Yes,’ Jules called, ‘I’ve just been doing a spot of shopping.’ She retrieved her tote from the passenger well, waved a cheery goodbye to Mrs Elvery and went back inside the house.

14

One Month After Paris

Alice

Alice sat on the mustard love seat in the drawing room, fresh from the school run in jeans and a jumper. She loved this room; her Paris room, inspired as it was by the sumptuous decor at Ladurée on rue Bonaparte. It was lined with books on one wall, built in around the wide-framed door that opened through to the light-filled open-plan living space beyond. The house was still and quiet, but for the odd burst of noise – birds through the window, a plane overhead, an alarm from a child’s sports watch beeping upstairs – aftershocks in the dust of an earthquake. It felt strange to know that her marriage was over while Ted’s things still littered the house. His clothes in the wardrobe. Photos of them together lining the stairs. How long would it take to unwind their lives? She felt exhausted at the thought of it. No, that wasn’t it. She was exhausted already, and it was another mountain looming. The house, the joint accounts and memberships, subscriptions.

She didn’t think of it as four weeks since Ted had left. She thought of it as four weeks since she’d last seen Mr Hough or her friends. She’d been ghosted by both. And she had no idea why. On the Monday morning, the day after she returned from Paris, Mr Hough left the school without notice. She’d tried calling him but it didn’t even ring and she had to deal with a devastated Charlotte. For two weeks, she’d cried every day after school: ‘I miss Mr Hough, Mummy,’ she would sob into Alice’s shoulder. ‘He was nice to me.’ And Alice would think, Me too, my love, me too.

There were rumours as to why he’d left. She learned from Vita (a mum from school; her son Fred was in Charlotte’s class, and Alice loved her for her flamboyancy and genuine, rather than self-professed, lack of judgement when it came to Charlotte) that she was at the centre of them. ‘Did you…?’ Vita asked. ‘No!’ Alice replied, mortified, because the truth was nothing had ever happened beyond a few text messages, but she couldn’t miss the looks from the other mothers: some scandalised, some jealous, some impressed.

Perhaps there was a benefit in the misunderstanding around Mr Hough. There was a dignity in it, she felt, to be the one in the wrong rather than the one wronged. Maybe she was clutching at straws. Whatever, she’d listened to enough Brené Brown and Glennon Doyle in the last month to know that she – and her children – deserved better than this. And not just from Ted. She deserved more from her friends too.