Chapters (50)
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication Page
- Contents
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Ninteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Epilogue
- Letter From the Author
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
I stood up to go to the loo, and had to hold on to the back of a nearby chair to steady myself.
‘Whoa,’ I said.
Sasha squinted up at me. ‘Where are you going?’
‘To find my flesh-coloured body suit.’
She laughed again as I staggered to the bathroom. As I peed, I felt my pockets for my phone, then remembered Sasha still had it. I closed my eyes and swayed. I really was drunk. I wanted to lie down. Lie down and never get up.
When I re-entered the living room, a half-formed joke about the sociology student in my head, Sasha was sitting up, a serious, but still inebriated, expression on her face.
‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ she said.
‘What is it?’ I sat down on the sofa beside her.
‘It’s about Lance.’ She took a big gulp of vodka. She was drinking it neat now. I hadn’t seen her this drunk for a long time.
‘What about him?’
She looked at me. ‘Something I haven’t told you. When our affair ended, he – he tried to kill me.’
Thirty-five
Thirty-five
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ I said as softly as I could.
She nodded, not meeting my eye. ‘Can you turn the music down?’
‘Of course.’ I got up and turned it down so it was barely audible. I thought Sasha might want some physical space so sat in the chair opposite, leaning forward so she could speak quietly.
‘It happened the day he told me he didn’t want to see me anymore. He said he wanted to meet me at the hotel we went to sometimes. That’s when he told me he wanted to end our relationship – just after we’d had sex.’
‘He waited till after?’
She stared into her glass, where the last couple of ice cubes were clinging to life. ‘I know. Bastard, right? We were naked, in bed, and he told me he needed to talk about something. That’s when he told me it was over. That his wife had found out about us and he’d promised her he’d end it.’
‘What did you do?’
She poured more vodka into the glass. As she talked, her words slurred and she wobbled from side to side. Her face had that sloppy, unfocused look really pissed people get just before they pass out.
‘I told him I was going to talk to her, to tell her exactly what we’d done together. All the really pervy stuff. I haven’t told you all of it. I told him I’d tell Mae that he told me she was an ugly old bitch and that I was so much better than her in bed.’
‘You wouldn’t really have done that, though, would you?’