Shauna dressed very carefully for her lunch date. It was still warm so no doubt the girls would be eating outside on Tanya’s patio. She selected her most expensive couture day dress, a beautiful short-sleeved shift in brilliant pillar-box red silk that suited her tanned skin and dark hair and eyes. She added strappy high-heeled sandals, red lipstick and lots of black mascara.

Then she looked at herself in the full-length cheval mirror in the master bedroom, turning, assessing. Yes, she was a bloody good-looking woman still, even if she was a mother. Men still showed an interest in her, but she didn’t want anyone but Josh. This was the life she wanted now – prosperous, decent. Mixing with people with a bit of class about them. She loved it.

She frowned, thinking of her last encounter with Jeb. She had spelled it out for him this time, made her feelings completely plain. All that she’d been through growing up in the camp, and her doings with the Cleavers – she didn’t want to think about that any more. And now Jeb had accepted that – it was weeks since he’d come sniffing around for the second time – life was going the way she wanted it.

But does Josh really want you? asked that tiny, niggly voice in her brain.

Yes. He wanted her. Sometimes. Not so often now. In the blackness of night, he wanted her and had her. There was wanting, the physical stuff, and there was needing, though. Did Josh need her? Did he crave her when they were apart? Did he truly, deeply, crazily love her?

Sometimes she caught him looking at her as if at a stranger. So did he love her? She lied to herself, told herself that of course he did, she’d given him a son; they were a family now.

60

60

Dressed and ready, Shauna kissed Connor goodbye and told Marta to take good care of him. She’d passed her test first time, so now she had a cute pale-blue BMW sports job to ride around in. She drove over to Tanya’s, which was just down the end of the road but she wanted to make an entrance, to arrive in style in case any of the other girls should be at the front just parking up.

Disappointingly, they weren’t, but there was a raft of other expensive sports numbers out on the drive. Shauna rang the bell and it was answered not by Tanya but by an unknown young white woman dressed in black.

‘Hi,’ said Shauna brightly. ‘I’m Shauna Flynn. Tanya’s expecting me.’

The maid opened the door wide and ushered her through the vast sprawling house.

‘Mrs Prescott and her friends are on the terrace,’ said the maid as she walked.

Terrace, thought Shauna. Not patio.