‘I just need to …’ Saskia rasps, pushing Jason’s arm away. She sounds like Mark, her voice in shreds.

‘I get it, it’s a lot to take in,’ Jason reassures her, trying again. ‘Someone smashing their way in. But just concentrate on your breathing.’

‘No,’ she says, with more force. ‘I need to explain.’

‘She’s got it wrong,’ Beth murmurs. ‘Please; she doesn’t understand.’

‘No, it’s the exact opposite of that,’ Saskia says, wiping her mouth and pushing herself to sitting. ‘For years I’ve misunderstood.’ She gives Beth a wounded stare. ‘I was blinded by her, her big, innocent eyes, just because she’s so beautiful and rich. Because she plays the perfect mother, the perfect wife, so well. But that should have been a clue, shouldn’t it? Because no one’s perfect, so it had to be a lie.’

‘I can be perfect,’ Beth whimpers. ‘If you just give me a chance to show you, to clean up this mess.’ Beth wafts her arms around the room, but her left one knocks the side table. It wobbles with the impact and a picture frame falls onto the floor, the glass shattering as it connects with the table leg. ‘No!’ Beth cries out, reaching for it, not noticing, or caring, that her hands are being sliced by the shards. She stares at the photo. It’s a family shot, all four of them dressed in different shades of white clothing. But now it’s bare, exposing how the photo has faded over time. She looks back up at Joe. ‘I just wanted to protect my family. Keep life perfect for them. Don’t you see?’ She looks down at the floor, her features pinched. ‘They shouldn’t be exposed to people like her. Life’s failures. It could rub off, couldn’t it? I couldn’t risk my children being stained by her.’

‘She’s worth ten of you, a hundred,’ Saskia says, vehemence breaking through her hoarse tone. ‘She saved my life tonight, twice. She only broke in because Beth fed me nuts, tried to poison me, so that she could give me my adrenalin shot. And that concrete block was meant for me; Kat jumped in the way, took the hit so that I didn’t have to.’

‘She did that?’ Joe looks down at the woman, an unlikely hero, but aren’t they all? As he stares, he sees movement, followed by a low moan. When Kat opens her eyes, Joe sees that they’re different colours. One eye is bright blue, like the sea.

The other is a light grey, and it reminds him of an early dawn.

January 2022

January 2022

Chapter 57

Chapter 57

Kat