They all made their houses, didn’t they, she thought, crouching down to admire her daughter’s efforts. Real or imagined or woodlouse-sized, they all worked so hard to build and create, to configure walls and doors, to call a place a home, as if that was enough to keep out the bad things. Robyn’s mind flicked back to their own warm, comfortable house on its quiet little cul-de-sac, with their Christmas china in the cupboard and their toothbrushes lined up in the bathroom, and the sofas, gone spongy from the children’s bouncing. That life she and John had put together for themselves, piece by piece, year after year, memory upon memory. She thought of her husband’s late nights out recently, his black moods. She hoped their cosy little world wasn’t in any danger of crashing down. Was it?

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Paula Brent had always been able to put a good spin on things. At work, she didn’t bat an eyelid when calling a small, damp-ridden fleahole an ‘exciting investment opportunity’. As the mother of two teenage boys, she had learned to unearth a silver lining where nobody else could see one, including the time she’d replied, ‘Well, at least he can spell “vagina”,’ when called in to see the head teacher about her eldest son’s graffiti last term. And God help her, she’d been married to Matt Brent for seventeen years, and still found it amusing when letters arrived addressed to ‘Mr and Mrs Bent’. But today, here in her parents’ lounge, the same room where she’d sprawled on the sofa to watch cartoons on telly as a child, where they’d had the Christmas tree in the back corner every single year, everything she thought she knew was being unravelled. Because it turned out there were some occasions when a good spin was actually not possible at all.

‘I’m very sorry to have to admit to you all that I had an affair some years ago,’ her dad’s opening gambit had been, and the words spattered like shrapnel into her brain. Paula had to clutch the armrest of the sofa, because it felt like the ground was tilting beneath her, as if they were all on board a capsizing ship. Wait – what? Dad had cheated on Mum? Dad, the soppiest man alive, had done the dirty on kind, lovely Mum? No. No way.

It had to be some sort of wind-up, she reassured herself; one of her dad’s daft pranks. Because her parents were supposed to be going off on their second honeymoon today, for goodness’ sake! Their hotly anticipated week in Madeira, all sunbathing and sherry; new swimming costumes packed in the cases. He was kidding them, right?