Her father was looking at her with such loathing it made her realise just how disliked she actually was in her family. It was a real shock for her because she had been under the impression that she was better than them somehow, and she had believed that they had thought that too. She glanced at her husband, and saw the triumph in his eyes, even though he wasn’t looking directly at her, and she knew then that, if she wasn’t careful, she would be sidelined by this sister of hers.

She was the elder sister, she was the one who had dragged herself out of this dump, and she was the one who had bettered herself. And she would carry on bettering herself, because there was no way she would settle for anything less than the best.

Chapter Thirteen

‘Oh, for crying out loud, James, are you stupid or what?’

Jimmy looked at his wife and wondered, not for the first time, how he had ended up tied to a woman who he had nothing at all in common with. In fact, he knew somewhere in his heart that she had nothing in common with anyone else in the world. She was a one-off, a complete enigma. No one liked her. Once that had saddened him, he had thought she was misunderstood and seen her as someone he could protect. Now, though, he knew that if anyone needed protecting it was him – him and his children. He had married a bully, an emotional bully, and he could no longer pretend otherwise. The last few months had shown him what his life was really like, and it wasn’t pretty. He had finally admitted to himself that he had no real life, nothing even remotely resembling one. All he had was Cynthia and her wants and her moods. She had taken away everything from him: his dignity, his self-respect, his children.

He was also not blind to Cynthia’s reaction to her sister’s husband-to-be. Cynthia was almost ill with jealousy at Celeste’s obvious happiness and, even though he hated his wife at times, hated her for her coldness and her complete disregard for everyone around her, there was still a part of him that longed for her to love him. Look at him in the way she looked at Jonny Parker. But he knew it would never happen.