Russ took a long drink of wine, emptying half the glass in one gulp.

‘Squeaky clean,’ he said again.

‘Will the deal make you a millionaire?’ Jennifer asked. ‘That’s so exciting. You could retire at forty and how awesome is that?’

Rowan smiled again.

‘It’s all got to be ironed out yet, still a lot of back and forth to be done with the lawyers. But they’ll want me on the board of directors – they’ve said they admire my “killer instinct”.’

She made air quotes around the words, with a broad smile.

*

The silence resumed as we walked home.

There were no streetlights, nothing but the bright glow of the summer moon to show us the way up the little road back to the villa. Rowan had pointedly ignored all of Russ’s further attempts to talk to her and she strode on ahead, holding Odette’s hand as the little girl skipped along beside her. Jennifer loosely linked arms with her husband, shooting uncomfortable looks at Russ as he weaved his way up the hill. Lucy was sullen, refusing to meet my eye. Arms crossed, she walked in a ragged line with the teenage brothers.

Daniel drowsed, half-asleep, on Sean’s back, his cheek laid across his father’s shoulder. Sean tried to catch my eye a couple of times, nodding with a smile towards our slumbering son.

But I kept my eyes firmly on the road ahead.

Chapter 11

11

I couldn’t sleep.

Sean’s soft snores had taken on the slow regularity of deep sleep perhaps an hour ago. He’d always had the annoying ability to drop off as soon as his head hit the pillow, not bothered in the slightest by the low hum of the air conditioning. But it wasn’t the barely perceptible noise of chilled air circulating that was keeping me awake.

Every time I closed my eyes, I started to feel sick. So instead, I stared up at the darkness, crisp cotton sheets cool against my skin, my mind shifting through an endless carousel of possibilities: round and round, and then round and round again. With every circuit, my inadequacies became clearer. Inadequacies as a woman, wife, mother. How come I’d never seen this before? It seemed so obvious now.

My friends.

Rowan, who was cleverer than me, always had been.

Jennifer, prettier than me, then and now.

Izzy, who was funnier than me, always able to make Sean laugh.

How could I compete against that? What was I good at? What did I contribute? Where did I fit in, compared to them? Somewhere in the middle, I supposed. Somewhere in the background.

Round and round, went the carousel.

My friends.

Rowan. On the verge of becoming wealthy enough to afford the lifestyle Sean had always yearned for and never had.