I hadn’t wanted to become one of its victims. I had to ensure the storm missed me. Took someone else instead. In the end, it hadn’t been up to me to choose who; fate had already decided.

I’m sorry it had to be you, Amber.

Chapter One

Amber

‘I’m not saying you’ve made a mistake, exactly …’

Barb’s tone cuts through me; it drips with contempt. Of course she’s saying I’ve made a mistake. She’s told me this very thing almost daily for the past ten months. I’m tired of trying to fight my corner alone. I’ve enough to be thinking about without my mother-in-law constantly on my back.

Soon-to-be ex-mother-in-law.

‘Good, because I haven’t,’ I say, without daring to make eye contact with her over my kitchen table. I’m not scared of Barb, and on another day I might well bite, but I can’t risk being drawn into this same argument again right now – I need to shut it down. I get up and walk purposefully out of the kitchen, leaving her sitting, back straight as a rod, bone-china cup lifted to her thin lips. The cup she insists I keep just for her. ‘Come on, boys, we’ll be late!’ I shout up the stairs.

‘I’ll help you with the boys, Amber. I can take them to school.’ Barb’s now honey-drenched voice drifts out into the hallway. My spine stiffens.

‘No, you’re all right. Thanks though,’ I call back. I smile as I say it, so that my own tone sounds light. ‘You can stay and finish your tea if you like; let yourself out.’ I turn to grab the boys’ coats off the bannister post.

‘Christ!’ I gasp, almost crashing into Barb as I spin back around. She’s standing directly behind me; I could’ve easily knocked her delicate five-foot-two-inch frame over. I hadn’t even heard her move. She can certainly be stealthy when it suits her.

She gives me a half-smile. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.’ Her watery, pale, blue-grey eyes seem brighter today; there’s a sparkle I haven’t noticed since the day she found out Nick and I wanted to split. Well, since I wanted to. That’s when her “you’ve made a mistake” speech first began. It’s progressed since then. Now she’s telling me at every opportunity that putting the house on the market and wanting to start afresh, with a new partner, is adding to my list of errors in judgement.