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Back The Other Husband Save as PDF
Chapters (67)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. PROLOGUE
  4. PART ONE
  5. ONE
  6. TWO
  7. THREE
  8. FOUR
  9. FIVE
  10. SIX
  11. SEVEN
  12. EIGHT
  13. NINE
  14. TEN
  15. ELEVEN
  16. TWELVE
  17. THIRTEEN
  18. FOURTEEN
  19. FIFTEEN
  20. SIXTEEN
  21. SEVENTEEN
  22. PART TWO
  23. EIGHTEEN
  24. NINETEEN
  25. TWENTY
  26. TWENTY-ONE
  27. TWENTY-TWO
  28. TWENTY-THREE
  29. TWENTY-FOUR
  30. TWENTY-FIVE
  31. TWENTY-SIX
  32. TWENTY-SEVEN
  33. TWENTY-EIGHT
  34. TWENTY-NINE
  35. PART THREE
  36. THIRTY
  37. THIRTY-ONE
  38. THIRTY-TWO
  39. THIRTY-THREE
  40. THIRTY-FOUR
  41. THIRTY-FIVE
  42. THIRTY-SIX
  43. THIRTY-SEVEN
  44. THIRTY-EIGHT
  45. THIRTY-NINE
  46. PART FOUR
  47. FORTY
  48. FORTY-ONE
  49. FORTY-TWO
  50. FORTY-THREE
  51. FORTY-FOUR
  52. FORTY-FIVE
  53. FORTY-SIX
  54. FORTY-SEVEN
  55. FORTY-EIGHT
  56. FORTY-NINE
  57. FIFTY
  58. FIFTY-ONE
  59. FIFTY-TWO
  60. FIFTY-THREE
  61. FIFTY-FOUR
  62. EPILOGUE
  63. Mailing list
  64. A Letter from Kathryn
  65. Acknowledgements
  66. About the Author
  67. Also by Kathryn Croft

Perhaps it is this image – Jackson seeming shrunken and forlorn – which compels her to say what she says next. ‘I’ve had an idea. Why don’t you stay the night? Both of you? There’s plenty of space and it will save you driving home so late.’ Her offer is out there now, and she’s glad it is, even though she hasn’t planned this.

‘Oh, thanks that’s really sweet but I—’

‘Please, Mum,’ Jackson interrupts. ‘Please.’

Holly looks at Jackson, then back at Sienna. ‘Oh, I don’t know. We can’t impose on Sienna like this.’

‘You wouldn’t be,’ Sienna says. ‘You’d be doing me a favour – I could really do with the company.’

Holly smiles. ‘Well, I guess Jackson could stay one night, but I’ve got an early meeting tomorrow, so I need to get home and prepare. Would that be okay?’

‘Of course,’ Sienna says. This will be the chance for her to truly bond with Jackson. It will do her some good to have someone else to focus on, someone to look after.

‘Thanks, Mum,’ Jackson says, smiling for the first time this evening. ‘Thanks, Sienna.’

They’re still up at eleven p.m., watching Spiderman. Jackson has told her that he loved watching it with Greg, that it reminds him of those evenings when they had movie nights. She’d rarely joined them, believing that it was their special time together and she should give them space to be alone.

The film is almost finished when there’s a knock at the door. Her first reaction is panic; nobody she knows would have a good reason to come over this late, and there have been no messages on her phone from anyone. Jackson glances at her.

‘I’ll just get that,’ she says. ‘You carry on watching.’

There’s no one there when she opens the front door, and no cars that don’t belong on the street. Strange. She walks down the path to the end of the front garden, just to be sure, and all is calm and still.

Back in the house, she beings to wonder if she’s imagined it. Whoever it was hadn’t pressed the doorbell; it was only a knock she’d thought she’d heard. Paranoia, she thinks. She’d opened the door quickly, not leaving enough time for someone to have run off, out of sight.

‘Jackson, did you hear someone knocking on the door just now?’

He shrugs. ‘Don’t know. Maybe. Who was it?’

‘Oh, nothing important.’

In the kitchen, she sits down and buries her head in her hands. Wild and uncontrollable anxiety builds inside her, and she struggles to get a hold on it.

Jackson is here. How is she going to keep him safe?

THIRTY-EIGHT

Abby