‘Of course. Whenever. If you ask.’ Eleanor bounced the phrase back casually, knowing Kat was laying down her terms. She had in fact reached a state of longing to be gone, to be on her own. Ill or not, her sister was such hard work, so ready to fight, so good at making her feel there was something she needed to apologise for, if only she could figure out what it was.

‘Okay. Cool.’

‘Or you could come and see me in London,’ Eleanor offered, ‘take a break from Howard and the kids. We could have lunch or something.’

‘Oh yes, we must,’ Kat cried, as if she might even mean it, when they both knew she didn’t.

* * *

Ten minutes into Eleanor’s train journey, a text came through from Megan.

You okay? Long time no hear. xx

Eleanor gripped her phone, seeing again her friend’s husband’s big, square, dismayed face peering at her over the mangled sheets of her bed linen three weeks before. The morning mortification had been mutual. Billy had loped off like a whipped dog and she had stumbled to the toilet to throw up with a violence that she knew was as much about self-abhorrence as her hangover. The Trevor Downs commission had come through on the very same day; a flimsy lifeline, it had felt like, the pretext she needed to clean her act up and start again.

Eleanor stared at the message. She was pretty sure Billy wouldn’t say anything, but that didn’t make it any better or easier. Slowly she typed back:

Fine. Mad busy. In touch soon. xx

Megan would also have noticed her recent lack of communication on social media, she knew. Shutting the world out was a lot easier, she was discovering. Fewer mistakes got made. Less money got spent. Aloneness was the key.

Eleanor rested her forehead against the cold grimy train window, her mind drifting back to Kat’s bullishness over Nick’s email. Yet it had been easy in the end. Words pinging into an inbox on another continent. Sunny sentences. The past was the past after all, a foreign country, as someone a lot wiser than her had once pointed out.

She closed her eyes with a sigh. Human lives were so messy, that was the trouble. It all began simply enough: one got born, but then stuff started to happen, blocking pathways, burying love and truth till only a fraction of anything made sense.

We hope you enjoyed this exclusive extract. Good Girls is available to buy now by clicking on the image below:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amanda Brookfield is the bestselling author of 15 novels including Good Girls and Before I Knew You, and a memoir, For the Love of a Dog starring her Golden Doodle Mabel. She lives in London.

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