Janie:No.

Marlow:So what did Laura tell you she was doing there?

Janie:Honestly? She didn’t tell me a thing.

Marlow:(pauses) Janie, what I still can’t get my head round is what you aren’t telling me? You appear to be covering up something. Or for someone. And I really don’t know why – when things are very serious for you – you’re still doing that.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Monday 13 May – the day of the fire

On Monday night Janie didn’t go to yoga. She’d called Anna to babysit the girls, on the pretence that she was going, but the truth was that she had known the minute she started the car that she couldn’t face two hours of relaxation. Not when her head was spinning at a hundred miles an hour. What she needed was just to get away. Out of the house, because she couldn’t spend another minute there, pretending everything was okay in front of her girls, when it was anything but. She had been doing that all weekend, and now she was tired. So tired, but at the same time so bloody wired.

The previous Friday night Harry had come home half an hour later, by which time Janie was in bed. The party was still going on downstairs, laughter and music weaving their way up the stairs and the outside walls and in through her window, like creeping ivy. She’d tossed around the idea of staying with the guests, drinking her way through it, but in the end Janie realised she didn’t have it in her to pretend any longer. Escaping to her bedroom was suddenly the only option. She couldn’t care less what any of them thought. Harry could deal with that, once he’d figured out she was no longer downstairs. She wondered how long that would take him.

At some point he came up to the bedroom and poked his head in. ‘You’re in here,’ he stated.

She feigned sleep as he padded further in, patting the duvet that covered her as if he really had no idea anything was wrong. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

Janie shuffled, pretending to stir, then looked up at him. ‘I have a headache,’ she lied, dropping her head back onto the pillow. She no longer cared to argue, despite the fact that she was burning inside. She considered there was no point in listening to him telling her he’d done the right thing by taking Laura home, because possibly, in his self-centred brain, he believed he had.

She had no desire to tell her husband he was a thoughtless bastard, because she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of thinking she cared enough to argue.