BooksBarbecue
Back What You Did
Chapters (44)
  1. TITLE PAGE
  2. COPYRIGHT PAGE
  3. CONTENTS
  4. PROLOGUE
  5. Chapter One
  6. Chapter Two
  7. Chapter Three
  8. Chapter Four
  9. Chapter Five
  10. Chapter Six
  11. Chapter Seven
  12. Chapter Eight
  13. Chapter Nine
  14. Chapter Ten
  15. Chapter Eleven
  16. Chapter Twelve
  17. Chapter Thirteen
  18. Chapter Fourteen
  19. Chapter Fifteen
  20. Chapter Sixteen
  21. Chapter Seventeen
  22. Chapter Eighteen
  23. Chapter Nineteen
  24. Chapter Twenty
  25. Chapter Twenty-One
  26. Chapter Twenty-Two
  27. Chapter Twenty-Three
  28. Chapter Twenty-Four
  29. Chapter Twenty-Five
  30. Chapter Twenty-Six
  31. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  32. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  33. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  34. Chapter Thirty
  35. Chapter Thirty-One
  36. Chapter Thirty-Two
  37. Chapter Thirty-Three
  38. Chapter Thirty-Four
  39. Chapter Thirty-Five
  40. Chapter Thirty-Six
  41. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  42. Epilogue
  43. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  44. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

In that moment, I could have killed Aaron. Already so self-assured, confident of his trajectory to Oxford, then some City law firm. How dare he make her this sad, force her to these degrading lengths. I thought briefly of myself, offering my virgin body to Mike, trying to hang on to him with all I had. Pathetic.

‘Did you see it?’ Cassie pleaded.

I started the car. ‘No, darling. I didn’t see it. Let’s go home.’ I only saw the picture once, in the blink of an eye. I’d pretend I hadn’t until my dying day, because I knew it would kill her, to know I’d seen her like that. It wasn’t so much her exposed breasts, small and delicate. It was the look in her eyes. A million miles from sexy – the eyes of a cornered dog, a trafficked sex slave, a girl forced into something she had no wish to do. And I found myself wondering if that was how Karen’s eyes looked now as well.

Cassie said, in a small voice, ‘Mum? Can we go and see Dad? I – I want to see him.’

Mike

The world had been grey for a long time. It wasn’t gone exactly – he could make out vibrations, sounds, flashes of light – but it was behind a thick grey curtain. His head hurt, a lot. His body felt numb, shot through with points of pain. At times he was confused, thinking he was diving, the surface a bright-lit oval far above. Whenever he approached it, the realisation came – something bad had happened. Shame. Guilt.

Karen.

It wasn’t true. What she’d said. It was all such a jumble. Sex that day, in the hot stuffy room above the garage, her familiar smell, the pull of desire and shame. Telling her it’s over, we can’t do this to Ali. Seeing the snap of pain in her eyes. Impossible not to care for her, after years of intimacy. Missing her, even, on nights beside Ali on the sofa, watching yet another Scandi drama with subtitles.

What did he remember of that night? So little. The dinner in the garden, Ali going off to bed, mealy-mouthed, and pregnant, puffy Jodi. The four of them, Karen always one of the boys, laughing too loud, resting her feet on Bill. Trying to make Mike jealous maybe, and perhaps it had worked. The soft caress of the night air, the beautiful house and garden he’d worked so hard for, he’d earned.