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

When he’d told his parents what they were planning to do, IVF with donor sperm – Jodi had told them, Callum hadn’t wanted to, but she was excited, and he thought maybe she’d wanted to make the point that it wasn’t her with the little problem, the issue – his mother had faltered, then gushed. ‘Oh, how lovely. Isn’t it wonderful, the things they can do these days.’

His father had said nothing. Later, in the garden, while Callum pretended he knew how to cut grass, he had said, ‘I don’t know how you can do it. Another man’s bairn.’

‘It’ll be mine,’ he’d said, wishing he felt it.

‘You’ll always know it isn’t,’ his father had said, and Callum felt it all well up in him, the years of rage, feeling so small and so stupid, even now when he could buy his parents’ house twice over, knowing he’d never measure up to his father, because he couldn’t fix things and build things and ejaculate working sperm. He’d said nothing, but it was in there, moving under a thin layer like an iced-over river. Getting restless.

Then, that night. Karen so hot and flirty, her legs bare. Sexy still at her age, when Jodi was a whale and Ali was so prim and proper. Ali had always been the good girl. Even Jodi, quiet as she was, had once had her wild side too. Before the lack of babies had soured and killed it between them. Before she realised his cock was no use to her for what she needed. When she’d lumbered up to bed that night, she’d hissed at him. Actually hissed with disgust. ‘You better not come stumbling in to bed pissed like that. It’s not good for the baby if I get woken up.’

‘But where am I meant to sleep?’ He’d heard his own little-boy voice, pathetic and whiny. His father would have hit him for that.

‘I don’t care. Sleep on the sofa. Sleep in the garden.’ She’d thrown him a contemptuous look over her shoulder. ‘Sleep with Karen. Seems like that’s what you want. Not that she’d have you.’

It was the not that she’d have you that rankled. Even his pregnant wife, leaking and enormous, wasn’t worried other women would want him. No one wanted him. Even the women in the office and the hotels, they’d been paid, hadn’t they? One way or the other.