BooksBarbecue
Back What You Did Save as PDF
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

‘Not that I know of.’ And I realised, thinking about it, it was quite possible I wouldn’t know. I sorted the kids and the house, and he did this. Our money. The ground under our feet. I’d been stupid. I’d taken all that for granted, when in reality I had no idea whether it was solid or not, and here we were running about on top of it. ‘Is there a way to find out who the account belongs to?’

‘I’m sure there is. I can look into it.’

‘Are you sure?’

He shrugged. ‘I’ve got nothing to do at the moment. Let me help you. Please. I’d like to.’

It was the same thing he’d told me all those years ago, and I hadn’t listened then, and look where it had got me. But sometimes it takes a long time to learn our lessons.

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen

‘What were you doing with the money?’ I bent over Mike’s face, still blank and slack. Around him the machines beeped and the leg compression socks pumped, trying to keep him from getting thrombosis. I counted the needles going into him – five in total. That seemed a lot. And there I was with so many questions, faced with this wall of silence. He wasn’t awake. I knew he couldn’t hear me, despite what I let Benji believe. I knew he wasn’t there at all.

So these were the facts. Mike and Karen had been having an affair for twenty-five years. As long as I’d known him – in fact, if what she said was true, she’d slept with him first. Jake was Mike’s son, or so she said. That meant they’d been having sex in 1999, for definite. I remembered a Millennium party, everyone very drunk, Karen and Mike disappearing. It sank into my stomach, another stone in the well. More facts: Jake’s bail hearing was currently underway, and soon I would hear if he was being let out, perhaps to come after Mike and finish him off. Mike and Karen had slept together on the Saturday of our party, and later that night, Karen had accused him of raping her in the garden. And our bank accounts told me another fact – we were broke. I was waiting on a call from Mike’s boss to tell me what was happening with his salary, but it was clear a lot of money had been going out somewhere, leaking like water from a dam. Where to? Did Mike in fact know Jake was his son, and was he paying for him all this time? Was the money going to Karen? Was I the only one who knew nothing?

‘Wake up,’ I hissed in his ear. He smelled different. Of antiseptic, and stale breath. His face didn’t even flutter. He wasn’t there. I didn’t know where he was.