After the One, Cass Lester [top romance novels .txt] 📗

since if they’d sold the flat, it would have cost them a fortune in estate agent and legal fees which would have taken a substantial chunk out of the pot. And considering she’d put down the deposit and paid the lion’s share of the mortgage, it was more than he damn well deserved anyhow.

‘But now La Bimbo is pregnant, he wants me to give him the other ten per cent.’

‘Can you afford to?’

‘No! It’d be twenty-eight grand! I’m mortgaged to the max and had to borrow off my parents to buy him out as it was. But apparently, and you’re going to love this, he thinks he’s got a case because they’re expecting a baby and I have no dependants!’

‘Bloody hell, Nishe.’

‘Bloody hell indeed.’

Feeling utterly helpless, and angered by the injustice of Nisha’s position, Charley sighed before saying, ‘I wish I could do something to help.’

‘You have helped,’ Nisha assured her. ‘I only called to vent. And I’m sorry to dump on you, again, but you’re the only one who understands what it’s like to be on your own, financially, I mean, as well as everything else.’

‘I just wish I could do more—’ Charley trailed off hopelessly.

‘Don’t say that, or I’ll feel crap about calling you. It’s not like I was expecting you to magic up twenty-eight grand!’

‘Just as bloody well! I’d struggle to raise twenty-eight quid!’

Chapter Seven

At the weekend, the delivery of the new bed forced Charley to brace herself and deal with Josh’s things in the spare room. She’d leant the flat-packed frame and the double mattress against the wall, but if she wanted space to actually build the damn thing, she’d have to clear the bags and boxes cluttering the middle of the room – it was as simple as that. She made herself a mug of tea, knelt on the floor, pulled the nearest bag to her and began to empty it onto the carpet. Out tumbled the tokens of their lives together… the blue knot cufflinks she’d bought him for their anniversary… a tangle of festival wristbands… his phone and GameBoy (for crying out loud), and then his wallet. The wallet had been her first birthday gift to him. She opened it and her face stared back at her, a few years younger but still very much the same – her slightly self-conscious smile, framed by a mass of unruly curls tumbling down over her shoulders.

She took a deep, shaky breath. She was only halfway through the first bag and she was already struggling. So when the doorbell rang about ten minutes later, although she wasn’t proud to admit it, she was thankful for the interruption.

A woman in cropped slacks and a long T-shirt, with greying hair and a cabin-size wheelie-bag, stood on her doorstep, looking vaguely distressed.

‘Pam?’ Charley’s mind raced frantically. Her mother-in-law never arrived unannounced or without an invitation. What on earth was she doing here, completely out of the blue without so much as a phone call or a text and, crucially, with a suitcase?

‘I’ve left Geoff!’

‘What!’ gasped Charley.

‘He’s having an affair.’

‘Bloody hell, Pam!’ The expletives escaped before Charley could stop them, but beyond that, she was utterly speechless so, picking up the suitcase, she ushered her mother-in-law indoors.

‘Tea?’ she suggested, leading into the kitchen.

‘I was hoping for something a bit stronger. Quite a lot of something a bit stronger, actually,’ replied Pam, flabbergasting Charley for a second time in a minute.

Charley didn’t have ‘anything stronger’. She never kept wine in the flat, worried that she’d be tempted to drink alone, and that was a slippery slope she wasn’t going to risk even putting a toe on.

‘Make yourself at home, and I’ll nip out and get something,’ she said.

‘Oh, don’t go out just for me,’ Pam protested politely.

I’m not, thought Charley. After a bombshell like that, I need a drink.

Nipping to the mini supermarket around the corner, Charley grabbed a bottle of Prosecco then, thinking about it, changed it to a bottle of Pinot, in case it looked like she thought that Pam leaving her husband was something to celebrate. Then, thinking about it even more and remembering Pam’s request for ‘quite a lot of something a bit stronger’ she picked up a second bottle. Then she added a couple of frozen pizzas to the basket, partly to mop up the booze, but also because, judging by the suitcase, Pam had apparently come to stay the night and, as usual, there was bugger all in the fridge.

Ten minutes later, sitting on the sofa with glass of wine in hand, Pam seemed surprisingly unruffled. Only the speed with which she knocked back her drink and held the glass out for a top-up gave anything away – that, and the fact that the total transformation of the living room had utterly escaped her notice.

‘I feel so stupid… such a fool! He’s been seeing this… woman, sleeping with this woman,’ she corrected herself, ‘for years! Years!’

Charley was lost for words, which wasn’t, as it turned out, a problem, since her mother-in-law ploughed on, emitting a steady flow of words fuelled, no doubt, by a much-needed release of tension.

‘Of course, all the time he was working I never knew – he’d get held up in the office or have to go to a work do or something and he’d get home late, and I’d be full of sympathy for him having worked such long hours, when all the while he’d been… having it off in some… some hotel room or whatever.’

Charley took a gulp of wine. Hearing the ins and outs of her father-in-law’s sex life, as it were, and from her mother-in-law, was all a bit… hideously embarrassing, really.

‘How did you find out?’ she ventured, when Pam briefly stopped in her rant to take another glug of wine.

‘Hah! After he retired, he got careless… no, greedy. He couldn’t resist a bit of… afternoon delight’ – she spat the words out viciously – ‘and I caught him at it.’

Charley choked on her wine. ‘You