One Little Mistake: The gripping eBook bestseller
Emma Curtis
Prologue
JOSH’S DOOR OPENS soundlessly. Six months ago I removed it from its hinges and planed a centimetre off the bottom to stop it rasping against the carpet. And I mean ‘I’. I am very good at that sort of thing. A DIY expert. The room smells of my son; of talcum powder and baby shampoo. It’s warm and dark and seems to breathe with him. The blinds are blackout ones and the curtains interlined so that no light peeps through and it takes my eyes a moment to adjust. He is clutching the paw of his panda; profoundly and sweatily asleep.
I stoop to pick him up, but as soon as I touch him he kicks a foot out and purses his lips. I step back into the shadows. If he wakes now there will be fallout and I’m too tired and emotionally blindsided to deal with it. Instead I go to the window, lift one corner of the blind and watch the raindrops hit the cars and scatter in rivulets across their roofs. The gutters are barely able to cope with the sheer volume of water and puddles are forming around them. The tight feeling in my chest won’t go away, or the sense of urgency that almost certainly diminishes my ability to make good choices. Behind me, Josh’s breathing settles back into deep-sleep mode.
I check my watch then turn around and walk out, closing the door behind me and hurrying downstairs. Josh never wakes during his morning nap. Never ever. He makes up for his bad nights by sleeping soundly for an hour and a half, so I’m safe for a good while yet and I’m only going to be twenty minutes.
I put on my coat, grab my umbrella and step out into the rain.
1
One Day Earlier Sunday, 3 January 2010
AN IMAGE, SHARPLY focused and painfully ridiculous, gatecrashes my mind as I pull on to our forecourt: it’s me in my underwear and a naked man with a middle-aged body and a naughty-boy smile. I’m grabbing my clothes and pulling them back on, getting tangled in the sleeves, apologies and excuses tumbling from my mouth as his initial amusement turns to bewilderment and consternation.
I open my eyes. I’m home now. It’s OK. Nothing happened.
Our Christmas tree, stripped of its baubles, leans forlornly against the dustbins and above me the street lamp throws an eerie glow over the old magnolia tree. It’s coming into bud. I remember when we first viewed this house I was enchanted by the ivory-streaked, blush-pink petals.
In the front window the light from the television flickers across the faces of my family. The four of them are snuggled up on the big red sofa; my husband Tom lounging back, a daughter tucked under each arm; Josh flat out asleep on his father’s chest, his fingers curled round the collar of Tom’s shirt, his legs splayed. He looks like a frog.
What in God’s name was I thinking? I grip the steering wheel, close my eyes and swear. When I look up again Polly has climbed on to the back of the sofa behind Tom and has her arms around his neck. Tom finally registers that I’m here. He deposits her on top of her big sister and jumps up to open the door, Josh in his arms. This is my husband: Tom Seagrave; a funny, occasionally annoying, warm and sociable man. And he loves me. So why?
I blow my nose vigorously. Emily and Polly have pressed their faces against the window, their noses squashed upwards like pigs’ snouts. Tom comes to the car in his plastic gardening clogs. I get out and take the baby from him before reaching up for a kiss.
‘Have you been good?’
I scoop Polly up and hug Emily against my leg, hide my blushes in children’s babble.
‘We went to the playground with Daddy and Amber,’ Emily says.
‘Did you? That must have been lovely. Where was Robert?’
‘Working his socks off, apparently,’ Tom says. ‘Amber left him to it.’
The house still smells of Christmas, a comforting, mixed spice smell overlaid with pine from the needles that the vacuum cleaner has missed. There are still scraps of tinsel stuck between the banisters and the Christmas cards have been left in a neat pile on the kitchen table for me to check before they get relegated to the recycle bin.
I pick them up and absently flick through them. ‘You have been busy. So what did you and Amber talk about?’
‘Nothing much. This and that. School stuff, mostly.’
I glance at him, wondering why he seems to be holding something back, but he forestalls any further questions, asking, ‘So how was my darling mother-in-law? Still baring her breasts and howling into the wind?’
I laugh, relieved and reassured by the familiarity of his joke. Tom pretends to have fixed views on my mum. He’s extremely attached to the idea that she’s living some sort of eccentric alternative lifestyle, that she spends the solstice on the South Downs with a coven of like-minded souls, that her B & B is in fact a front for what is actually a harem of male sex slaves. He pretends to think this because she favours dark colours and loose layering, is prone to extravagant gestures and gross exaggeration, and has worked her way through half a dozen lovers since he’s known her.
‘Don’t mock. It’s mean.’
‘Sorry. I was only kidding.’
‘I know.’ I give him a contrite kiss. The skin on his face is different from David’s. More vulnerable somehow. ‘She misses Peter.’
The lies flow easily, helped by the fact that I phoned her this morning and that I’ve heard it all before. My mother was seventeen when she had me and her boyfriends have been creating havoc with her emotions and upsetting our routines for as long as I can remember. To think I nearly threw all this away for some ridiculous fling. What does that make me? My mother’s daughter?
‘Shame about that. I liked him.’
I dump my bag on the floor. ‘Hah. But you like everyone. God, I wish she would grow up.’ For a moment I wonder if I’m talking about Mum or myself, but then Tom wraps his arms round me, crushing the girls between us, and pushes the thought out.
‘Don’t be so pious. She’s only forty-seven.’
‘Forty-six,’ I mumble happily. I tip my head back and kiss his chin, then think I might be overdoing it and pull away. The girls escape and throw themselves on to the sofa.
‘Tired?’ Tom asks, stroking my hair.
I nod. ‘Knackered.’
‘Do you want to cancel Robert and Amber? I can always do his passport renewal another time.’
‘No. It’ll be fine.’
I feel an enormous sense of relief. Everything passes. That’s what I learned from my mother.
2
‘WHERE’S THAT GLASS of wine then?’ Amber gives me a hug then looks at me. ‘You OK?’