Chapter One
Keeley glanced at the clock on the wall and reluctantly closed her book. Five o’clock. She had only meant to read for half an hour, but somewhere between one chapter and the next, most of the afternoon had disappeared. It was hardly the first time this had happened, and each time she promised herself that next time she would set a timer. Unfortunately, the idea of setting one usually occurred to her after she’d already lost several hours to a good book. She slid the bookmark between the pages, left the novel on the arm of the sofa and headed towards the kitchen, already mentally rearranging dinner to account for the fact that she’d done absolutely none of the preparation she’d intended.
Barbecue chicken would be easy enough. Marc and the children loved it, there was chicken in the fridge, and she was fairly certain there was still enough barbecue sauce unless Craig had discovered another inexplicable use for it. At thirteen, her son appeared to regard most condiments as an independent food group. Callie, at eleven, was marginally more civilised when it came to eating, although Keeley suspected that had more to do with her daughter’s determination to be nothing like her older brother than any particular appreciation for good manners.
The house was unusually quiet as Keeley began pulling things from cupboards. Both children were upstairs, presumably doing whatever children did when they reached the age where a closed bedroom door became a basic human right. Keeley had learned not to investigate unless there was shouting or an extended period of suspicious silence, although the latter was becoming considerably harder to judge now that both children were old enough to entertain themselves without dismantling the furniture.
She liked the quiet, though, and she loved the house. Fourteen years of marriage had filled it with the sort of things that wouldn’t have meant much to anybody else: photographs accumulated rather than carefully selected, a faint mark on the kitchen wall from the year Craig had discovered that wheeled desk chairs could apparently double as indoor transport, and Callie’s school artwork tucked into frames that had once contained considerably more tasteful prints. It wasn’t a show home and had never tried to be. It was theirs, and Keeley had spent years turning it into the place she most wanted to be.
Sometimes she couldn’t quite believe how quickly they’d arrived here. Fourteen years of marriage, two children and all the ordinary milestones that had somehow carried them from student accommodation and supermarket own-brand pasta to mortgage payments and arguments about whose turn it was to empty the dishwasher. Keeley could remember several versions of Marc: university Marc with too much confidence and not enough money, newly graduated Marc discovering that a degree did not automatically result in employers fighting over you, ambitious Marc working increasingly long hours as he established himself in finance, and nervous new-father Marc who had stared at newborn Craig as though somebody had handed him a live grenade and neglected to include the instructions.
They had met during their first year at university, although Keeley had noticed Marc before she’d actually spoken to him. It would have been difficult not to. He was tall, blond, good-looking and possessed of the sort of easy confidence that made being dropped into a university full of strangers look less like a terrifying life change and more like an opportunity to expand his social circle. He seemed to know people everywhere he went, and even those who hadn’t met him appeared to know who he was.
Keeley had taken a slightly different approach to university life. She’d made friends, certainly, and she’d gone out, drunk things that tasted exactly like their cheap price implied they would, and endured enough sticky nightclub floors to consider herself properly initiated into student life. But she’d never possessed Marc’s ability to collect acquaintances everywhere he went. She preferred smaller groups, quieter conversations and occasionally spending an evening with a book without feeling she was somehow failing to make the most of the student experience.
Marc, for reasons she hadn’t understood then and still couldn’t entirely explain now, had noticed her too.
There had been no shortage of women interested in him. Keeley had known that even before they started dating, largely because some of those women had made their interest spectacularly obvious. Marc could have pursued any number of confident, glamorous girls who seemed considerably better suited to him, but instead he’d pursued Keeley. Whenever she’d asked why, he’d invariably mentioned the glasses she’d worn back then, claiming there had been something irresistible about them. Keeley had always suspected this explanation was bollocks, but after all these years it seemed rather petty to keep interrogating him about it.
She was just starting to cut the chicken when she heard the front door open. Keeley paused and glanced automatically at the clock. Marc wasn’t usually home for another hour, and lately it was more common for him to send a message saying he’d been caught at work than to arrive early. The tech start-up he worked for had been growing rapidly, which Marc generally spoke about with equal measures of excitement and complaint. Working in finance meant he wasn’t involved in building whatever clever bit of technology the company was currently trying to convince investors would change the world, but apparently he was still expected to find the money for everybody else to do it.
“I’m in the kitchen,” she called.
There was no immediate answer, only the familiar sounds of keys being put down and shoes moving across the hallway. A few seconds later Marc appeared in the doorway, still wearing the shirt and trousers he’d left in that morning, although he’d removed his tie and undone the top button of his shirt. He looked tired, which wasn’t unusual after a long day, but there was something about the way he stood there that made Keeley put the knife down.
“You’re early,” she said with a smile.
“Yeah, I managed to get away.” Marc returned the smile, although it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
Keeley crossed the kitchen towards him. “Should I be worried? I thought they chained you to your desk until at least six.”
“Not quite.”
She rose onto her toes to kiss him hello, but Marc turned his head at the last moment and her lips caught his cheek instead. Keeley drew back and looked at him, momentarily unsure whether he’d done it deliberately. It was such a tiny thing that, with anybody else, she might not even have noticed, but this was Marc. She knew his habits without having to think about them, just as he knew hers. A kiss when one of them came home was so ordinary that its absence immediately felt anything but.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, the smile fading from her face.
“Nothing’s happened, if that’s what you’re asking.” Marc glanced towards the hallway. “Are the kids upstairs?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I just wanted to make sure we could talk without them coming in.”
That did nothing whatsoever to reassure her. “Right. That’s not ominous at all. What’s going on?”
Marc walked further into the kitchen, although he didn’t come towards her. Instead, he stopped beside the island and rested one hand against the worktop, looking down at it for a moment before meeting her eyes again. Keeley had seen him nervous before, usually ahead of an important meeting or when something at work hadn’t gone according to plan, but this was different. He seemed almost reluctant to look at her.
“I don’t really know how to start this.”
“The beginning usually works.”
Normally, that would have earned something from him, even if it was only an eye-roll. This time his expression barely changed, and Keeley’s unease sharpened. She glanced towards the hallway herself, wondering whether something had happened with one of the children that she somehow hadn’t heard about.
“Marc, you’re worrying me now.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. I just...” He paused and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “I’ve been trying to work out how to say this all day.”
“Say what?”
Marc hesitated again, and Keeley felt the first unpleasant flutter of panic in her stomach. She wanted him to stop looking at her as though he was about to deliver terrible news and simply tell her what had happened.
“I haven’t been happy for a while.”
