clothes on it to topple to the floor. She’d spent the entire weekend running around after them all – as usual. But this weekend, it had felt so different. So … wrong. She rested her forearms on her thighs and dropped her head into her hands, anger and resentment spinning through her veins. Since when had she become such a doormat? Since when had she allowed people – and her own family at that – to treat her as nothing but a domestic slave? Once upon a time she’d harboured dreams, ambitions. She’d wanted to travel, have a successful career, achieve something – all the things that made life worth living. But that seemed a million years ago. What had happened to that lively, feisty girl? The girl who had been so full of energy, with a natural zest for life? The girl that had captivated Max Burrell …
Julia had scarcely believed it when Max had shown an interest in her. They’d both been seventeen, in the first year of sixth form. Julia – pretty and popular – had been academically capable, but nothing special. Unlike Max. He’d joined the school the year before, and in no time at all assumed his place as captain of the rugby team and star of the debating society, in addition to smashing all of the school’s athletic records. Undeniably brilliant, he was destined for great things – a dead cert for Oxbridge. Add devastating good looks to the package, and Max could have had any girl he wanted. But the only one he did want was Julia.
It had all started at a house party where Julia, losing her balance on ridiculously high stilettoes, had sent a huge glass of cider over Max’s trendy shirt. She’d been mortified, he amused. She’d thought he’d run a mile. He stuck to her like glue. Then, at the end of the night, he’d kissed her on the cheek and asked her out. Julia thought it must be a joke; an adolescent bet, with his mates sniggering around the corner. But it wasn’t and they weren’t.
Much to the apparent bemusement of the rest of the school, they soon became a couple, ‘Are you really going out with Max Burrell?’ being asked on more than one occasion; and ‘I can’t believe Max Burrell is going out with her,’ being overheard on several others.
Not that Julia was surprised. There were heaps of prettier girls in the school. Quite why Max had singled out her, she couldn’t fathom.
‘Because you’re gorgeous, genuine and funny,’ he insisted.
But, try as she might, Julia couldn’t get her head around it. Every time they went out she almost had to pinch herself to prove that it was real. Not only because she was actually with Max, but because of the way he treated her – gazing at her with a glint of tenderness in those grey-green eyes. Placing his hand on the small of her back each time he opened a door for her. And, best of all in Julia’s opinion, casually draping his arm over her shoulders whenever they walked down the street.
‘God, do you know how lucky you are, going out with him?’ her friend, Marie, begrudgingly muttered, when they’d glanced out of the window between classes one day to see Max striding across the school car park, all long legs and floppy dark-blond hair.
And Julia did know how lucky she was.
The day Max told her he loved her had been one of the happiest of her entire life. Three days before Christmas they’d been ice-skating at a park on the outskirts of the city. Julia, with unabashed bravado, launched herself into the centre of the rink and attempted to do a twirl. Things – perhaps understandably – not going quite as planned, she landed in an ungainly heap on the ice.
A split second later Max was at her side. ‘God, Julia! Are you all right?’
From her supine position, Julia gazed up at him. ‘My arm hurts but I don’t think I’ve broken anything.’
The look of concern on his face caused her heart to constrict. ‘I can’t stand the thought of anything happening to you, Ju. I really can’t.’ He tenderly swiped a lock of hair from her forehead. ‘I love you.’
Those three words caused every other thought to rocket from Julia’s head. She forgot all about the pain in her arm, the other skaters, the loud music, and the fact that she was lying on a sheet of ice. For a few seconds, she and Max were the only two people in the entire universe.
‘And I love you,’ she eventually replied.
And she really did. Had for months but hadn’t dared tell him.
After that, the intensity of their relationship increased tenfold. It was like they were soulmates, destined to be together forever.
That same evening, with Julia’s parents out sipping mulled wine at a neighbour’s party, they’d lain on the sofa in her living room for hours, kissing and gazing into one another’s eyes.
‘I’d like to marry you one day,’ Max whispered.
And Julia thought, for the second time in only a few hours, that she might die of happiness.
Then, in what seemed to be the blink of an eye, university beckoned. York for Julia. Cambridge for Max. General consensus was that they didn’t have a hope in hell of keeping the relationship going. But they had. For a while, anyway. Until … until Julia made what she now realised was possibly the biggest mistake of her life.
‘Julia?’ Paul’s voice bowled up the stairs. ‘Are you going to be much longer? I need to leave in a few minutes.’
Julia swiped the tears from her cheeks, leaped off the bed and began rummaging through the pile of laundry for her husband’s blue striped shirt. ‘Nearly finished,’ she called back.
*****
Half an hour later, Paul Blakelaw’s heart sank as his gaze landed on the clock on the Jag’s walnut dashboard. Shit! Of all the days to be late, it had to be today. The day of the dreaded Board meeting. With his presentation first on the agenda. And now he’d hit the worst of the traffic, he’d be at least ten minutes late. Damn. If only Julia hadn’t taken so long to iron his shirt … Paul grimaced. God! That made him sound like a completely chauvinistic pig. Which he wasn’t. He was actually perfectly capable of ironing his own shirt – which, ideally, he would have done the evening before, if he hadn’t arrived home so late. But with him working such ridiculous hours, he’d come to rely on Julia for those kinds of things. Which didn’t make him a bad person, did it? He was, after all, doing his best to provide for his family. And he didn’t think he was making too bad a job of it. But Julia …
Paul slammed on the brakes as a bus pulled out in front of him.
… Julia had been acting really strangely over the last few days. Of course he’d asked her what was wrong, but the uninformative ‘nothing’ hurled back had made it perfectly clear she didn’t want to discuss the matter.
Crunching the gears as he slowed down at a junction, Paul shook his head and heaved a weary sigh. Until recently, he’d never much thought about his marriage. He and Julia just kind of drifted along. Like most couples, he assumed. Especially when there were children involved. But ever since turning forty – or, to be more precise, ever since his new assistant had started at the office just after Paul’s fortieth birthday – he’d begun to look at things a little … differently.
Which is why he really hoped Julia acting strangely didn’t mean she suspected anything.
Not that there was anything to suspect.
Not really, anyway.
*****
The best thing about college, Faye concluded, was that you had heaps of spare time. Spare time which could be utilised for studying, of course. But Faye had discovered it was much more fun lying – albeit fully clothed – on a sunlounger by the pool at Buttersley Hall, observing Josie’s tennis lesson.
Or, to be more precise, observing Eduardo during Josie’s tennis lesson.
Faye would have been the first to admit that her experience with the opposite sex could be deftly placed in the ‘limited’ category. In Bristol, she and Luke Molloy had been ‘going out’. Which, roughly translated, meant they were mates who occasionally engaged in a snog. But that was because, Faye suddenly realised, Luke was a mere boy. Eduardo, on the other hand, was a man.