Read Online The Bridesmaid Pact by Julia Williams - Free Book Online Page B

gave me a perfunctory peck on the cheek. It was an action quite without affection, but he always kissed me when he came in the door. He smelt of booze. Great. He’d obviously been having another ‘business’ lunch. Lord knows what business they actually did at those lunches. It never ceased to amaze me how Steve kept down his job as a financial advisor. But he was a smoothoperator, and even in these dicey financial times, he always seemed to come up smelling of roses.
    ‘What’s for tea?’ he asked, going to the fridge and opening a can of beer.
    ‘Sorry, I haven’t got there yet,’ I said. I’d barely sat down since picking the kids up from school. We’d rushed straight to the swimming pool after school, then I’d called in on Steve’s mum who’d been in her usual panic about unpaid bills. When Steve’s dad was alive he’d dealt with all the paperwork, and even though he’d been dead for five years now, Maggie still couldn’t get to grips with it. While I was there she’d let slip something that had un settled me rather.
    ‘Did you have a nice time when you were away, dear?’ she said, once I’d established that she didn’t need to write a cheque for her council tax as she paid it by direct debit, and her gas wasn’t going to get cut off because she was a week late paying her bill. I hadn’t seen Maggie since before going to Euro Disney three weeks earlier, as Steve and I had booked a week in Center Parcs with the kids over the Easter holidays. I wondered afterwards why we’d gone. The boys had had a great time, but Steve barely spoke to me for the whole time we were away.
    ‘Yes it was great, thanks,’ I said. ‘And Steve did a brilliant job with the kids. I couldn’t believe how tidy the house was when I got back.’
    ‘Well, they weren’t there that much of course,’ said Maggie. ‘They came to me for their tea on Saturday, and of course, they were out all day on Sunday.’
    ‘Oh?’ I said. Odd. The kids hadn’t said anything about going out for the day, nor about having tea at Maggie’s. ‘That’s nice, guys. Did Daddy take you on a treat?’
    ‘We went to the zoo and I had an ice cream and saw a gorilla,’ said William proudly.
    ‘Shhh!’ Sam furiously dug William in the ribs. ‘You know you weren’t supposed to say anything about that.’
    ‘Why not?’ My heart lurched suddenly. Why was Steve keeping secrets from me, and getting the kids to lie?
    ‘We met Daddy’s friend and he said you wouldn’t like it,’ said William.
    ‘I bet he did,’ I said grimly. This was it, the moment that I’d been dreading for months. I’d suspected Steve was cheating on me again, but he’d laughed at my suspicions. Now I knew he was definitely up to something fishy. But getting the kids to lie to me. That was below the belt, even for Steve.
    ‘Oh dear,’ Maggie flapped about looking uncomfortable. ‘Have I said something I shouldn’t?’
    Maggie had many faults, not least her inability to manage her domestic affairs without our help, but she was pretty astute about her son. I’d never told her Steve had cheated on me, but from things she’d said over the years, I was pretty sure she knew.
    ‘No, of course not, Maggie,’ I smoothed things over, my speciality that. ‘Steve must have forgotten to mention it.’
    And now, here I was, watching my errant husband fill himself up on beer, and wondering how on earth I was going to mention the elephant in the room. Because I was sick of his lies, and his promises to do better, and his insistence that if he strayed it was somehow my fault. I’d stuck with him for so long because of the kids, but now he was making them deceive me. I’d been a doormat long enough. Time to stand up for myself.
    ‘You didn’t mention you’d taken the kids to the zoo,’I said casually, once the boys were in bed, and Steve was flopped out in front of the football.
    ‘So?’ Steve lied so flippantly and easily. ‘I forgot. It’s not a