The Other Woman(77)

‘P . . . Pamela?’ I pretended to stutter, as I drew level with her table.

She looked up, and the colour instantly drained from her face.

‘Emily?’ she questioned, as if hoping that I’d somehow say ‘no’.

‘My goodness, what a surprise,’ I said, feigning astonishment. ‘Finished at the hospital so soon?’

I watched as her head and mouth battled for control, searching for the right thing to say. ‘I’m too late,’ she said. ‘Apparently my appointment was this morning.’

‘Oh, really?’ I said. ‘That’s odd.’

‘Yes, I’m to come back tomorrow.’

‘Did they not let you know in advance that your time had changed?’ I asked.

‘Apparently, they sent a letter . . . in the post,’ she faltered. I was getting a sick satisfaction from her obvious discomfort. I thought she’d be more prepared than this. Ready for this eventuality, should it ever occur.

‘Really? How strange that you didn’t receive it.’

How long was I going to keep up this charade? I pulled out the chair opposite her and sat down. ‘Shall I tell you what’s really going on here?’

She looked at me, her eyes like steel, daring me to call it.

I leant across the table. ‘What’s going on, is that you never had cancer in the first place, did you?’

She looked like she’d been slapped in the face. ‘What?’ she said. ‘What a wicked thing to say.’

I ignored the tears welling up in her eyes. I was used to the waterworks. She could bring them on at will.

‘Are you really going to keep going with this?’ I asked incredulously.

‘I don’t know what you’re suggesting,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I think you do,’ I said. ‘You never even went to the chemotherapy ward, did you?’

‘Of course I did,’ she said. Her voice was getting higher. ‘I’m to go back tomorrow.’

‘No, you didn’t, and do you know how I know?’ I said, calling her bluff. ‘Because I’ve just been up there and they’ve never heard of you.’

She wiped a tear away and laughed wryly. ‘You can believe what you like.’

‘Oh, I know what I believe,’ I said, feeling slightly wrong-footed. This wasn’t going how I’d imagined. ‘I wonder what Adam is going to make of all this?’

Tears fell down her cheeks. ‘He doesn’t need to know,’ she said quietly.

This was more like it. ‘You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this. How long I’ve waited to expose you for who you really are.’

‘You can’t tell him,’ she said, as she closed her eyes. Her wet lashes stuck together in clumps. ‘It’ll be the end of—’

‘It’ll be the end of your lies and deceit. He’ll know you for the person you really are, not the perfect mother you pretend to be.’

‘You can’t tell him,’ she repeated.

‘Just you watch me,’ I said, pushing the chair out from under me and standing up. ‘Just you watch.’

I went to walk away, to walk away to a new life without her in it. I dared to imagine my world as it was about to become: free of stress and full of love. I hadn’t even got past her when she said, ‘And how are you going to explain away James?’

I stopped dead in my tracks. ‘What?’

She fixed me with her eyes. ‘How are you going to explain to your fiancé that you’ve been seeing his brother behind his back?’

My blood ran cold as my brain back-tracked to James: where we’d met, what we’d said. No one could have seen us, could they? What did she know? I wondered if she’d noticed that every look was just that second too long, or that every time we met, the kiss on the cheek was just that little bit softer. It was nothing, yet everything.

She was double bluffing me, clutching at straws. I looked at her and, despite the white rush of images that were bombarding my vision, I kept my gaze firm.

‘Are you honestly suggesting there’s something going on between me and James?’ I questioned, half laughing.

She nodded. ‘Oh, I’m sure of it. And do you know how I know?’ she said, turning the tables on me. ‘Because I told him to do it.’





37

I was up all night, alternating between crying on the sofa and being sick in the toilet. How had it got to this? I’d finally found a way of destroying her, taking her down once and for all, yet it would be at my own cost. I couldn’t win this one, and she knew it.

Aside from the intoxicating rage and sickening revulsion I felt towards Pammie for what she’d done to Rebecca, I was also deeply saddened at the thought of James’s ill-fated attempts to seduce me, in an effort to catch me out and appease his psychotic mother. How had she kept him at her beck and call? Why would he have been prepared to do it? It was as if she had some kind of hold over her two sons, one that neither of them was prepared to break.

I felt violated. The very thought of James coming to me under his mother’s instruction made me feel dirty and invaded. There was nothing she wouldn’t do to dispense me from their lives.

Adam had slept soundly all night and, when he woke up, he came into the living room, took one look at me and said, ‘You look like shit.’