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The children’s eyes remained glued to him; no one moved as they waited for him to continue. Jenna tried to imagine how she’d have felt if her father had ever done this to her and Hanna. It wasn’t possible, for the simple reason he never would have.

“Sometimes,” Jack pressed on, “mummies and daddies stop living together and one of them goes to live with somebody else.”

“Why?” Wills asked.

Jack swallowed, clearly floundering badly now. “Well, because…they’ve…they’ve fallen in love with somebody else. It happens to lots of people. I don’t expect all your friends’ parents live together, do they?”

If they didn’t, it was evident that Josh and the twins had no idea of it.

“So, that’s my important news,” Jack declared, sitting back in his chair, as if it were all done and dusted and they could move on to other things now.

All three children looked at Jenna, their eyes round with confusion, their need for her to explain as clear as the fear that they were understanding correctly. She tried to think of something to say that might help to make this better in some way, but there was nothing, unless she wanted them to think she was happy about their father’s decision, and she couldn’t bring herself to do that.

“You’re still going to live here, aren’t you, Mummy?” Flora asked, going to her.

“Yes, I’ll still be here,” Jenna promised. “I’ll never leave you.”

She could feel Jack’s eyes boring into her, but he’d deserved that, and no way was she taking it back.

“I don’t want you to go,” Wills told his father.

“Nor me,” Flora added. “We want you to stay here with us, because you’re our daddy and daddies should live with their children.”

“I know, sweetheart,” he sighed, “but like I said just now, sometimes it doesn’t happen that way.”

“But I want it to.”

“You can’t go,” Wills told him, “because we won’t let you.”

“No, we’re definitely not going to let you,” Flora echoed.

Though Jack’s smile was unsteady, Jenna felt no pity for him, only the beginnings of contempt. He’d brought this on himself, so it was his to deal with—until he’d gone, when she’d be left to pick up the pieces. What was concerning her much more for the moment was the fact that Josh hadn’t yet spoken. He’d simply sat there watching his father, thinking his own eight-year-old’s thoughts, feeling whatever was going on in his young heart and keeping it all to himself.

“I’m not going yet,” Jack was telling them. “I shall stay for tea and then we’ll play some games until it’s time for bed.”

“I don’t want to play any games,” Flora pouted.

“Nor me,” Wills snapped.

Jack looked at Josh. “What about you? What would you like to play?”

Without uttering a word Josh slid down from the table and walked out of the room.

“Josh,” Jenna said, following him.

He kept going, all the way up the stairs to the landing, where Paige was standing. From the tautness of her face it was clear she’d been listening, but she didn’t look at her mother, simply went to Josh and put her arms around him. He didn’t hug her back; he simply stood with his head resting against her as though not entirely sure if this was a safe place to be.

Jenna couldn’t tell if he was crying; she only knew that she was struggling with her own emotions as she left Paige to comfort her brother and returned to the twins, who were shouting at their father.

“Is he all right?” Jack asked as she came in.

“What do you think?” she replied.

Sighing, he dashed a hand through his hair and started to stand up.

“No! No! Don’t go,” Wills yelled, running to him.

“I’m not, son,” Jack promised, settling him on one knee. “I already told you, I’ll be here until bedtime.”

“Then I’m not going to bed.”

“Nor me,” Flora declared, plonking herself on his other knee.

“Now that’s just daft, isn’t it?” he teased. “Everyone has to go to bed, and you’ve got school in the morning.”

“If you stay here, like you always do,” Flora said, gazing up through her pink-rimmed glasses, “then you can take us to school.”

“I can take you anyway, if that’s what you want.”

“No, only if you stay here. I won’t be your friend anymore if you don’t.”

“Well, I’ll always be yours.”

“I don’t care.” She turned to Jenna. “You don’t want him to go, do you, Mummy?”

Jenna started to answer and stopped, as she realized that actually she didn’t want him to stay. Not now, tonight. She wanted him gone, out of the way so she could tend to her children and think more clearly.

“Daddy knows I don’t want him to go,” she heard herself answering, “but he’s decided it’s what he has to do because he’s fallen in love with another woman. Her name is Martha and I expect he’ll want you to meet her one of these days.”

“I don’t want to meet her,” Wills protested angrily. “She’s not our mummy, you are.”

Jack was glaring at her.

Ignoring him, she said, “Of course, and I always will be, but if she’s going to be in Daddy’s life that means she’ll be in yours too.”

“No!” he shouted.

“Wills,” Jack said gently, “try to understand that—”

“I don’t want to understand,” Wills seethed, throwing his arms round Jack’s neck. “I just want you to stay.”

Clinging on too, and starting to sob, Flora said, “You’re being horrible to us, and it’s not fair. We haven’t done anything wrong and it’s mean of you to say you’re going to live somewhere else.”

Deciding to let him carry on alone, Jenna ran upstairs to check on Josh and Paige.

“Is he still with you?” she asked when Paige opened her door.

“No, he’s gone to his room.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Not really. He just asked if I already knew and I said I did.”

Jenna was regarding her closely. “Are you all right?” she asked.

Paige shrugged as she looked away.

“He’s still downstairs if you want to speak to him.”

“No way,” Paige snapped, and she slammed the door.

Going to Josh’s room, Jenna knocked gently and put her head in. Her heart immediately turned over to see him sitting on the edge of the bed, feet dangling, head bowed.

Going to him, she put an arm around his shoulders so he was leaning in to her. “Do you want to ask me anything?” she said softly.

She felt him shake his head, and she tightened her hold.

“Everyone’s going to think he doesn’t love us anymore,” he whispered after a while.

“Oh no they won’t,” she assured him. “They know how much he loves you.”

“So why does he want to live somewhere else?”

“Because he’s decided he doesn’t want to live with me. It has nothing to do with not wanting to be with you.”

“So can I go and live with him?”

Feeling the words cutting through her, Jenna said, “Is that what you want?”

He tilted his face to look up at her and shook his head. “I want to live here with you and Paige and the twins, but I want Daddy to live here too.”

“I know you do, sweetheart, and if I could make it happen I would, but his mind is made up and I don’t think we’re going to change it.”

As two large tears rolled onto his cheeks Jenna caught them with her fingers and blinked back her own. “We’ll be fine,” she promised hoarsely.

“No we won’t. It’s not going to be the same anymore.”

“But you heard what Daddy said—he’ll be seeing you all the time.”

“It’s not the same,”
he growled.

Since he was right, she didn’t argue.

After a while his stricken blue eyes came pleadingly to hers. “Can you make him stay, Mummy, please?”

“I’ve already tried my best,” she assured him, “but that doesn’t mean we have to give up. We just have to be patient and see what happens. Can you do that, be patient with me?”

After a while he nodded and, sliding his arms around her, buried his face in her chest.

—

You need to check out Kelly Durham’s FB page,
Julie had messaged a few minutes ago, so Paige had, and what she’d found was so beyond terrible and humiliating that she just didn’t know what to do. It didn’t matter that the whole photograph couldn’t possibly be of her; anyone who looked at her could see that no way did she have massive boobs like the ones on the body her photo had been attached to. What mattered was that the face was hers; even worse was that it had been shared to twenty other pages already, and one of them was Oliver’s.

My name is Paige Moore and that’s what I want, More and More and More,
someone had captioned underneath.

The other comments were so crude, so vile, that she couldn’t bring herself to read any further. All she could do was add her own, saying,
This is a sick joke played by Kelly Durham and her friends.

Within seconds a return post hit the screen.

You’re the sicko for taking this selfie in the first place.

I didn’t take it. You stole my camera and now you’ve Photoshopped the picture you took with it.

A boy from year eleven posted,
I’ll give you more anytime. When shall we meet?

Another boy said,
Now that’s what I call tits. Give ’em to me baby.

Kelly wrote,
It’s a selfie and everyone knows it, bitch.

Deciding it would do no good to continue this, Paige closed down her laptop and grabbed her iPad to FaceTime Charlotte. “Have you seen what’s on Facebook?” she asked when a bleary-eyed Charlotte came on the screen.

“No, haven’t been on today,” Charlotte answered, sounding so bunged up she was hardly getting the words out.

Paige winced as screaming started downstairs. It was obviously the twins, but her parents were shouting too, and she felt as though she was in the middle of a nightmare.

“So what does it say?” Charlotte asked.

“You need to see it. Go to Kelly Durham’s page. The photo she took of me the other day? She’s used it.”

“Oh crap,” Charlotte muttered. “I was hoping she’d forgotten about that.”

“Me too, but she hasn’t. She’s even posted it on Oliver’s page.”

“What is the matter with her? She’s
such
a bitch.”

Hearing voices outside on the drive, Paige said, “Hang on.” Running to the window, she peered out to see her dad talking to Auntie Hanna. Actually, it seemed more like they were rowing, which was no surprise, but whatever they were saying she couldn’t hear, so she went back to her iPad.

“Have you heard from Liam today?” she asked, feeling she couldn’t make everything about her all the time.

Charlotte immediately perked up. “Only four times,” she replied, “and I think I’m seeing him on Saturday. We haven’t actually arranged it yet, but he asked if I was doing anything and I said no, so we’ll see what he says when he comes back. How about you? What’s going on with your parents?”

Paige almost sobbed. “Don’t ask. It’s all terrible, and I swear if I could leave home I would. Except my dad’s already done that and now he’s about to do it again.”

“You mean he’s there?”

“He was. I’ve just heard his car pulling away. Thank God Auntie Hanna’s turned up. I don’t know how I’d cope with my mum on my own.”

“I feel really bad for you. It totally sucks, all this crap you’re going through.”

“I know. I wish I knew how to make it stop.”

“I reckon you should tell your mum about Kelly Durham.”

“I keep wanting to, but she’s dealing with so much right now, and anyway what can she do? Even if she goes to the school, which would be a total catastrophe, she won’t be able to make her stop, because no one can. I’ve been reading about it online. There are no laws against what she’s doing.”

“Yeah, but we’ve had talks about bullying, and that’s what this is.”

“Big-time.”

“Exactly, so you’re supposed to tell someone about it. A parent, or a teacher. Why don’t you talk to Miss Kendrick? She’s cool and she really likes you.”

“If I do, it’ll just get worse. Julie’s already warned me about that, and from what I’ve read on other people’s blogs who’ve experienced it, it went quiet for a while after they told, then it got worse for them too.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“
I don’t know.
I keep trying to think of something, but there isn’t anything.”

Charlotte regarded her helplessly.

In the end Paige simply shrugged. She wasn’t sure about running away yet, mainly because of how much it would upset her mum. So there was nothing left to say unless they wanted to talk about Liam again, and since Charlotte was definitely up for that, it was what they did.

—

It was close to midnight by now, and Josh and the twins had only just dropped off to sleep—all three in Jenna’s room—tucked up with their favorite bears and fluffy rabbits, and Waffle keeping vigil at the foot of the bed. Since Jack had gone, several hours ago, there had been so many tears and tantrums that Jenna’s exhaustion had reached a point where she’d lost track of what was being said or done. If it weren’t for Hanna and her mother, she was sure, she’d have stuffed the children in the car, driven them to Jack’s little love nest, and told him to sort them out. She was still thinking about it, though of course she never would. It would scare them half to death if she were to dump them somewhere they’d never been before, then drive off and leave them, and that was the last thing she wanted.

What she actually wanted was to know that Jack was suffering for what he was doing; that his conscience was destroying every minute of his time with Martha; that his heart was in as many pieces as hers.

“Of course it isn’t making me happy to do this,” he’d shouted at Hanna before he’d left, “but I’m not prepared to carry on living a lie.”

“You sanctimonious bastard,” Hanna had shouted back. “
You
don’t want to live a lie, so your family has to carry on without you while you go have yourself some fun. It makes you feel better to do that than to man up to the responsibilities of fatherhood? To honor your marriage vows? To prove that you’re a worthwhile human being?”

“I’m not arguing about this any more tonight,” he’d shot back. “We’re just going round in circles. The children are getting more distressed by the second, and me being here is making it worse.”