After the One by Cass Lester (e book reader free .TXT) 📕

‘No! I caught him with the other woman.’

Charley could almost visualise quote marks round the phrase ‘the other woman’ in Pam’s mind. Then the first crack appeared in Pam’s demeanour. She closed her eyes, flinched at the memory, and said, ‘Oh God, it was awful, Charley, absolutely awful.’

Once in a while, Pam and her friends treated themselves to a pub lunch, and this time they’d decided, rather last minute, to try somewhere new. They’d met up, in the pub car park, in a flurry of hugs and air kisses, and then headed inside. Laughing and joking, they made their usual noisy invasion, but within seconds, the laughter had died in their throats and they’d stood in shocked and absolute silence. There, in the middle of the dining area, holding hands with a younger, much younger woman, and laughing animatedly at some shared joke, was Pam’s husband.

Pam had seen him before he saw her. ‘Geoff?’ she ventured.

Her entire entourage had stiffened while they waited for his response. It was instantly damning, the panicked, guilty look on his face had given him away completely – without that, they might perhaps have believed he was with an old work colleague, but instead he looked, for all the world, like a naughty boy caught with his hand in the biscuit tin. Deafened by the sound of her blood pounding in her ears, and burned by the heat of her face scorched by humiliation, Pam had turned on her heel and fled.

Behind her, Geoff had scraped back his chair and scrabbled to his feet. ‘Pam!’ he’d cried, and then pushed his way through her group of friends to follow her. They hadn’t made way for him.

Sadly, Pam missed the moment, the glorious moment, when Zee, her oldest friend, had casually picked up a full jug of water from the table and thrown it in the younger woman’s face. Screaming in shock and with indignation, the woman had reeled back and then risen to her feet, wiping her dripping face with her napkin.

‘That’s assault!’ she’d yelled. Whipping round to the bar keeper who was standing at the bar, open-mouthed and frozen in the act of polishing a glass, she’d cried gleefully, ‘You saw that! She assaulted me! You’re a witness!’

‘Oh, take me to court,’ Zee had replied magnificently.

Outside in the car park, Geoff had caught up with Pam at Zee’s car, where she was desperately, but futilely, rattling the door handle and cursing the fact that she couldn’t bolt into the sanctuary of the vehicle and lock the door.

‘Pam—’ started Geoff, but she had turned on him savagely.

‘How dare you! How could you?’ Then suddenly, finding herself urgently needing to know the answer to another, more damning question, she had demanded, ‘How long?’ When he didn’t answer, she’d repeated, ‘How long? I have a right to know.’

‘Five years,’ Geoff muttered sheepishly, and Pam had wanted to hit him. He’d put his hand on her arm. ‘I’m sorry…’

She’d twisted away from him violently. Suddenly the thought of him touching her physically repulsed her. Frantically she’d looked around for Zee, who was halfway across the car park. ‘Zee!’ she’d called urgently.

Instantly taking in the scene, Zee had grabbed the car keys from her bag, opened the doors remotely, and Pam had escaped to the safety of the passenger seat, slamming the door behind her. Ignoring Geoff completely, Zee had got into the car and driven Pam home.

When Zee had pulled into Pam’s drive, she’d wanted to go inside too, but Pam had shaken her head. ‘No… thank you, but no… I… I need to think,’ she’d stammered, and had hurriedly clambered out of the car.

As soon as she was indoors, the sudden, empty silence had engulfed her, focusing her mind and clarifying her thoughts. Her single overriding, urgent need was to get away before Geoff got back, so running upstairs she’d frantically thrown together an overnight bag and had fled to Charley’s.

‘Is it okay if I stay?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Charley but then, as Pam picked up her case and started to head for the spare room, Charley belatedly remembered what she had been doing just before her mother-in-law arrived. ‘I was having a bit of a clear-out…’ she started awkwardly, trying to catch up with Pam, to warn her. But she was too late, her mother-in-law had already stopped in the doorway of the spare room and was surveying the piles of Josh’s belongings. Charley felt vaguely sick.

Pam merely swallowed hard, then turned to Charley, and with endearing, unemotional simplicity said, ‘Do you want a hand, or would you rather do it alone?’ At that moment, Charley suddenly realised that out of everyone, Pam was the only person she would, very much, like to help her.

Fetching the rest of the wine she then squatted down beside Pam, who proceeded calmly to help sift through the belongings of her dead son.

‘I’m struggling to know what to keep and what to—’ Charley couldn’t bring herself to say, ‘throw away’.

Pam rescued her. ‘What to give away,’ she supplied, before adding in a light, careless tone, ‘Well, I’ve kept Josh’s teddy, but then I’ve kept Luke’s too, all the photos, and a lot of the books I read them when they were little, a few other things of sentimental value… and I’ve kept his bed linen, too, of course.’ But Charley knew that was partly because Pam was aware of how much it meant to Charley to sleep under Josh’s old duvet cover when she stayed in his bedroom at Christmas.

Christmas. That terrible first Christmas without Josh. Charley had never known how Pam had managed to create a normal Christmas that year for the sake of her other son, Luke, and his young family. Comforting smells had filled the house – mulled wine, roast turkey, the sharp pine scent of the tree – and a full three-course lunch had appeared on the table, crackers were pulled, jokes read out, paper hats perched on heads.