Page 1

Chapter 1

February 2011

Tess squeezes the trigger.

The drill screams into life.

She lets it slow to a stop and dumps it onto the huge coffee table beside her recent purchases.

‘DIAMOND TIPPED’ proclaims the packaging, with a shooting star which reminds her of a toothpaste advert.

She unwraps the drill bit with some difficulty and holds it up to the light.

It must be a very small diamond, she thinks, glancing down at her left hand.

In the kitchen, she turns on the tap at the sink and squirts a healthy dollop of green washing-up liquid into her palm.

She holds her hands under the icy stream and watches as a white froth of extravagant soapy bubbles appears.

The ring spins on her finger, but it doesn’t come off.

Too many doughnuts, she thinks.

A cold ache, not dissimilar to the frozen feeling in her chest, begins to spread downwards to her fingers and upwards to her elbow.

She twists the ring around and around until she is able to pull it over her knuckle and drop it into the sink.

Back at the coffee table she arranges the other items from her shopping trip.

A fifty-metre roll of yellow masking tape, a tube of superglue and a pack of Brillo pads.

Yellow reminds her of happy times.

It’s the colour of custard and daffodils and good cheese.

Blood red, for anger and pain, would have been more appropriate but the store hadn’t offered that option.

Patrick has ever so helpfully left the chuck key attached to the drill cable.

She opens the jaws wide enough to insert the bit.

As she tightens the chuck she gives the key a vengeful extra-tight twist and squeezes the trigger a second time.

There is a bark from upstairs.

Baxter, locked safely in the bathroom, is protesting.

A long time ago, when she was about six, her father had fitted a shelf in the family’s bathroom.

He wasn’t what anyone would call a handyman, and he had therefore consulted the Biggest Ever Book of DIY , a hopeful, but underused, Christmas gift from her mother.

She remembers that masking tape had been an essential piece of kit for the task.

Tess scrubs a corner of the immaculate, craftsman-made table with a Brillo pad until the oiled surface is back to naked wood.

She leans down to table height and blows the pink powder away.

Scissors make short work of the lid on the tube of superglue.

She spreads it liberally across the back of Patrick’s phone, taking care to avoid the switches on the side.

While she waits for the ￡400 device to bond permanently to the bare timber, she goes back to the kitchen, fills the kettle and waits for it to boil.

From the window she looks out at the neatly mown front lawn which is his pride and joy.

Coffee made, she retrieves her engagement ring from the sink, and carries the mug back to the living room.

Her hand shakes, but for once she leaves the splashes on the table where they land and doesn’t race for a cloth.

The coffee is too hot to drink, and she puts the mug down without bothering to use a coaster.

She turns the phone on, rips a couple of pieces of masking tape from the reel and arranges them in a cross, right over the messaging app Patrick uses.

And then she puts the ring on top of the tape.

Her hand is surprisingly steady as she positions the point of the drill bit through the ring and exactly in the centre of the papery kiss.

She squeezes the trigger again, and leans forward to add her body weight to the grind of the drill.

The Biggest Ever Book of DIY was right, she thinks, as the metal spike begins to split the yellow cross.

This is not difficult at all.

She pushes down, feeling the drill hesitate a little as it goes through the glass screen.

It jumps slightly at the level of the components before it rushes downwards into the beautiful spalted ash.

When the chuck is almost at the level of the screen, she stops.

The phone is skewered to the table by the drill, with the ring sandwiched between them, like a piece of modern art.

*

There is nothing else to be done.

The carpets have been vacuumed, the bathroom scrubbed and taps polished, and the houseplants have been watered.

She has tidied the garden, bagged up the last of the fallen leaves for mulch and dealt with the lawn.

The last thing she does is to take her own phone back to factory settings.

She can’t bear to look at it any longer.

It would be so easy to be vindictive, she thinks, as she stands on the doorstep and locks the door for the final time.

Baxter sits patiently on the path and she bends over to pick up his lead.

‘Come on, Bax. It was me who signed the adoption papers at the Dog and Cat Home, so there’s absolutely no doubt that you are all mine.

’

She eyes the keyhole, the tube of superglue in her hand.