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‘Huh?’ Leigh gaped.

Alex threw her a quick grin. ‘You might want to hold back on that victory lap around the room, Calloway.’

‘Alex,’ Leigh warned sternly, and Alex’s smile dropped a fraction, which Leigh was satisfied to see.

Leigh turned her full attention back to Amanda. ‘OK, we’re way more behind than we realise. I think it might be wise if you started at the beginning of this story.’

Amanda took a sip of water. ‘Better hydrate, then.’ She put the glass back down and leaned forward in the armchair like a storyteller of old. But this was no fairytale.

‘So, five years ago, I took a job in their house—it was only my second job, I was nineteen—and for about the first year, it was a normal job. Don’t forget to clean the tops of the windowsills, don’t let limescale build up on the taps, all the usual stuff.’

‘But then Erin made a move?’ Leigh prompted.

Amanda shook her head. ‘No, the first one to make a move on me was Isabelle.’

‘WHAT!’ Alex exclaimed.

‘You were carrying on simultaneous secret affairs withbothof them?’ Leigh clarified.

‘That’s crazy,’ Amanda said. ‘How the hell would that work? I couldn’t possibly have managed to keep that under wraps with them both living under the same roof. No, we were all sleepingtogether.’

Leigh let out a long, sad sigh. She was not getting a victory today. On the upside, no one was. It didn’t provide a lot of comfort to know that. Erin should have told her this. But she’d kept the secret when she had no reason to protect Isabelle’s good name anymore. It didn’t bode well.

Alex wasn’t beaten. She was angry. ‘You’re fucking kidding? You guys were a throuple?’

Amanda gave the saddest smile Leigh had ever seen. ‘I don’t think I’d put it like that. Looking back now, if I’m honest? I was just a toy they liked to take out sometimes.’

‘And you were OK with that?’ Alex asked.

‘I thought so at the time. I was even… This sounds silly to say now, but I was flattered. I was nineteen and kind of a bumpkin. And then these two famous attractive womenbothwanted me. I thought it meant I was special.’ She shook her head, embarrassed.

‘But you stayed a maid?’ Alex asked.

‘Only at first. And then I guess that felt a bit odd to them. So they said I was to stop working for them and come live with them, staying in the pool house. They even gave me a credit card for expenses. I was even more flattered by that. I thought it was becoming serious between us all.’ She took a pause and frowned. ‘Though they asked me to keep the uniform. They liked me to roleplay that I was still the maid and that I was trying to seduce Erin. Then Isabelle would do this thing where she pretended to come home early and catch us and then join in.’

Leigh grimaced. ‘That’s sounds…

‘I know,’ Amanda said. ‘Now. But if you’d told me back then it wouldn’t end well, I’d have said, “You don’t get it. We’re just having fun.” But when I think about it now…’ She lowered her head. ‘It turns my stomach. I thought it was a game. I waspretendingto be the maid. But that’s all I really was to them. A servant.’ She looked back up at them, desperation in her eyes. ‘I thought they cared about me. You need to understand that. I wouldn’t have stayed if I hadn’t.’

Leigh nodded. ‘That’s very clear, Amanda. No one here’s judgingyou.’

‘No,’ Alex agreed.

‘What about your other relationships outside the house?’ Leigh asked.

‘Oh, they killed all my friendships stone dead,’ Amanda said flatly. ‘They kept talking about how I would probably grow out of them. Though, of course, I never mettheirfriends. But they both had a lot of opinions on my old friends, my real ones. I stopped feeling comfortable mentioning anything, seeing them, anything.’

‘So, you were isolated?’

‘Very much so.’

‘Do you know why they did that?’ Leigh asked gently.

Amanda nodded. ‘Right at the start, they asked me not to talk about us with anyone, and I was fine with that. I kept my promise. But I don’t think they trusted me to keep quiet forever. I think they were worried I’d tell people what we were doing and ruin their rep as the perfect couple. So, they wrecked everything that wasn’t about them. They became my whole world. For years, it was just me and them.’

‘Then what happened?’ Alex asked.

‘Well, I guess you could say that life imitated art. Because our sex game ended up playing out in real life,’ Amanda said.