Page 12 of The Good Girl

Chapter Eleven

Julia was alone in the kitchen, the glass bi-fold doors open slightly, allowing a breath of air inside while a gentle summer shower tapped lightly against the panes, a cooling relief after the relentless heat of the past few days.

Her laptop sat closed on the counter, her tea long gone cold.

She couldn’t face going into work, the sheer effort of faking it too much to even contemplate.

After the incident in the village shop that morning, it had been a battle to keep her anger at bay; the hurt she was used to.

It was about being patient now and dealing with what she regarded as waste.

The past eight years of her life reduced to something she wished she could put in a bin bag and send to landfill.

Or incinerate. Yes, burn the lot, her marriage and, if she knew how and would get away with it, her piece of shit husband.

As she watched the raindrops trickle down the glass, a memory came unbidden. The first time she saw him again. Shane Jones.

Like a bad penny, he’d turned up at ClearGlass with the easy confidence of someone who believed the past could be rewritten with a grin and a sharp suit.

But Julia had known him before the suit.

Before the swagger. Back when he was little more than a sunburnt yard hand with a flirty smile and a mop of overgrown hair, more interested in sneaking cigarette breaks than learning anything of substance.

The day she walked into the marketing department and saw him leaning against a desk, holding court with a gaggle of giggling juniors physically jolted her, stopping her in her tracks.

His hair was shorter, his frame filled out, the once-slouched posture replaced with a confident stance, his body language projecting ease. Reinvented, yes, but not erased.

She’d rung Nancy the second she got in her car to drive home and her sister was as rattled as she was, asking if Julia could get him sacked and then when she realised the stupidity of her question, said she’d pray he’d mess up or get bored and leave. The sooner the better.

The shock Julia had felt that day had been real. Like someone had reached back in time and dragged a shadow through the door. She never thought he’d come back and neither did Nancy.

Julia hadn’t been involved in the hiring process.

HR had handled it. His CV was glossy, inflated, but who didn’t embellish?

A year working in Dubai, another in New York.

Logistics experience. Project management.

Corporate sales. All expertly packaged. She’d accessed the files and read it in private and remembered being impressed that the waste of space had made something of himself.

With hindsight she felt the sting of her own gullibility, a kind of slow humiliation that tightened its grip over the years.

Ronnie had been gone two years when Shane turned up.

The house was too big. The silence too loud.

Molly was surly with grief. Dee was small and clingy.

The business had demanded every waking minute of her time.

It had been easier to be the wife than the widow.

She knew that role and had to learn a new one.

Taking Ronnie’s place, being everything to everyone at home and at work.

Being Mum she could do with her eyes closed.

Being Dad, who wasn’t scared of anything, burglars, thunderstorms, Dr Who monsters or spiders, was a challenge.

And then Shane had arrived. At first it was harmless.

Banter in meetings. A coffee brought without asking.

A compliment slipped into casual conversation.

She’d brushed it off. But then came the small touches, a hand lightly on her arm, a laugh that lingered.

A bottle of wine left in her office after a late finish, with a note that read – ‘ Thought you could use something stronger than coffee. ’

She’d been flattered. Foolishly. Completely. When you’ve been part of the office furniture and the provider of fish fingers and chips at home for long enough, even counterfeit attention glows.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Nancy had said, voice like steel over the phone when Julia confessed they’d had dinner. ‘For Christ’s sake, Julia, think about what you’re doing and how it’ll look. He’s ten years younger than you and has all the charm of a fox in a henhouse. He wants something.’

‘Like what? Oh, and thanks for the compliment by the way. I’m not exactly ready for a Zimmer frame just yet and these days nobody cares about age gaps.’

‘Stop trying to con yourself. Yes they do. Look, I don’t know what he’s after but I don’t trust him; I never did and neither should you.

Look at it from the outside in and ask yourself what he could gain from being with a woman ten years older than him.

Oh, and who happens to own a multi-million-pound company.

Control. Legitimacy. Security. It’s too risky, Julia, and you know it. ’

Julia had laughed her off. Said she was overreacting.

That the company was safe and he’d never get his hands on it.

But Nancy never did that. Overreact. Nancy was always three moves ahead, always cautious.

She’d planned her life meticulously from her teenage years.

Not letting anything or anyone get in her way.

Nancy had flings, didn’t need anyone in her bed for longer than a night or two and certainly not a partner, kids or a family to tie her down.

Julia, on the other hand, had wanted to believe in fantasy.

Fell head over heels with Ronnie and believed in true love.

Got married young, threw herself into being a wife and couldn’t wait to be a mother.

That had been the only blot on the horizon, how hard it had been to get pregnant – but it all turned out okay in the end.

Then she lost Ronnie and felt like her heart had been ripped out while she was still alive and some cruel god had forced her to go on without it and him.

She never thought she’d love or feel wanted again.

Desired or liked. Shane had provided her with a life raft after years of drowning quietly in grief and monotony.

The whispers around the office started not long after. Julia told herself it was jealousy. People always whispered when a woman in power made an unexpected choice. But now, she saw them for what they were. Warnings. Big red flags flapping in the wind. The sort you ignore at your peril.

She remembered the shift, not that she acknowledged it or the big fat hint from one of the directors, Ben, sitting across from her in a quarterly review, his voice low.

‘Look, Julia, you know I’d never do anything to make your life difficult but Shane’s…

he’s not pulling his weight, okay. Always has an excuse.

Always someone else’s fault and your relationship is making things awkward because someone needs to address it. ’

Of course she had, privately, and he’d sulked and she’d apologised and then it was all forgotten, for a while.

And worse, then came the subtle shifts she noticed in the hierarchy.

Staff who hesitated around her. Projects that missed deadlines.

Gossip that soured the air during Friday drinks in the boardroom.

Shane created disorder in the same sure way that gravity kept your feet on the ground.

Wherever he was, whatever he touched, things bent out of shape.

But by then, she was already in too deep. He was living at the house, smiling at Dee, charming Magda, pouring Molly orange juice at breakfast. He wove himself into their lives like ivy around brickwork, slow, silent, and suffocating. Then the proposal, the wedding, the falling out with Nancy.

She didn’t know when the charm turned. Maybe once he knew Nancy was out of the way.

He saw her as the enemy from the off mainly because she radiated disapproval whenever they were together.

There wasn’t a single moment. Just a gradual erosion.

The jokes with a cutting edge. Comments that made her feel small.

The sulks when things didn’t go his way.

The questions about her meetings, her movements, her emails, her passwords.

Then came the big row, when she said she thought they should take a break.

Then came the blackmail. Julia shuddered and pushed that particular scene away because it still turned her blood cold, the day he proved Nancy right.

Instead, she stared out at the darkening sky, fingers pressed to her lips.

She should have seen it sooner. Should have fought back.

But fear has a way of nesting in your gut and growing roots.

It fed off your doubts, your loneliness, and your guilt.

Until now. Now, she was done. But not without a knot of unease that curled low in her stomach, a sense that Shane might already suspect what she was up to. That the calm she’d been holding on to by sheer will was only a breath away from blowing up in her face.

The directors were complaining again. Shane’s laziness had turned into absenteeism.

One department head had threatened to resign if Julia didn’t address it.

And she would. She would clean house. But every time she imagined the confrontation, she pictured the look in his eyes, cold, amused, calculating.

One thing had niggled for years, and it was Nancy who had put it all into perspective.

Asked Julia why Shane hadn’t just blown her out of the water sooner.

Got it over and done with, played his best hand, the one he’d used to keep her in her place.

It was so simple really, once she heard Nancy say the words – because he liked his cushy life, and he wanted it to last as long as possible.

Shane knew that staying put was more lucrative than taking his chance in court.

If he played his ace, then there’d be nothing left to blackmail her with.

Julia saw it all in her mind’s eye, a flash of truth and clarity. A row of carefully laid out dominoes. She’d wasted too long waiting for Shane to give the end a flick and in seconds, click click click click, he’d ruin her life.

It was those words and that image that broke the spell.

Plus the fact Molly was leaving home, and Dee was old enough, intellectually if not emotionally, to understand.

Julia had spent months preparing. Nancy’s legal mind had guided every step.

After Ronnie died, Julia had made her legal guardian of Molly and Dee, and executor of her will, just in case.

And now, she and Julia had ramped up. The bank transfers.

The contracts. The trust in the girls’ names.

The new passwords. The evidence. A quiet war, waged in shadows and secured in backups.

She had everything. And soon, when she returned from America and Shane was prancing around Paris in his Mickey Mouse hat with Dee, she would deliver the blow. One letter. One solicitor. One line in the sand.

And this time, she wouldn’t flinch. She couldn’t. Not if she wanted her life back. Her dignity. Her safety. She feared he would lash out, that he might drag the girls into it, but she also hoped this was the final hand. The last play. He’d take a deal and go.

Julia stood and stretched, bones clicking in protest. The rain shower had passed and the sun was breaking through the clouds so she opened a window and let in the day. A waft of fresh air brushed her arms, and she welcomed the shiver.

Deciding to head up to her suite, maybe she could sleep for a while and take her mind off it all, she left a note on the counter for Magda and the girls saying she had a migraine, and after taking the floating glass stairs with a spring in her step, she turned right onto the corridor, pausing at the framed photo of Ronnie and the girls at the beach.

He was laughing, Molly on his shoulders, Dee holding his hand.

Everything about it was golden. Perfect. She stopped and touched the glass.

‘You’d tell me off for being such a fool in the first place,’ she whispered.

‘But then you’d want me to fight. For them.

For myself. For what we built. I hope you know that you’ll always be the love of my life, that’s why I stood my ground and kept your name.

I’m a Lassiter, yours, forever, Ronnie.’

A sound behind her made her jump. Shane’s footsteps on the heated tiles.

She turned slowly, unsure of where he’d come from or was heading. He was standing halfway down the hall, bed head hair, crinkled tee and shorts. Smiling.

‘Didn’t expect you to be here,’ he said. ‘Not going in today?’

Julia smiled back. ‘No, I thought I’d stay here and talk to ghosts instead.’

He laughed, but there was a flicker of something else in his eyes. Suspicion. Wariness. ‘You all right, Jules?’

‘Never better.’ And for once, she almost meant it.

Because soon, the ghost of who she’d become would finally be laid to rest. And Shane Jones would become just another chapter she had survived. Then she would start a brand-new page in her life, neat, clean, and free.