‘I know.’
Bill took his eyes off the late news broadcast he wasn’t watching. ‘Know what?’
‘I know, Bill.’
He turned off the television. ‘How?’
Anne shrugged. ‘I’ve had an inkling for a while now, but when I spoke to Lorna the other day, I knew. She was so eager to tell me about Jack Douglas, and I thought it was strange at first, but then I realised – she was happy to have something to talk about besides you.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be. The fact that you’re here now, when you could be out with her, that says a lot. I’ll forgive you on one condition.’
‘Anything.’
‘You forgive me first.’
He carried her up to the bedroom and the shut the door behind them. They were going to spend the night forgiving one another and nothing, but nothing, was going to stop them.
The Bugs Bunny clock on Samantha’s bedside table said that it was five minutes past ten. Her mother was still up, and her father’s presence was an added burden; she hadn’t considered either of these things when she wrote the letter. Before Lorna came along, her father would have run to the office for refuge, to find comfort in the certainty of numbers, and she had assumed he would go there. She was so completely flabbergasted when he came into the bedroom to goodnight to her that it must have shown on her face; he put his hand on her forehead before he gave her a kiss.
She was beginning to think she wouldn’t get to witness her beautiful plan coming to fruition until she heard her father coming up the stairs again. She lay as still as a corpse, watching the crack under the door for the light to go on in the room across the way. What happened was even better. Not because she wanted her parents to be happy, like everyone else’s parents – for starters, she knew for a fact that most other kid’s parents were just as miserable together as hers were. The deafening silence coming from her parent’s bedroom, save for the squeaking, meant that they probably weren’t coming out until morning. She got out of bed and put on her slippers.
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