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 thatgravity 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 cloudsso 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.
Chapter Twelve
The sun lay across the roof terrace, its heat warming the tiles. The shower had passed and the air was still and up there, above the rest of the house, the world felt far away. The kitchen doors slamming, Magda’s tuneless singing as she hung washing on the line and Dee’s endless chatter couldn’t reach her. Her mum had one of her headaches so was having a lie down and Shane was mooching about somewhere, probably taking a swim and keeping out of the way.
Molly lay flat on a sun lounger, in preparation mode for the evening ahead. Completely nude, skin slick with tanning oil, eyes closed. Her headphones played a lazy playlist, but she wasn’t listening. Not really. Her thoughts were too loud.
This had always been her favourite spot – the roof terrace, tucked away above her mum’s suite, accessed by a steep stairway, surrounded by waist-high walls so you could look out at the lush green landscape, open to the sky above and nothing else. Not overlooked. Not observed. The only place in the house that felt like it was truly peaceful and private. And here, she could think. Or try to.
After Phoebe’s confession of sorts, Molly was aware that her perceptions of Shane had clouded and she needed to make some sense out of it all before that evening. The reason she was topping up her tan. She wanted to be bronzed and beautiful for Shane on what was to be their last liaison. He had spun a lie about going to Glasgow, she’d concocted an afternoon at a nail bar and then cocktails with her friends. In reality they were booked into an exclusive hotel in Manchester where they would have one final night together, then go their separate ways. Just like they’d agreed. What she’d insisted on.
When she returned for holidays, there would be no secret trysts for old times’ sake. Their communications would revert to those of stepfather and daughter, keeping their relationship platonic and above board. The cheat phone would be no more.
