Chapter 23

TWENTY-THREE

ASHLEY

H ad my door always been so perfect?

I stood before it, gathering the courage to go inside. To face the shitstorm that undoubtedly awaited.

Not a speck of dust clung to the frame, no cobwebs or blown leaves. Nothing.

Heat hit my stomach at the realisation that Jerry didn't do this. In my absence, he must have moved his fucking mother in to baby him.

The door opened, and I stepped inside.

A wave of sharp antiseptic cleaner filled my nostrils as I stepped inside. My home didn't smell like home.

I walked into the kitchen to find Beverley there, humming to herself while stirring something on the stove. She hadn't noticed me, lost in a world of her own.

I found familiarity in the smooth bannister beneath my fingers as I ascended the stairs. A sliver solace amongst the alien takeover of my home. There were touches of my mother-in-law everywhere; a new cushion on the chair on the landing, hotel-corner tucked sheets on my bed, the toilet roll hung the wrong direction as I passed the bathroom.

I followed the sound of digital gunshots to find Jerry, where he almost always seemed to be, rotting in his sticky gaming chair. He faced away from me, blue light following the edge of his frame.

‘Fucking hell, Brett. That was a poor shot. Man up.' A raucous laugh followed his comment, presumably to a response in his headset.

I don't know what I'd expected my disappearance to have done, but he acted like nothing changed.

Rage filled me, and I stormed across the room and tore the cables right from the wall, his console powering down instantly.

‘Holy shit! Ashley?'

Jerry gawped at me, the headset framing his face. I waited.

‘Where the hell have you been?' He asked, almost stupefied. No big hug. No tears. Nothing.

‘Did you even notice I was gone? You seemed to have had your mom take my place pretty fast.'

Jerry pulled off the headset and stood, his clammy hands taking mine and pulling me to his chest.

‘Of course I noticed,' he said, his Cheeto-tainted breath making me scrunch my nose. ‘But I needed someone to sort the place out. Mom offered.'

‘Did you miss me?' I needed something from him. A sign that I wasn't so insignificant in his life that he could replace me with his mother.

‘Yes. God, yes. I was so worried. Where have you been?' He held me limply, no sign of his apparent concern in his arms.

I wanted to tell him I was busy sucking another man's cock. Being ridden until nothing mattered but Bobby. That another man had made me whole again. A stranger had cared more about me than the man I'd spent a decade with.

‘Everything got on top of me. I rented a little place in the countryside for a week.' A half truth.

‘What got on top of you? You don't have to work, we don't have kids. All you do is look after me and the house. But you're here now. It'll all be okay.'

It wouldn't be okay. Jerry hadn't had even a tiny revelation. His wife had gone missing, and it was barely a blip for him.

My marriage was as good as over.

S leeping next to Jerry resulted in no sleep at all. Not from passionate lovemaking, nor talking into the early hours, but from the crushing need to escape. My home was far more of a cage than Bobby's real one had been.

Bleary-eyed, I made my way to the kitchen to pour myself a cup of much needed coffee.

Between the police questioning me, and the late hours by the time they finished, I'd mostly avoided my mother-in-law.

No such luck.

The salty smell of bacon hit me as I rounded the corner, and Beverley plastered a sickly sweet smile on her face.

‘Well, look at you. Did my boy keep you awake all night?' She asked, pouring me a coffee. From my own damn pot.

‘No.' I took the coffee begrudgingly and sat heavily on one of the bar stools, watching her so comfortably using my kitchen. ‘You don't have to stay, you know. I appreciate you were looking out for Jerry, but I'm sure your own husband would like you back.'

‘Oh, I'll stick around. Jerry has been so happy to have me home.' Beverley caught my expression changing. ‘He was concerned about you, of course.'

Sure .

‘We don't need you here. We can cope on our own.'

Beverley's fingers gripped the spatula she held, whitening around the knuckles.

‘He needs me,' she spat. ‘While you were likely whoring yourself around the state, I was the one here holding his hand.'

‘And probably wiping his ass, too.'

The spatula clattered into the pan. Beverley rounded on me, a deep frown on her face. ‘Listen to me, you ungrateful whore. I told him not to marry you. I warned him you weren't wife material. And he didn't listen to me.'

My nostrils flared as I took a steadying breath, desperately wanting to smack her right in the face.

‘I can tell that you want to leave, petal, but you can't.'

‘If I want to divorce him, you can't stop me.'

‘And what will you do to support yourself? You've got no money. No job. Nothing.'

I slammed my coffee cup on the counter, brown liquid sloshing into a wide puddle beneath. ‘Why do you care? You hate me.'

‘I do. You're no good for him. You don't understand how well you've got it. But I want grandchildren. One baby is all you need to give me.'

‘Don't you mean to give him ?' She was beyond the pale. ‘I can't get pregnant when Jerry prefers video games to sex.'

‘It's a wife's job to figure it out. If your husband won't sleep with you, you're doing something wrong.'

I bit my lip, trying to hold in the rage. I couldn't.

‘He's not fucking perfect. I've tried everything. I can't keep doing this.' A twisted laugh came from my mouth and I knocked the coffee cup to the floor in a flare of madness.

‘Divorcing him will leave you penniless. Everything is in my name. Your house, the cars. Everything . Jerry trusts me.'

The world tilted. If what she said was true, there really was nothing to take forward to a new life.

‘I can give you money. Give me nine months and a grandchild, and I can give you enough to start fresh.' Desperation made her voice rise.

‘You want me to have a baby and hand it over to you? You've got one overgrown man-baby already. You're crazy.'

I stormed out of the room, my mind racing. Leaving was a surety. I only needed to figure out the how.

Staying in that cluster-fuck of a family was no longer an option. Wasting my life trying to appease a man who didn't appreciate me…

Done.

I was done .