Free No Way Out by Samantha Hayes Page A

dog-ends.’
    ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Jo. I hope you kicked him out in a good and proper village-rousing, suit-slashing display of emasculation, rather than allowing him to slink off with his tail between his legs when no one was looking.’
    Jo fished the teabag out of Lorraine’s mug, added milk and stirred in some sugar. ‘He left quietly of his own free will.’
    ‘I bet he bloody did.’
    ‘Lorraine . . .’ Jo sighed. ‘It’s me having the affair, not him.’ She slid the mug towards her sister.
    Lorraine took a breath. ‘I see,’ she said, picking up her tea.
    The first thing she thought about was the house. It had belonged to their parents. It was their family home – Freddie’s inheritance now. When their father had died ten years ago, their mother, June, had continued to live there for several years. But the place was no good without him, she’d said.
Too big, too empty, too heartbreaking
 . . .
    Too much to cope with, Lorraine suspected but never said.
    And then, one day, her mother had packed up a few essentials and, without telling anyone, moved into her caravan on the north Cornish coast. It was a month before they knew where she’d gone. She’d since relocated to a more substantial park home, and had never set foot inside Glebe House again. No one really understood why. It was just the way she was.
    In the meantime, she had made arrangements for the property to be signed over entirely to her youngest daughter, as if she was already dead and buried. Lorraine’s theory was that she wanted to leave a family feud in her wake that she could actually witness and enjoy. She gave nothing to Lorraine.
    Lorraine had barely finished reeling from the unfairness of this transaction when, without prompting, Jo did the right thing and bought out her stunned sister’s imaginary share – or rather, Malc bought it out soon after he’d married Jo.
    ‘She’ll have to try harder than that, sis,’ Jo had said once the paperwork was finalised.
    Lorraine was grateful. There had been no family feud for her mother to enjoy. But the gesture had made her feel indebted to Jo – something she continued to feel uncomfortable about, and even, if she was honest, a bit resentful of.
    ‘Tell me he wasn’t . . . you know, hurting you or anything,’ Lorraine said now, taking a sip of tea.
    There was silence, interrupted only by the buzzing of insects driven wild by the garden scents. Lorraine had brought this up a couple of Christmases ago, after noticing a pale green bruise around Jo’s upper arm, but had been told in no uncertain terms to let it drop, that she’d bashed herself while hauling the tree inside.
    ‘I just met someone else,’ she finally responded. ‘We clicked. Malc’s job was taking him away all the time. We weren’t really getting on.’ She batted a wasp away with her hand, flinching when it returned.
    ‘You were lonely, then?’
    ‘No, I wasn’t lonely.’ Jo seemed certain about that.
    ‘Then what?’
    ‘I can’t honestly say,’ she replied.
    Lorraine wasn’t sure if it was more a case of
won’t
say or that she simply didn’t know. Or, she wondered, was it another of Jo’s manically bad decisions that she would live to regret?
    Either way, the moment of finding out had passed because Freddie emerged from the kitchen door, stumbling out on to the terrace wearing pyjama bottoms and a tatty blue dressing gown. His feet were bare and huge, Lorraine noted, thinking back to the last time she’d seen him – far too long ago, considering they only lived an hour or so from each other. Every time she saw Jo and Freddie she made a mental promise that she’d come up more often, every month or every couple of months at the very least. But promises soon fell by the wayside when work took over.
    ‘Freddie, my God, you’ve grown another six feet!’ Lorraine stood up. She opened her arms wide, trying to ignore the pained expression that spread across her nephew’s face.
    Freddie