And then he was gone.

She reeled from shock, from the speed it had all happened at. She’d fantasized about Dylan removing himself from her life, but now that it had actually come to pass it was ugly. Eleven years wiped out in half an hour, and Dylan in such agony. And talking about selling the house! Yes, she was wild about Marcus, but things weren’t that simple.

Too stunned to cry, too frightened to grieve, she sat in the kitchen for a long time. A ring at the front door jolted her back to the real world. It might be Marcus.

But it wasn’t. It was Ashling.

Clodagh hadn’t been expecting her. She certainly wasn’t ready for her. And Ashling’s uncharacteristic angry hostility compounded the whole horrible mess. Clodagh had always been surrounded by love, but suddenly everyone hated her, including herself. She was a pariah, a scumbag, she’d broken every rule in the book and wouldn’t be forgiven.

After Ashling left, then she cried. She crawled back into bed, between the sheets with their smell of abandoned sex. She’d never laundered so much bed-linen as she had in the past five weeks. Well, no need to do it today, nothing to hide any longer.

She reached for the phone and rang Marcus, so he could remind her that they hadn’t really done anything wrong. That they were mad about each other, that they couldn’t help it, that theirs was a noble entanglement. But he wasn’t at work and he wasn’t answering his mobile, so she had to endure her anguish alone.

This isn’t my faulty she repeated again and again like a mantra. I couldn’t help myself But, like a fissure into hell opening, she caught a glimpse of the atrocity she’d perpetrated. What she had done to Dylan was unforgivable. Unbelievable. With shaky speed she grasped the nearest magazine to hand and tried to forget herself in an article about stencilling. But the fissure opened again – worse this time. It wasn’t just Dylan she’d fucked over. It was her children. And Ashling.

Her heart beat faster and with a hand slidy with sweat she pressed buttons on the remote control until she found Jerry Springer. But he wasn’t enough to distract her from herself – normally the people he had on seemed like cartoon characters with their ridiculously convoluted private lives, but today she didn’t feel any different from them.

She flicked to Emmerdale, then Home and Away, but nothing worked. She trembled with shock and disbelief at her own actions, at the devastation she’d wrought. Then she remembered she’d have to collect Molly from playgroup and had a panicky seizure of paralysis. She couldn’t go out. She really couldn’t. It was impossible.

She couldn’t be on her own and she couldn’t be with anyone else and for a horrible moment she wondered if she was cracking up. This beyond-the-pale thought held her in its grip for a nightmarish while, then she struggled from the embrace of the bed. Cracking up was even more unpleasant than having to face the outside world.

Marcus rang in the afternoon and, in spite of everything, every cell in her body sang as soon as she heard his voice. She was mad about him, in a way that she hadn’t felt about Dylan in years. If ever. Love would conquer all.

‘How’re you doing?’ he asked, his voice full of concern.

‘Shit!’ she half-laughed, half-cried. ‘Dylan’s moved out, everyone hates me, it’s all a disaster.’

‘It’s going to be fine,’ he soothed.

‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’

‘Hey, I rang you earlier and your phone was off.’

‘Keeping a low profile.’

‘Ashling knows. Dylan told her.’

‘I figured he might.’

‘Will you talk to her?’

‘I don’t think there’s any point,’ he said, trying to disguise his shame. ‘I want to be with you. What can I tell her that she doesn’t already know?’

Marcus had spent the past five weeks justifying his involvement with Clodagh by saying that Ashling was neglecting him. But, in truth, his feelings were more complex. He hadn’t been able to credit his luck with Clodagh. She was so beautiful and he certainly preferred her to Ashling. But he’d been very fond of Ashling and was needled by his shitty behaviour. The last thing he wanted to do was confront his own cavalier carry-on by having a question-and-answer session with Ashling.

Far better to focus on the positive. His voice intense with desire, he asked Clodagh, ‘Can I see you?’

‘Dylan’s coming after work. To talk to the kids. Christ, it’s hard to believe…’

‘But how about when he’s gone? I could spend the night. After all, there’s nothing to be afraid of now, is there?’

Her heart soared. ‘I’ll call you when he’s gone.’

‘Right, ring me at home. Ring three times, then hang up, then ring back. That way I’ll know it’s you.’

Dylan arrived after work. He was different. No longer obviously in pain, but angry.

‘You wanted to be caught, didn’t you?’

‘No!’Did she?

‘Yes, you did. You’ve been behaving really weirdly.’

Maybe she had been, she acknowledged.

‘Have my children seen you in bed with that prick?’

‘No, of course not!’

‘Well, they better not. Not if you want any access to them.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m going to get custody of them, you don’t stand a chance. In the circumstances,’ he added, unpleasantly.

His words and the hard expression on his face suddenly brought home to Clodagh how deadly serious this situation was. It was a side to Dylan that she wasn’t familiar with.

‘Jesus Christ, Dylan,’ she exploded, ‘why are you being such a –!’ She stopped short of calling him a bastard. Why wouldn’t he be a bastard, all things considered?

He seemed amused by her frustration – if it was possible for someone to laugh and sneer simultaneously.

She was reminded that Dylan was a businessman. A very successful one. A man who played hardball. Maybe he wasn’t going to roll over and play dead just because she wanted him to. Dylan had always treated her with tenderness and love, she was finding this abrupt change hard, even if she was responsible for it.

‘I’m going to get custody,’ he repeated.

‘OK,’ she said humbly. But even as her face was meek, her head was whirring. He’s not getting my children, no way.