I Invited Her In: The new domestic psychological thriller from Sunday Times bestselling author Adele Parks. Adele Parks

I’m up against,’ declares Abi. ‘Baby worship. It’s an epidemic.’

      ‘It must be hard,’ I admit. I love Facebook – even though I don’t post pictures, I love to read other people’s euphoric posts. The ones wishing the ‘sweetest, kindest, funniest boy/girl a happy birthday’. Oblivious to the fact that everyone else is claiming the same of their child. These utter and complete testaments of love have always delighted me. Now, I see it from Abi’s point of view. The vanity behind the posts. The insensitivity.

      Abi shoots me a look that suggests she is irritated, if not outright angry. It is difficult to know what the right thing to say is, exactly. She juts out her chin and says firmly, ‘Still, I’m an absolutely awesome PANK.’

      ‘PANK?’ I ask, not certain I want to know the answer.

      ‘Professional Aunt, No Kids.’

      ‘Oh yes you are, the girls are already totally under your spell.’

      ‘And Liam too, I hope.’

      I’m not sure Liam has actually noticed Abi’s existence; teens live in their own very small world but saying so to Abi would only sound as though she’s ignorant of how big kids tick. The last thing she needs to hear, right now. I nod, and then ask tentatively, ‘Did you and Rob ever try for children?’

      ‘Rob was the biggest child in his life. He didn’t want kids.’

      ‘Oh. I see.’

      ‘He hated the idea with a vengeance.’ I shift uncomfortably in my seat as she starts to brew up a new wave of invective. I wish I hadn’t brought Rob up. What was I thinking?

      I try to cut her off. ‘You have plenty of time for a baby,’ I say, encouragingly.

      ‘I don’t have plenty of time. I’m thirty-eight. But I do have some time. Friends of mine are getting pregnant in their forties; there are options. But first I need to divorce Rob and then meet someone new. Then get pregnant. Let’s not pretend. It’s not going to be easy.’

      We sit in silence for a moment. Both sobered by the truth of her words. Suddenly, Abi laughs. ‘Oh, listen to me. I sure know how to kill the mood, right?’

      Coughing, I say the most honest thing I can. ‘You’re entitled to.’

      She stares at me for the longest time. ‘Yes, I am, aren’t I?’ Then she asks, ‘How did we ever lose contact?’

      I feel warmth seep through my stomach at her comment, the meaning implicit: how could we have let something so important fall by the wayside? Simultaneously, I feel sadness, guilt, grief. It’s confusing.

      ‘Well, I had Liam. You had your studies,’ I murmur, scratching the surface.

      Abi brightens. ‘Bring me up to date. What have I missed?’ she says with a burst of enthusiasm and excitement.

      ‘Where to start?’

      ‘Show me the pictures. Take me through every lost year. You said you have albums, right?’

      ‘Well yes, but—’ I can’t believe she’d be prepared to sit through them. I mean, how interesting can they be to her?

      ‘Come on. You get the albums, I’ll fill the glasses.’

12

       Abigail

      Despite her suspicions that Rob sometimes strayed, dallied, Abigail had never felt so inclined. She told herself that he wasn’t being unfaithful, it was at worst, just sex. Someone once told her that sex was like drinking a large G&T. Pleasant at the time, forgotten once swallowed. She didn’t imagine there was ever any emotional commitment to these women, therefore there wasn’t any emotional betrayal of her. Overall, he was careful, discreet. There were hints, whispers but no evidence, no facts. Anyway, even if he was indulging himself that way, then she certainly wasn’t going to compound the issue by also doing so. She had opportunities. If not endless then certainly countless. But a marriage was a marriage. Vows were vows. If they weren’t taken seriously, then what was the point? You could just buy a white dress and throw a party, you didn’t need the solemn oath bit. That’s what she’d always thought.

      But now she was questioning her own decisions, mourning the opportunities she’d missed. Now, she knew just how deep the betrayal ran.

      When she found out, was faced with indisputable evidence, facts, she’d howled. She wanted to kill him, rip him piece from piece. A bolt of visceral violence surged through her being. She’d been lied to and cheated upon. It was wrong, it was cruel, it was unfair. She screamed, roared. Like a lioness. Rob was passive, almost sanguine. That hurt her more; he couldn’t see why she was so devastated. He said their marriage was dead anyway.

      ‘No fucking way is it dead. Don’t say that,’ she’d yelled.

      ‘It is,’ he insisted. ‘You killed it with wanting a baby more than anything else. You stopped wanting me ages ago. I was a means to an end and when that didn’t work out for you, you didn’t want me at all.’

      ‘No, no, that’s not true. That’s not true!’

      ‘When did we last have sex, Abi?’

      She wasn’t sure. It was months, probably, maybe a year. She didn’t like to think about it. That wasn’t how she saw herself, how she saw them. She was sexy. He was sexy. People assumed there was a lot of sex. But the truth was she’d started to go off it a while back. She glared at him. How dare he say ‘when that didn’t work out for you’, as though their childless state was some awful dollop of unluckiness. It wasn’t that way. She felt fury swirl through her body, gushing like blood. She knew when she’d started to go off sex. She could give him an exact date. He should be able to work it out, if he cared to. It was the day he came home with a slight limp, told her he’d been to the hospital and had a vasectomy. Just like that, without even discussing it.

      When she threw a dinner plate at him, he’d been surprised. ‘We agreed no kids, we agreed that forever ago.’ He’d said it as though it was no biggie.

      No one understood. She had been thirty-six at the time, he was forty-three. When she complained to her girlfriends, they commented that he was being thoughtful, considerate, taking away the burden of responsibility from her. One or two of them leaned in and whispered to her that a man getting a vasectomy was an indicator that he wasn’t planning on throwing over the first wife and starting again with a younger one. She should be pleased!

      She just saw a full stop. An end. A blank. If their marriage was dead it was because he killed it when he had that operation. Indiscreetly fucking other women? No longer being considerate enough to try and be careful? That was just a matter of scattering the ashes.

      Besides, she also suspected that the vasectomy was not a considerate act designed to take the burden of responsibility away from her, it was so there would never be the chance of an accident. Either with her, or she supposed, with any of his other women, who all had the potential to turn out to be gold-diggers. He’d always been disproportionately concerned about unplanned pregnancies. She was on the pill and she took it regularly, never daring to skip a day because he was right, they had agreed no kids, and it wouldn’t be decent to try to trick him. Now, she regretted playing so fairly. Even though she had always known it was unlikely she would get pregnant while she was taking contraception, she always believed there was a chance, an infinitesimal hope. Then, after the vasectomy, she knew it was all over. She cried in the bathroom every month that she had her period.

      So yeah, maybe things had become a bit snoozy in the bedroom, maybe even comatose. It would be impossible to exist in that crazy mental early stage, when all they wanted to do was grab one another and rip each other’s clothes off. Truthfully, she could barely remember that stage when they couldn’t see anything other than each other. When nothing else existed. She wanted more. And he wasn’t allowing