by Amy Daws
My thoughts are distracted when I spot an unfamiliar car parked in front of the house. The staff usually park on the east side of the estate, and I know this little silver Audi doesn’t belong to any of them.
I park alongside it and slide out of my car to make my way inside, ignoring the chill running up my spine. My eyes are cast downward as I dig for my keys in my bag, so I don’t see the person standing before me right away. I don’t see them when I reach the first step. I don’t see them when I reach the second step. The third. The fourth. The fifth. It isn’t until the eighth step that I realise another human is watching me.
A human who just came out of my house.
A woman.
My eyes land on her feet first—platform, red-soled, Louboutin ankle boots. They are covered in crystals, and I know instantly I’m staring at a six thousand dollar pair of shoes. As a clothing and accessory stylist, it’s my job to recognise expensive things. I dress some of the wealthiest soccer players in Manchester, as well as their partners. I style for executive wives, plastic surgeons’ mistresses, even some London movie stars. I buy expensive clothes for people. It has been my career since moving to England three years ago, and I’ve embraced all that the job entails.
However, in all three of those years of working with the most affluent residents of Manchester, I have never, not once, had a desire to style people in crystal-encrusted footwear.
This is definitely not a client of mine.
My gaze passes the shoes and slides up a pair of bare, feminine legs. I wonder briefly if she’s naked on my doorstep in six thousand dollar boots, but I see a hint of a leather skirt at the very top of her thighs. Just enough to cover her pussy lips. Good for her.
Her appearance doesn’t get any more modest as I raise my eyes up her torso and take in her ten inch line of cleavage. Is that dark spot an areola peeking out? Wow, what a brave soldier we have here. A modern-day Lady Godiva on my doorstep!
When I steel myself to glance up at her face, I know exactly what I’m about to see before I even see it. The shocked expression of a blonde, barely twenty-something-year-old with smeared makeup and freshly fucked hair, wearing six thousand dollar shoes. Blondie here is not from these parts.
You see, I didn’t grow up with a lot of money. My mom was a single parent who worked two jobs just to live paycheck-to-paycheck. I remember thinking my sisters and I were rich when she gave us each a fifty dollar bill for school clothes at the end of the summer.
Perspective is everything, though. And after working for people who come from wealth that would make the Queen of England envious, I know when someone comes from money and when they don’t. Neither is better than the other. Just…different. There’s a sixth sense you get about it.
Suffice it to say, Blondie did not buy herself those shoes.
“I was just—” The blonde begins to speak, but I raise my hand to cut her off mid-sentence.
“You were just leaving,” I grind, wincing at the sound my clenched teeth make inside my head. I could say so much more, but this woman—girl—doesn’t deserve my words. The man who bought her those boots does.
Without another look at her, I swing the front door open and walk up the grand, eighteenth century staircase to our bedroom. The whole house creeks with every step, like it’s moments away from crumbling to the ground. It’s the oldest in the neighbourhood. And rather than tearing it down and building something modern like most estates in this area, it’s been restored to its creepy, Edwardian baroque glory.
My steps are slow and steady. My breathing is even to match them as I prepare myself for what’s about to happen. If my husband, Callum Coleridge, was a gentleman, he’d have used one of the seven spare bedrooms we have. It’s the decent thing to do when you decide to cheat on your wife of six years. It’d be impolite and cliché to fuck the whore in the master suite. Wealthy Brits are all about propriety, aren’t they?
But lo and behold, before I even reach the doorway to our bedroom, I hear my husband’s voice call out, “Did you forget something, Callie, baby?”
Callum and Callie. That would look oh-so cute on stationary. I push the master suite doors open and my eyes land on our bed—a huge, four-post, hundred-year-old monstrosity. This morning, it was perfectly made up. I took care to ensure that all four corners of the mallard duck bedspread that Callum’s mother picked out were tucked with neat hospital corners despite the fact that we have people we pay to do that sort of thing.
Now those duckies are rumpled and tossed, squished together like the photos of the carnage Callum brings home when he comes back from a weekend of shooting in the country.
Freaking mallards.
My gaze shifts from the bed to my husband who’s standing in the doorway of the en suite bathroom, shirtless and buttoning his expensive, tailored trousers. Trousers that I bought for him. Trousers that I had custom-fitted for him. Trousers that look fucking fantastic on him.
He looks up with a smile, but his face drops when he sees me instead of his beloved Callie Baby. He winces like he’s been kicked in the balls. Did I kick him in the balls? I look down at my feet, both planted firmly on the floor in modest black stiletto boots. No sparkles on mine. That’s probably what our marriage has been missing. Crystal-encrusted footwear.
“Sloan, I—” he falters.
“Yeah, it’s Sloan. I met your Callie Baby, was it?” I hook my thumb toward the door. “I saw her downstairs. She seems fun. Did she forget her pants up here?” I look around the room, scowling over how the cream fitted sheet is popped off of one corner of the bed. “I wondered if she forgot her pants because I don’t think that leather strip around her vagina classifies as a skirt. She really should consider hiring me to style her. Her footwear indicates she can afford me.”
Callum clears his throat and straightens his shoulders. “I was going to talk to you about all of this.” He approaches me with the same swagger he always has.
How does he have swagger right now? I literally caught him with his pants down, yet he’s walking toward me like a businessman at a board meeting. I shake my head as his words sink in. Did he say, “all of this,” like there is an actual this? Not a one-off thing?
Stepping away, I decide to continue my quest for Lady Godiva’s clothes. Mostly because avoiding eye contact seems vital to my mental state. If I really stop to think about what he means by “all of this,” then I’ll know that what I’ve suspected for years is coming true. And I didn’t want it to come true. I’m living in a foreign country, in a mansion owned by my mother-in-law, styling people who have the kind of wealth I didn’t even know existed in real life. I’m in way over my head, and I refuse to accept another change in my life right now.
“Stop walking away from me. We need to talk,” Callum barks in his demanding, bossy voice. The same voice that I’ve been listening to for the past six years from the mouth that only speaks and never listens.
I swallow past a painful lump in my throat and look up. “You want to talk about the cheating? Or the reason Callie Baby doesn’t wear pants outdoors? Because both should be addressed at some point.”
His lip curls at my sarcasm. Callum hates sarcasm. Can you believe that?
“This has been coming on for a while, Sloan.”
I love that he doesn’t have a term of endearment for me. In our six years of marriage, he’s never once called me anything other than Sloan.
“So you’re telling me that this isn’t the first time you’ve cheated on me, your wife?” My eyes are wide and blinking, barely concealing the pit of despair in my belly.
“For the last few years, you and I haven’t been—”
“Haven’t been connecting much?” I narrow my gaze at him. “Yeah, I’ve noticed.”
“Our marriage has been a sham and you know it,” he scoffs. “What happened between us was an accident, and I thought I was doing the right thing. But I have needs, Sloan.”
“Oh my God, you want to talk about needs?” I cry and a bubble of laughter erup
ts from my throat. I shouldn’t be laughing. This isn’t at all funny, but hearing him say all this is pushing me to the point of hysteria. “Do you want to hear what my needs are, Callum?”
He slides his hands into his pockets, and the image of him suddenly makes me sick. His waxed chest. His sandy blonde hair perfectly cut and swept off to one side like a prep school brat. His manicured fingernails. Yes, manicured. I make his appointments.
He doesn’t look like a millionaire CEO right now. He looks like a chump. Like a joke. Like a poser. Like the cheating bastard he is.
My voice is loud when I continue. “My needs begin and end with our daughter!” I’m screaming now. I’m pretty sure. Mostly, there’s a ringing in my ears, so I can’t fully hear myself and this level of emotion is unfamiliar to me. “My needs ended when hers began.”
He rolls his eyes. He actually rolls his motherfucking eyes! “She’s been in remission for three years!” he barks.
“Remission doesn’t mean she’s all better!” I exclaim, blinking a battery of tears from my eyes. I can’t believe I’m having this argument with the father of my child. The man I married when I was six months pregnant because his mother threatened to take away his trust fund if he didn’t make things right. “Sophia is still a child, Callum. She’s only six years old, and she had cancer for three of those years. She still has nightmares that she’s back in the hospitals. Her healing doesn’t just end because she got the cancer-free balloon!”
“She’ll never be better in your eyes,” he growls through clenched teeth. “And I’m tired of living this way. You don’t give a toss about me, and you haven’t since the day you found out you were pregnant with Sophia.”
I shake my head, pain erupting in my core. A deep, dark pain that I’ve been ignoring for years because I didn’t want to rock the boat. I didn’t want to break up our family. I didn’t want to admit that I knew we didn’t love each other. That I knew Callum was cheating on me. I’ve known for a while it wasn’t working between us, but I didn’t want to disrupt the only life Sophia knows. I understand the pain of growing up without a father and of having no security in your living situation when you’re too young to help. She has already suffered enough for someone who had the nerve to be born with a tumour. This isn’t fair to her!
My voice is soft when I reply, “Cal, we moved here to England for you. I left my first job as a designer behind for you! We’re living in your mother’s mansion with staff, and a butler, and freaking mallard ducks on the bedspread all for you! If I didn’t care about you, why would I have uprooted my entire life in Chicago?”
“Because you didn’t want to lose Sophia,” he snaps with a cold, calculating stare. “Because you knew my mother never would have let you keep her, and we have the means to make that reality possible.”
My heart drops. Is he really threatening to take her away? Truly? He can’t be. None of this can happen. I can’t lose Sophia. Not to Cal, not to his mother, not to anyone. I can barely stand to be apart from her for one night. We’ve been through so much together. It was me who was at every single appointment with her. I was there when the doctor told me my six-month-old baby had a brain tumour. It was me holding her tiny head over a toilet bowl after she went through a slew of radiation. It was me who comforted her when the doctor had to run another PICC line because the nurse couldn’t find a vein. I rubbed her bald head. I kissed her bruised veins. Me! Callum was just in the background while I worked with Sophia to get past her fear of touch because the memories of hospitals haunt her. This can’t be happening. I can’t share my daughter!
My voice feels like acid when I utter, “Maybe if we do some counselling—”
Cal’s haughty laugh cuts me off. “You’re not understanding me, Sloan. I’m not doing this anymore. You…I’m not staying with you. I’ve filed for a divorce with joint custody. If you make a fuss, I’ll file for full custody.” His expression is grim.
It feels like I’ve been punched in the stomach. My knees feel weak and the room begins to spin as I whisper, “But you barely spend time with Sophia as it is. Even right now, she’s spending the night with your mother because I have to work tonight. You could have been watching her. Instead, you’re here fucking Lady Godiva!”
“Lady what?” He scoffs and moves to put his shirt on while sliding his feet into his loafers. “Sophia is everything to my mother, and I’m not taking that away from her.”
“From her? From her! What about me?” I scream and drop down to the floor as reality crashes all around me. “What about what you’re taking away from me, Cal?”
“You’re hysterical, Sloan. We’ll discuss the particulars with lawyers present.” He walks past me, then pauses in the doorway. Turning on his heel, he looks back at me, chin raised like a dictator looming over his people with all his power and wealth. “And don’t waste your money fighting for full custody. My lawyers will bury you.”
With that nail in the coffin, he leaves without another look back.
My head drops. He’s right. Cal has the best lawyers money can buy and more money than I’ll ever have. Even if I tried to gain full custody, I would lose. Aside from this indiscretion, he’s a pinnacle of Manchester society. His company employs hundreds. The Coleridge family name—that he never allowed me to take in our marriage—is adored.
The tiny shred of control I had over my life is officially gone, all because I decided to come home and catch my husband cheating. There’s nothing else I can do other than submit to being a part-time mom to the best thing in my entire existence.
It’s over an hour before I move from the floor of my bedroom and drag myself into the bathroom to pee. It’s weird how your body keeps working when your soul is dead. All my organs continued digesting the water I drank today and alerted me that I had to relieve myself despite my grief. Despite my despair.
I stare at myself in the mirror as I wash my hands. My long brown hair is stuck to the dried tears on my cheeks. The hollows of my eyes are dark and veiny. The whites of my eyes, red. A dribble of snot has crusted on my upper lip. I’m twenty-eight years old, but the woman looking back at me is a sixty-year-old drug addict. I can’t help but be grateful that Sophia is with Cal’s mother this evening. I would hate for her to see me like this.
My hands tremble as I push the strands back from my face and pull my hair into a low ponytail. Callum’s ominous words pierce through every part of my soul. They pierce through the memories I have of Sophia when she was born. The pictures I have of her as a toddler with no eyebrows or lashes. The sensitive hands and skin she rarely let me touch because she was conditioned to think touch meant pain. It’s been three years since her treatments, but I’ve just gotten her back to being a little girl again. She’s no longer a sick baby afraid of anyone who comes near her. She used to cry when I’d try to hold her hand. Cancer tried hard to kill her spirit. A spirit that was beautiful, even on her darkest days. I’ve dedicated my life to bringing her back from all of that, and now Cal is changing everything.
This is torture.
This is why I would have stayed married to him. To avoid missing a single day of her precious, miraculous life. So many choices have been made for me up until this point. It makes sense that Cal decides when it all ends as well.
I slide my three carat diamond ring off and shakily place it by the sink. It represents a lie. It represents a cheater. A womaniser. A monster. It represents a side of myself that I can hardly look at in the mirror.
I jump when I hear my phone ringing from the bedroom. I’m ashamed to say that a sick part of me hopes it is Cal calling to say he’s sorry. My thoughts are completely out of control. To think I’d take him back after everything that’s happened. That I would welcome him home after how awful he made me feel. What’s wrong with me?
I stride out of the bathroom and fish my cell out of the side pocket of my purse. My seamstress and business partner’s bright, freckled face lights up my screen.
My voice is hoarse when I answer. “Hey, Freya.”<
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“Hiya, Sloan!” Her Cornish accent is high-pitched and oh-so blissfully unaware. “Oh my God, my international flight has free WiFi! Can you believe it? I can watch all the Heartland on Netflix that I want!”
“That’s nice,” I reply with a forced laugh. Thankfully, Freya is so caught up in her own world, she doesn’t notice the weird sound of my voice.
“I just wanted to make sure you didn’t forget about Gareth Harris’ suit delivery. He needs it dropped off tonight because he has family coming into town tomorrow morning. I dropped it off with your butler, and it’s hanging in your coat closet.”
Mindlessly, I mumble a thanks before disconnecting the call, grateful Freya was oblivious. I don’t have the energy to tell her what’s happened. I don’t have the energy to believe it’s true. To believe that, once again, my life is forever changed without deciding it for myself.
The last thing I want to do right now is see Gareth Harris. He’s the one client of mine whom I actually respect. He’s the one client who has never once looked down his nose at me or made me feel insignificant in the two years I’ve been styling him. Of all the people I’ve met in England since moving here, he’s the one I might even dare to call a friend.
But I don’t want him to see this side of me. I don’t want him to see me broken, so I will put on a professional front. I have to because soon I won’t be married anymore. Soon I’ll have to support myself and Sophia the way my mom supported me and my sisters. I won’t have access to Callum’s wealth. His mother made sure of that with our prenup.
I will need to be the single, working mother I grew up watching.
No. I need to be better.
I need to feel empowered by this new life and embrace my independence. I can do this. I can get control of my life again.