The Affair: The shocking, gripping story of a schoolgirl and a scandal. Amanda Brooke

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СКАЧАТЬ and turned her attention towards Scarlett’s room.

      Of the two adolescents Nina had to contend with, she held out most hope for Scarlett. At fifteen, she was still young enough to want to please her mum, or at least Nina hoped that was the case. She tapped lightly on the door and walked in.

      Scarlett was sitting at her dressing table absorbed in the task of applying dramatic sweeps of eyeliner to accentuate violet eyes that were already guaranteed to draw attention. She had always been a pretty child and undoubtedly she would become a beautiful woman one day, but at that precise moment she was somewhere in between and it didn’t rest easy with Nina. Her daughter had plenty of friends who were boys and one day, perhaps soon, she would break someone’s heart and most likely have hers broken in return. The best Nina could hope for was that Scarlett wouldn’t follow her example and leave it until middle age to find the one.

      ‘Scarlett!’ Nina shouted loud enough to be heard above the music being channelled through headphones and assaulting her daughter’s eardrums.

      Scarlett jumped and the delicate flick of black she had been applying zigzagged towards her temple.

      ‘For f—’ Scarlett began, only to check herself. ‘Flipping heck, Mum. What did you do that for? You scared the sh—, the life out of me!’

      Try as she might, Nina couldn’t keep a straight face. ‘I think you need to redo your makeup.’

      Scarlett turned back to the mirror and examined the damage. ‘Oh great, now I’ll have to start again. I’m going to be late.’

      ‘Late out, but not late back,’ Nina told her. ‘Where are you going anyway?’

      ‘Only Eva’s.’

      ‘To do homework?’ Nina asked hopefully.

      ‘On the first day back? Not even my teachers are that mean.’

      ‘How was school?’

      Scarlett pulled a face. ‘Mrs Russell has left. She got a better job in Chester.’

      ‘Good for her,’ Nina said. Scarlett owed much of her academic success to the woman who had been her form tutor for the last four years. Whenever there had been a suggestion that she was becoming distracted or disheartened, Mrs Russell had managed to get her back on an even keel. ‘You’re going to miss her, aren’t you?’

      Scarlett shrugged. She preferred not to admit to liking any of her teachers and Nina had to read between the lines. ‘So who’s her replacement?’

      Wiping her eyelid with a dampened cotton bud, Scarlett appeared disinterested in both the question and her answer. ‘Mr Swift.’

      ‘Ooh, isn’t he that good-looking English teacher?’

      The soiled cotton bud was cast across the dressing table. ‘Urgh, if you’re into ancient relics.’ A smile began to form as she drew her dazzling violet eyes away from her reflection and towards her mum. ‘He’s about to turn thirty and the whole of our form convinced him he’s losing his hair. He’s probably gone home to ask his wife if he really does have the massive bald spot we all swore we could see.’

      ‘The poor man.’

      ‘Linus said he’s going to bring in one of his granddad’s caps as a birthday present.’

      ‘Ah yes, Linus. Will he be at Eva’s tonight?’

      ‘Probably,’ Scarlett said as she began reapplying her eyeliner.

      Scarlett had spent most of the summer helping her best friend Eva convert her parent’s garage into a crash pad. She had stayed over so often that Nina had felt obliged to send groceries as a contribution to Eva’s parents’ burgeoning shopping bill. According to Eva’s mum, they had a strict no smoking and no drinking policy in place, and thanks to an internal door that meant an adult could barge in at any moment, Nina was reassured that they weren’t up to anything else either.

      ‘I hope you behave yourselves.’

      There was a split second where Scarlett might have been about to ask her mother what she meant, but they had already had that conversation and Scarlett was in no hurry for a repeat. ‘We will.’

      Having remained on the threshold, Nina looked over her shoulder towards Liam’s closed door. ‘Boys might seem a mystery to you now, but, believe me, it doesn’t get any better.’

      The comment had been directed to herself as much as it was to her daughter, and Scarlett chose not to respond.

      ‘You do know you can talk to me about anything, don’t you?’ Nina continued.

      Scarlett huffed, suggesting she didn’t quite agree.

      ‘What?’

      ‘I would have thought you’re too loved up to be bothered about what’s going on in my life any more.’

      ‘Just because Bryn is here, it doesn’t mean I haven’t got time for you, Scarlett,’ Nina said carefully. ‘I know you’re getting to an age where you can make your own decisions, and I trust you to make the right ones, but sometimes it helps to talk them through with someone, and not only me. Maybe Bryn can give you the male perspective where I can’t.’

      Scarlett put down her eyeliner. ‘OK, Mum, is this conversation about me, or could it possibly be about Bryn?’ she asked.

      Nina felt her heart being pulled in two opposing directions. She and her children had made a formidable partnership over the years and she didn’t want that part of her life to change. ‘All I ask is for you and Liam to give him a chance. He’s not trying to foist himself on you as your new dad. We both know you’d only resent him if he tried.’ Nina left a pause in the hope that Scarlett might tell her she was worrying for nothing, but her silence told her all she needed to know. ‘Please, Scarlett.’

      Scarlett bit her lip. This was another conversation they’d had many times before, right up to the eve of her wedding, in fact. Both Liam and Scarlett had needed some convincing that Bryn wasn’t a con artist preying on a lonely woman who just so happened to have a house and a business. It didn’t help that Bryn had made the mistake of mentioning to Sarah that he had been made bankrupt in a previous life, and so Sarah had sided with the children. Nina had told them to trust her judgement, and although that argument hadn’t been completely won, she clung to the hope that one day Scarlett and Liam would come to love Bryn as much as she did.

      ‘I’ll try,’ Scarlett promised.

      Leaving a pause that was thick with disappointment, Nina asked, ‘What time are you planning on coming home?’

      ‘Eleven.’

      ‘Ten.’

      ‘Ten-thirty?’

      ‘If you’re expecting me to pick you up, it has to be ten o’clock, Scarlett. Some of us have to get up at five.’

      ‘I could walk. It’s not far.’

      ‘Not at that time of night.’

      ‘I’ll СКАЧАТЬ