‘You didn’t tell me,’ Seb says, a whine in his voice, eyes blinking from behind his glasses.
Rosie snorts a fake laugh and Seb at least has the decency to look away, abashed. That was an idiotic thing to say.
His work phone starts ringing; he looks down. ‘Sorry, it’s Harriet, I’m going to have to take this.’
Rosie shrugs and turns her back to him to get a mug and teabag as Seb stands and walks out of the kitchen to take the call upstairs, saying, ‘Morning, Harriet,’ to the chair of governors as he leaves.
Once he’s gone, Rosie turns back round to face the kitchen table, ignoring the kettle as it spits and bubbles behind her. As she hears Seb move around safely away upstairs, she stares at one thing. His school laptop. Seb thinks she doesn’t know his password, but she’s watched him open it enough times that she knows it’s their kids’ initials followed by the year. He is vigi lant about protecting his students’ and teachers’ confidential information, but not vigilant enough. Fucking Seb. Fucking upright, law-abiding Seb. She moves across the kitchen, sits down on the still-warm chair. Seb. So good when it came to everyone else and such a traitorous slimy shit when it came to her – his wife. Rosie taps in his password, and the screen comes alive.
Above her, the floorboards groan. He’s pacing around. She feels her hands moisten, nervous suddenly at what she’s going to ask them to do; they’ve never done this, never snooped before. But she didn’t listen to her instinct before, when she suspected something more had gone on between Seb and Abi, and look where it has left her. Betrayed in the most degrading way. She remembers Blake and Eddy’s story – how Seb had slammed his computer shut when they’d disturbed him at school. She won’t ignore her instinct again. She clicks through to the computer’s history easily, and the screen fills with an incredibly young-looking Asian girl, peering over her shoulder, looking back at Rosie, around her pert, naked bottom the words ‘GeeGee is ready to play!’ Rosie whimpers and clicks on the next page. This time it’s a white woman with long brown hair in a squat over a chair, bronzed, doughy breasts pushed up, masturbating, her eyes closed, her lip slightly curled, furiously focused on her own pleasure. ‘Discounted rates! Only £130 for the first hour!!!!!’
Rosie clicks on more and more pages. Where was she, she wonders, when Seb was staring at them? Was she putting their kids to bed? Cleaning the bathroom? Folding fucking laundry?
Rosie sits back and lifts her face to the ceiling, feeling herself drop fully into what she suspected to be true. Seb is a liar, a perpetual liar. He’d been shopping online for people just like how she’d buy toilet roll and tomatoes. He hadn’t just stumbled on Abi’s website like he said. He’d hunted for her, hunted specifically for Abi with her brown eyes, toned legs and perky breasts.
Upstairs, on the phone, Seb laughs, and Rosie feels like she’s suddenly no longer made of bone and muscle. No. Now she’s all rage.
She stands, knocking the chair over but not caring; she can’t sit with him smiling and laughing, thinking he’s got away with this sick
‘Rosie?’
Rosie’s head snaps up from the screen as she slams the laptop closed. Eva is standing in the back doorway, holding something wrapped in a tea towel and looking quietly at her daughter-in-law.
‘You scared me!’
‘Sorry,’ Eva says, addressing the toppled chair on the floor before looking back up to Rosie. ‘I did knock but you were miles away.’
Eva’s eyes move from Rosie’s face to her hand, her fingertips resting on Seb’s laptop, the Waverly Community Secondary School label stuck on top.
‘Yes, I was just … Seb’s upstairs on a call. I’m actually about to go out. I want to go for a swim and then I promised I’d see Anna.’ Rosie had, in a weak moment, finally given in to Anna’s incessant requests to meet and talk.