Spinning Around by Catherine Jinks Read Free Book Online Page A

at work? This poor girl, her name’s Jenny, and she found out that her husband had been seeing someone else for three years . So she confronted him with the evidence (a telephone bill for a mobile that she’d never even known about) and he calmly packed his bags and left. Just like that. And she had an eleven-month-old baby, at the time.
    You think to yourself: how could that happen? It couldn’t happen to me. Jenny must have married a prick. She must be a bit slow, not to have worked it out. Not to have spotted the signs.
    But it can happen. It does happen. And I don’t want it to happen, that’s the thing. If it’s true—and it probably isn’t—but if it’s true that Matt’s seeing someone else, and I ask him about it, what if I’m opening a huge can of worms? What if he wants a divorce? What if he asks for a divorce ? I don’t know what I’d do. I think I’d have a nervous breakdown. I’m practically having a nervous breakdown just thinking about it—about what it would do to Emily, for a start. She wouldn’t understand. Jonah wouldn’t understand. Surely Matt would never do something like that to the kids? He might do it to me, but not to them. He must know it would break their hearts. How could he bear it, knowing that Emily was falling asleep every night with tears on her cheeks? I couldn’t.
    And then there’s the house. How could we possibly keep the house? Suppose he decided on divorce, and wanted to rent his own place—how could we keep up with the mortgage payments? We couldn’t. We’d have to sell this place, and I’d have to move out to . . . I don’t know. Punchbowl? Penrith? What’s more, I’d have to quit work, because we can only afford childcare two days a week as it is; Matt always looks after the kids on a Tuesday. Unless I was to ask my mother for help, of course. But I’d rather die than ask my mother. I’d never hear the end of it. ‘I told you so’ would be hanging in the air for ever after, and I wouldn’t be able to ignore it because I’d be in her debt, God forbid. I’d be a pitiful welfare mother living miles from all my friends, squabbling with Matt about child support payments, agonising over his new girlfriend, over his new wife , over his new family —my God, what if he goes off and has more children ?
    But that’s silly. I’ve got to calm down. Because this whole business about the purple-haired girl—it might be perfectly innocent. And if it is, would Matt ever forgive me for suspecting him? Would it screw up our marriage? I don’t want that to happen. I don’t want it to happen because I love him, and I don’t want to lose him.
    It’s true, I’m not angry. I’m frantic—even though he’s been annoying me so much lately. I know it’s unreasonable, but I can’t seem to help it. I’ve been grinding my teeth over all sorts of things: his CD addiction, for instance. He’s always been one for impulse buying, and not just CDs—he’ll often come home with toys for the kids, boxes of Darrell Lea chocolates (he loves Darrell Lea), new videotapes or strange liqueurs. He’s been pining after a DVD player, recently; I’m so frightened that he’ll go out and buy one. God knows, I’m not mean. I didn’t mind when we had separate bank accounts and no mortgage. I didn’t mind when I had lots of my own money. But those days are gone, and he doesn’t seem to realise it. He still seems to think that he can throw his money around the way he used to, even though we’re on a tight budget. I don’t think he understands about budgets. He probably thinks they’re what people used to have before credit cards were invented.
    And then there’s his drum kit. It’s so big that it fills up vast tracts of our sunroom (because he won’t put it in the garage, even