The Fence by Meredith Jaffe Read Free Book Online Page B

argument, Frankie left Brandon to supervise handwashing. In reality, Brandon’s one day of teaching covered enough of the cost of the nanny and Frankie so liked having a wife as well as a husband that she let it slip. Everyone was benefiting.
    Until that fateful day, she thinks, as they drive over the Gladesville Bridge, past the mansions and yachts, when Frankie had a toothache and went to the dentist. One injection hadn’t dulled the pain, so the dentist had given her a second which left her mouth numb to the point she was incoherent. Frankie had called her PA, managing to convey that she had to cancel her afternoon meetings because she sounded like she’d had a particularly long and well-greased client lunch. She even caught a cab home, which she rarely did, and arrived to find Brandon putting his ‘me time’ to good use by banging the Brazilian barista from the coffee shop around the corner.
    Frankie squeezes her eyes shut against the horrible image rising up before her. Her pulse hammers in her temple every time she thinks of it and, right this second, her urge is not to place a hand on Brandon’s thigh but to slap him and shout ‘Why?’
    At the door of their bedroom, she saw the wet footprints tracking from the ensuite spa towards their marital bed. There, on the thousand-count Egyptian cotton sheets, was Brandon kneeling at the foot of the bed, his head buried between the thighs of a woman arching her back and oohing in ecstasy. Frankie noticed two other things about her. That she had no pubic hair and that there was make-up smeared over the sateen sheets. The baby monitor winked on the bedside table.
    Stunned, Frankie stepped back into the hallway and listened in horror as they finished in shrieking, arse-slapping rapture. When Brandon sauntered, sated and flaccid, to the toilet, he stopped when he saw her reflection in the wardrobe mirror. He glanced at the bed, as did Frankie, to see the barista checking for messages on her phone with one hand whilst searching the bottom drawer of Frankie’s bedside table for her secret stash of salted caramel Lindt balls with the other.
    Frankie withdrew to the twins’ room, who mercifully were at ballet lessons with the nanny and not there to witness their father’s betrayal. She collapsed on Amber’s bed, hugging Waddles the penguin to her chest. Her whole body flooded with heat, blood pounding in her ears. How long, how long had this woman been in her bed? An awful thought slapped her in the face. Whilst she was at work imagining the twins learning first position, wishing she could be there to see them stick out their bellies and point their satin toes, Brandon was with this woman. Not thinking of his children at all. He had undone everything. How could she continue to work five days a week when Brandon was clearly no longer a fit parent?
    During the three hellish months of their separation, Frankie took the children to lunch at her mother’s and made the mistake of sharing her feelings.
    â€˜Even with two nannies on permanent rotation and the cleaner in twice a week, I’m exhausted.’
    â€˜Cut back your hours,’ said Noelle as she placed a platter arrayed with an elegant spiral of fruit in front of the children.
    Frankie almost slammed down the Royal Doulton teacup. ‘I can’t afford to, Mother. I have a mortgage, bills to pay; the money has to come from somewhere.’
    Noelle sniffed and shot Frankie a glance. ‘You made your choice, Francesca.’
    There was so much Frankie wanted to say. Noelle had given up work the day she married Frankie’s father, Bernard, so she could maintain a harmonious home for her barrister husband, and everybody else, including her six children, had come a firm second. How much that hurt, still hurt, burning Frankie up with resentment that she, only a child herself, was left to organise her younger siblings so they did not interfere with her mother’s