Dominique kept her head high as she walked away from her husband’s tart, despite her legs feeling weak and strangely jointed. She should turn around and slap that Kendra woman. Give her a mouthful in the street. But she was already running late to collect Mouse. No way would her child suffer because her shit of a husband had been cheating on them all.

Already temperatures were plummeting as the sun raced towards a horizon hidden behind buildings. The handful of snowflakes that had fallen earlier were frozen in place, twinkling in the late-afternoon light like nature’s jewellery.

It was cold enough to freeze Dominique’s heart for ever.

Children streamed from the school building, many wearing paper crowns at jaunty angles. Of course, it had been the school party that afternoon. Mouse shouted goodbye to her friends and bounded over, face pink with excitement.

‘Mummy, I’ve had the best day ever.’

Dom bent down and hugged her daughter tight. She was not the most demonstrative person in the world, struggled sometimes to show her children how much she loved them. But right now, her heart was so full of love it might explode. Her children deserved better than to come from a broken home.

That Benjamin had betrayed her, when he was all that she knew, hurt like hell, but she could cope with it. That he had betrayed their children was unfathomable.

Dominique felt a failure.

Mouse, so articulate and empathetic, would be scarred for ever if her parents split up. Ruby, insecure beneath her veneer of anger, was at such a vulnerable age that she could easily end up doing something silly as a reaction to her father’s treachery.

Mouse jumped around Dominique as they walked home. Telling her about her day.

‘And when the music stopped for the last time, it was me. I was really careful not to tear the paper…’

But Dom wasn’t listening, too lost in the past…

Benjamin and she had known each other since they were teenagers; she and his sister, Krystal, had been schoolfriends. Back then, the two of them always had a laugh together, and he was loyal, hard-working, stuck up for his mates, and would do anything for anyone. Still, they hadn’t got together until Dominique was twenty-two. One night a big group of them all, including Krystal and Dominique, had gone out together. Somehow, she and Benjamin had got separated from the crowd and got chatting, and… the rest was history. She had known from the beginning that he was a keeper, their transformation from friends to lovers so easy. And of course, he knew about her past—

‘Then guess what, Mummy?’ Mouse interrupted her thoughts.

‘Erm, what, sweetheart?’

She didn’t hear the answer…

Benjamin had an amazing body back then, sixteen stone of solid muscle. She had cheered him on from the rugby field’s sidelines, watching him tackle people as a prop, and thought he was sex on legs. The two of them hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other, but they had always talked, too. About anything and everything, but mostly about their hopes and dreams. They had shared a vision of the future: he, building a business; she, looking after their family.

Where had it all started to go wrong? Almost as soon as they married the slow drift apart had seemed to begin, with Benjamin working to provide the life they had envisaged together…

Mouse danced around her, holding her hand. The tug, tug, tug on her arm made Dominique’s shoulder socket ache as much as her head did. She was jabbering on about the school party, a stream of consciousness with barely a breath between words. Dom rubbed at her temples with her free hand.

‘Calm down a bit, eh,’ she said. ‘Mummy has a lot on her mind.’

Mouse stilled only slightly, kept skipping along. But it gave Dom a tiny respite from the throbbing in her head.

She remembered Benjamin’s glow of love when he proposed to her. It had been perfect. He’d taken her away for a weekend in Paris, and proposed to her in a restaurant, in front of everyone. When she said yes, the waiters had swept in with champagne. As the restaurant erupted in clapping, Benjamin had wiped tears of joy from his face, embarrassed.

He had taken that joy and shattered it into a million pieces.

Mouse’s words distracted her. ‘Do you want to see my prize, Mummy? I’ll show you.’

‘Wait until we get home, eh, sweetheart.’

‘Okay – then I can show Ruby and Daddy at the same time.’

Perhaps Fiona was right. Perhaps she should make Benjamin pay. It might be fun to see him squirm. Take him to the cleaners, like Fiona was always joking about; really hit him where it hurt.

She imagined his face twisted in mea culpa, his body curled up as though beaten and bruised. But even as she saw it, it disintegrated. She could never be one of those people who deliberately hurt someone – not even when that person had hurt her. In fact, burying her emotions had caused Dominique problems in the past. Confrontation never had been her strong suit. But her frozen heart twitched in rebellion, reminding her that perhaps it was time for her to try.