SPOILERS!!!!!!!
I am gobsmacked! Everything that we believed at the beginning of the book is not as the reality is! At first, I distrusted Debs, thinking that she was deranged and unstable, but it turns out that she might be the most sensible woman here.
As I suspected, the man that visited Callie the night they returned from hospital and made love to her wasn’t Tom, but Jez!!! Then we learn that she has been having an affair with him for months. The first time they met was years ago when she was celebrating an award she had received with her colleagues at work. At some point they were to leave, but as Callie went to retrieve her coat, everybody was gone. So she returned to the bar and asked the bartender to call a taxi for her. Then a man sat on the stool next to her and started talking. That man was Jez, and the following morning Callie wakes up in his bed. As she watched this sleeping, naked man beside her, she noticed his wedding band, so she walked out on him, thinking she would never see him again.
Then she found out that she was pregnant, which was a surprise to Tom, who thought he couldn’t have children after having mumps as a child. Callie was pretty sure that the child was the result of her one-night stand with the stranger, but she was too afraid to tell the truth. It was two or three years later that Tom learnt that two blue-eyed parents couldn’t have a brown-eyed girl like Rae was. This was their end, and Callie found herself without a home. Tom promised that Rae would always be his little girl, but there was no way he could stay with Callie. It was then that she talked to Guy, her ex-boss, who told her about the flat in the area where he used to live with his ex-wife. Apparently, he had sold his house to a friend, and that friend turned out to be Jez. Callie and Suzy had become friends when Suzy came to find the neighbour when she founds herself alone and in labour. From that moment onwards, they became good friends. Yet, one day Callie got into their house to find Jez there alone, and from that moment on they started their affair. Callie had to tell about Rae being his daughter and her heart condition in case that his boys could have the same problem.
Tom comes to talk to her about what he saw, and they have a mature, heart-to-heart conversation. I liked it how Callie explains her feelings and how she tries to cope with life. I can’t condone what she is doing, but I also feel sorry for her. Tom tells her that after talking to Kate, his girlfriend, he has decided to come back to London, open an studio, and that way he and Callie can look after Rae together, and Callie could return to work and become less harried.
That night Jez visits Callie and tells her that their affair needs to finish. Suzy is not well, and he has noticed that someone has been snooping into his accounts, so he suspects that Suzy has hired someone to spy on him. What they don’t know is that Suzy already knows about Jez and Callie. The plumber who fixed Callie’s toilet was supposed to send the invoice to Rae’s dad, that is, Jez, and instead of sending it by post, he got it to the house, so now Suzy knows, and we later learn that she is very dangerous.
Debs has always been right all along. Suzy has been trying to harass her, phoning her and hanging up all day long, making noise, and even leaving the pebbles in her bin. The problem is that nobody believes her. Luckily, as she walks down the street, she sees an elderly lady from the house next door, and when the lady mentions the pebbles having been lined perfectly, Debs bursts into sobs. The woman invites her into her house, and when Debs explains her suspicions about Suzy, she is surprised when her neighbour tells her that she couldn’t put it past her, and then explains that the reason the previous owners of Debs’s house left was because of the problems with Suzy. Apparently, Suzy made their lives a torture, flushing the toilet all night long, playing loud music… and all that came from Suzy not wanting the Hendersons to park their car in front of her house.
Debs then watches Suzy taking Rae and helping her into her car. We know that Suzy has manipulated the situation with both Callie and Rae about the girl going to her friend Hannah’s birthday party. When Suzy is alone with Rae, she does her best to put her mother down. So now that she knows what has been happening between Callie and Jez, she might want to do something more serious. When she reaches the party, she stays there a minute but then makes an excuse for Hannah’s mother about Rae feeling sick, so she leaves with Rae, to the girl’s dismay.
In Churchill Road Debs is desperate and tries to talk to Callie, but the latter believes that Debs is unstable and deranged, so she won’t open the door to Debs. So Debs decides to find Suzy and Rae on her own. We know something more about what happened to Debs and Daisy Poplar. Callie finds out on the Internet that Debs pleaded guilty when she was accused of attacking Daisy, but we know that the situation was more complex. Daisy and her horrible boyfriend apparently took some photographs of Debs and Allen, and they cornered Debs to torment her, and I imagine Debs only tried to defend herself.
Debs runs to the park in Ally Pally, trying to find Suzy and Rae when she can’t find them in the ice rink. In her heart she feels that Suzy will hurt Rae, and she needs to stop her before it is too late. It is raining heavily, but she wont’ stop. Then she decides to call Allen, and she tells herself that she won’t let anybody bully her any longer, and for the first time she talks to Allen directly. I love the conversation they have on the phone. Debs tells him that she is tired to walk on eggshells around him, so if he wants to leave her, it will be better. Allen is surprised when she asks him why he married her, if it was for company as there was nobody else. I really love Debs here, how she finally musters some courage to express what she had bottled all this time, and it is so sweet when Allen tells her how much she admires her kindness, her endurance, and her brains. It is a lovely love declaration, and at the end of the conversation Allen agrees to come and meet her so that they could find Suzy together.
Oh I love this book!!! It’s so clever!!! I just hope that Suzy will be found before she hurts little Rae.
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