Chapter 96
Savannah
Last week
“You’re not his wife.” Savannah shook her head, surprised that she hadn’t copped sooner. “Who are you?”
“Oh, for god’s sake.” The red-haired woman clicked her tongue. “This was the most stupid idea ever.”
“I knew it. This is all to stop me telling his real wife. There’s no open marriage, is there?”
Silence.
“I actually can’t believe he did this. Well, that’s it—I’m going to the other 26 Oakpark.”
The red-haired woman shook her head. “You can’t.”
“Just watch me.” Savannah stood and slipped on her newly purchased silver ballet pumps that were ridiculous with her shorts and tank top, but she was way past caring. She walked toward the hall then stopped and turned. “Who are you, anyway? Another girlfriend of Jon’s?”
The woman rose from the table now too. “I’m Greta, Susan’s sister. And furious as I am with Jon right now, none of this is Susan’s fault. She’s going through enough already.”
“Oh, poor Susan,” Savannah said in a mock-pitying tone, very aware how childish she sounded. “What is poor Susan going through?” She walked toward the front door. The woman followed.
“She’s dealing with a pile-on because of a stupid message…well, it doesn’t matter, but someone smashed their window last night, because of it.”
Savannah started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“That was me. I smashed the window. What message did she think it was linked to?”
“Forget the message—what the hell were you doing, throwing a brick at their window? Bella’s cot is right there—she could have been badly hurt!”
“Not my baby, not my problem.”
The woman—Greta—inhaled sharply. Then suddenly she raised her hand and slapped Savannah, right across the cheek, just like Savannah had slapped Jon earlier.
“What the—how dare you?”
“How dare you. It’s one thing to want to punish Jon. And I get why you want to tell Susan. But ‘not my baby, not my problem’? What kind of person says that?”
Savannah understood the point. On a rational, objective level, she absolutely knew it was an awful thing to say.
But the rage was so strong in that moment, she couldn’t and wouldn’t backtrack.
Jon had lied about being married, then made a fool of her by asking this woman to turn up and play at being his wife.
And now this woman had slapped her, in her own home. She’d had enough.
“Get out.”
Greta didn’t move.
“Get out of my house or I’m calling the police.”
Greta raised her hands in a gesture of surrender, skirted around Savannah and opened the front door.
“Don’t you dare go near Susan or Bella. If you do, I’ll be back, and it’ll be more than a slap.”
Greta slammed the door after her, leaving Savannah breathless and numb in the hall. How was this happening? In less than twenty-four hours, she’d been threatened by two unhinged strangers, despite having done nothing at all to warrant it. Slowly, she moved back into the kitchen.
In a daze, she searched for her phone. Fuck that woman and fuck Jon. They had no right to tell her what she could and couldn’t do. She was going to tell Susan. Where were her car keys? Oh, for god’s sake, Jon still had them. What an absolute tool. When she got her hands on him—
That’s when she heard someone at the front door.