The Forever Home by Sue Watson

Epilogue

It’s late autumn, the trees are golden, and the foam-laced sea is more boisterous and bracing after the glassy summer months. The house is looking good too, Ryan’s put Thailand on the back burner and continued to work on it. The care and attention he’s paid is really starting to show. I think the same can be said for me; someone told me yesterday that I looked ten years younger, and I have to say, I’ve never been happier.

Thanks to Mark dragging his feet with signing the divorce papers, I remained next of kin and inherited everything when he died. So I’m now the owner of my beautiful white, art deco house that lives precariously on the edge of a cliff in Cornwall – my forever home. It’s all I ever really wanted, and whatever happens in the eb and flow of life’s tide, I intend to stay here. The US channel still want to use the Forever Home idea, even without Mark, and have offered to pay me a retainer for use of the Forever Home brand. I feel like I’m finally climbing out from under Mark’s shadow.

I still have the recording I made detailing my emotional pain, and close-ups of my injuries, and I may, in the future, release this into the wild, because I think Mark Anderson, and men like him, have been protected long enough. I’ll donate some of the retainer fee from America to a domestic violence charity – if I can save one woman from what I went through, it will be worth it.

The inquest into Mark’s death has now been carried out and the coroner recorded it as ‘Accidental’, describing his death as ‘a tragedy, and a great loss’. The inquest revealed that Mark, a heavy smoker, had apparently turned on the gas hob on his boat while smoking. It was apparently his ‘bolthole, where he spent quiet time working on his scripts’ – a line straight from Estelle’s playbook.

Meanwhile, Erin has got herself an agent, and under Estelle’s tutelage has been paid well for her ‘open and honest’ interviews with the media. She plays the grieving girlfriend so well; I particularly enjoyed an, ‘exclusive’ with OK! magazine, who took her, Lara and Billy to the Seychelles. It seems that only by the infinity pool of a five-star hotel could she ‘begin to heal’. And in a lavish, six-page spread, Erin and Lara continued their grieving journey while sporting tiny designer bikinis from Lara’s company.

However, Erin’s real focus of grief is that, as Mark’s next of kin, I received everything in his will. But I think she’s finding solace in those lucrative magazine interviews, and hear she’s been approached by a reality show. I hope she achieves all her dreams, I’m just glad she’s stopped stealing mine. Meanwhile, I’ve set up a trust fund for Billy, because he is Mark’s son, my children’s sibling, and I hope one day, when Erin grows up, they can all be family. Mark failed all his kids one way or another, and I want to make up for that, to all his children. Even after his death.

Lara called me a little while ago; she wanted to meet up, go out for drinks again, and re-establish our friendship. It broke my heart, but I had to say no. I’d loved her, trusted her, she was supposed to be my friend, but while I’d been sharing everything with Lara, she’d been sleeping with my husband. How could I ever trust her again? As Ryan said, with friends like that, I don’t need enemies.

As for me, I have new adventures ahead, I’m about to open my own shop selling those ice cream paint shades and candles that smell like the sea. I’m bringing The Forever Home back, now it’s completely mine again, and this time, it will be real, with no dark shadows behind those white shuttered windows.

As for Jake, he and I will spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders, but it’s a price I’m prepared to pay. I didn’t realise how much our flawed marriage had impacted our child. He’s not a bad person, but even if he were, I’m his mum and it’s my job to protect him until the day I die, and if that means living a lie – then so be it.

So, in spite of everything that’s happened, life is good. Ryan and I are happy, I think I may have even fallen a little bit in love with him. But experience tells me I can’t ever rely on one person – unless that person is me. Who knows what’s round the corner for any of us? But if ever Ryan and break up, or he proves not to be who I think he is, then he can take my ‘secret’ to the police. As long as he believes it’s me who killed Mark, then Jake is safe. And ultimately, that’s all anyone wants, isn’t it? For their kids to be safe – and happy, forever.

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If you were utterly gripped by The Forever Home, don’t miss Sue Watson’s psychological thriller The Sister-in-Law, which has a a twist you will never see coming!

Buy here!