Chapter Sixteen
Gilly & ‘Robbie’
Stella’s words rang in her ears as she sat opposite her husband in the seat and front-room he had once taken for granted and to which now he so desperately wished to return — even under the conditions Gilly attached to that return. He looked grubby and dishevelled and she felt a little — only a “little” — mean for the pleasure it gave her to see him in such a way and to know she was responsible.
“Be extremely careful not to rub his nose in his capitulation at this point,” Stella had told her, the thrilled to bursting point housewife having called her immediately after allowing Nirupa to put the seal on her husband’s admission of defeat - and the beginnings of an even greater triumph - with her tongue; the phone in her hand almost before the front-door ha
