Chapter 4

The park bench still bore the ghost of yesterday’s foot worship—scuffed shoe prints and a faint smear of Mia’s bubblegum-pink polish where Jess had sprawled. Gemma arrived first, her cheer skirt deliberately shorter than regulation, thighs glistening with the kind of shimmer lotion that looked innocent in daylight and sinful under locker-room fluorescents.

Jess tossed a crumpled bag of crisps onto the bench between them. “Right,” she said, cracking her knuckles with theatrical solemnity. “Operation iClub debrief. Who wants to start?”

Mia stretched her legs across the bench, arching one bare foot towards Jess with deliberate laziness. “Confirmed,” she purred, flexing her toes so the chipped gold polish caught the sunlight. “Dad’s got a whole fucking foot thing. Like, whole sites with pics of feet.” She wiggled her toes inches from Jess’s face. “He’s yours.”

Jess’s grin turned feral as she grabbed Mia’s ankle, her thumb digging into the soft hollow beneath the bone. “Good girl,” she murmured, watching Mia’s pupils dilate. “I’ll have him begging to lick my flip-flops by the end of this.”

Jess’s pen hovered over the page. Then she wrote: “Mia’s Dad - Jess”.

Sophie’s lips curled into a smile. “As I reported last night, my dad has been jerking off to cheerleader porn starring girls who look exactly like us.”

Gemma’s shoes tapped an uneven rhythm against the bench before going abruptly still. Her glossed lips parted—once, twice—before she spoke with startling clarity: “I’ll take him first.”

Sophie stared at Gemma. The morning sunlight caught the gloss on Gemma’s lips, making them glisten like she’d just licked them. “You’re serious,” Sophie said, not quite a question.

Gemma rolled her eyes, swinging one leg so her shoe tapped Sophie’s knee. “Already told you I’m into your dad’s thing,” she said, fingers sketching vague circles in the air like she was outlining his silhouette—the broad shoulders, the soft belly, the way his work shirts strained at the buttons. “The whole ... dad bod situation.” Her tongue darted out to catch a drop of gloss at the corner of her mouth. “I want him.”

Jess wrote: “Sophie’s dad - Gemma” in looping cursive before slashing a line beneath it—too sharp, too final. The paper tore slightly. Gemma exhaled through her nose, eyes fixed on the smudged letters like they were a contract signed in wet cement.

“Right, so my dad’s clinically obsessed with tits,” announced Jess. “Like, theoretical physicist levels of fixation. His browser history is, let’s say, interesting.”

Mia adjusted the straps of her tank top, letting the cotton pull tight across her chest. “Easy,” she murmured. The sunlight caught on her collarbones as she stretched. “I’ll have him tripping over his own shoelaces by Wednesday.”

Jess wrote again in her notebook. Now it was Gemma’s turn. Three pairs of eyes swivelled towards her.

Gemma traced the rim of her juice box with one finger, the plastic crinkling under her grip. “My dad,” she said, voice dipping low like she was sharing state secrets, “basically lived for blowjobs.” The juice box squeaked as she squeezed it too hard. “Mum used to joke that he’d follow her around the house like a starving Labrador whenever she wore lipstick.”

Jess snorted into her Monster Energy drink. “That is deeply upsetting imagery.”

Gemma shrugged, kicking her shoes against the bench leg.

Gemma’s fingers trembled against the cracked leather binding of her dad’s journal — the one she’d found buried beneath a decade’s worth of tax documents in his bedside drawer. The entry was dated three months after Elaine’s funeral, the ink slightly smudged where something wet had fallen on the page:

“I miss her in stupid ways. The weight of her legs over mine in bed. The sound she made laughing against my neck. The way she’d take me in her mouth half asleep without even opening her eyes first. Everyone thinks grief’s about big things, but mostly it’s noticing all the small ones disappearing.”

Gemma’s juice box crumpled in her fist with a wet pop, the straw bending at an awkward angle. “He never touched anyone else after she died,” she said quietly, staring at the grass between her shoes. “Not once. Seven years and he still wears the wedding ring.” The plastic seam split beneath her thumbnail, leaking red down her wrist like a thin scar.

Mia’s foot nudged Gemma’s shin. “That’s actually...” She paused, chewing her lower lip. “Kind of sweet, honestly.”

Sophie watched Gemma’s face do something complicated—mouth twitching between a smile and a grimace as she wiped sticky juice off her arm with the hem of her skirt. The fabric rode up, revealing a sliver of milky thigh. “Yeah,” Gemma muttered, tossing the ruined juice box into the bin with unnecessary force. “Sweet like a fucking Hallmark card written in blood.”

Jess reached over and pinched Gemma’s earlobe—hard enough to make her yelp, gentle enough to be an apology. “Your dad’s a martyr,” she declared, as if settling some cosmic debate. “Which means we’re upgrading him from ‘target’ to ‘honoured guest.’ Right, Sophie?”

Sophie was already on her knees in the grass, hands folded prayerfully beneath her chin. “I solemnly swear,” she intoned, fluttering her eyelashes with theatrical devotion, “to choke on Mr Hartley’s dick so thoroughly they’ll hear him screaming in Cardiff.”

Mia snorted, kicking Sophie’s calf with her foot. “Romantic.”

Gemma’s laugh sounded suspiciously wet. She swiped at her nose with her wrist, smearing juice and something shinier across her skin. “Fuck off,” she mumbled, but her fingers found Mia’s hair—tugging just hard enough to tilt her face up—and for one suspended second, they shared something silent and enormous between them.

The notebook page looked like a deranged football manager’s playbook by the time Jess finished scribbling. Ink smudged where elbows had bumped, names circled and connected with arrows thick enough to tear the paper. Gemma’s breath tickled Sophie’s neck as she leaned over her shoulder to inspect the damage—warm and strawberry-sweet from the gum she’d been chewing since lunch.