Still, Shane would not believe it. She looked over Bette’s shoulder and saw Candace looking at them and she remembered where she had seen her before. It was at the CAC the day they had all been arrested for disorderly conduct. She had been the one who had shared the cell with Bette. She was the carpenter Bette hired to work on the exhibit at the museum.

She looked back at Bette and calmly asked, ‘Before or after?’ Bette’s puzzlement was apparent in her questioning, ‘Before or after what?’ Shane did not need to answer Bette’s question, the contempt on her face answer enough, ‘Her. Before or after you started ***** her?’ The question, so direct; but that was the way Shane had always been.

She tore through every artifice and pretence anyone had ever put up, she saw so clearly. She knew Bette. For her to believe that Bette was capable of doing such a thing meant that it must be true. She had had an affair. That’s exactly what she had done. She had betrayed everything that she had with Tina by ***** someone else, and now everyone knew.

Bette closed her eyes and hung her head. In shame, in regret, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that she no longer felt the right to hold her head up high. Shane stared at her in disgust, ‘Yeah, I thought so.’ Bette opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t as she noticed the tears of anger and hurt welling in Shane’s eyes as she shook her head.

She started slowly to back away from Bette, her shoulders fallen at her side in disappointment with the hands that had been so ready to defend Bette’s honour moments ago hanging at her sides. ‘Shane. Please.’ Bette’s own voice finally finding her as she desperately tried to ask Shane to hear her explanation.

‘Shane’ She reached out her hand for Shane to take it but when she saw the outstretched hand Shane’s only reaction was to turn and bolt out of the bar as fast as she could. Not looking back once at the person she no longer knew.

Alice wasn’t sure how long the pounding on the door had been going on for but it was loud enough to wake her from her sleep but apparently not loud enough to wake Tina as she saw that the door to the living room was still closed. Groggily Alice stumbled to the door as she pulled her cardigan on. She hadn’t even managed to focus enough to look at what time it was but she knew it was late enough that everyone should be in bed and not early enough for anyone to be awake.