Let's Call The Whole Thing Off
Jill Steeples
Reasons why you should never, ever, read your best friend’s diary (even if it has fallen to the floor, pages open oh-so temptingly…):- It’s morally indefensible.- She would never trust you again.- You probably know it all anyway…So what harm could the tiniest peek do…? Answer: Lots! The best reason for never reading your best friend’s diary:- You might just find out something you really didn’t want to know!Learning her fiancé, Ed – the guy she’s supposed to marry this weekend! – is having an affair with her best friend, is a devastating bombshell for bride-to-be Anna. Confused, hurt and absolutely livid, she hops on the first train to anywhere-but-here in need of some serious soul searching.Can she ever forgive Ed? Who is Anna ‘sans Ed’? And more importantly, should she go through with the wedding or should she just call the whole thing off?Jill Steeples first novel Desperately Seeking Heaven is shortlisted for the Romantic Novelists' Association Joan Hessayon Award 2014Praise for Jill Steeples'Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off by Jill Steeples is a well written and easy to like book.If you are looking for a chick lit with a twist then give this one a read.' - HarlequinJunkie'So gripping, vivid, enjoyable and fascinating!!!' - Sky's Book Corner'It was a thoroughly enjoyable read that kept you wanting more.' - A Book and Tea'I enjoyed reading this a lot. Jill is a great writer, she knows how to tell a story. I can’t wait to read more of Jill Steeples.' - Dreaming with Open Eyes
Reasons why you should never, ever, read your best friend’s diary (even if it has fallen to the floor, pages open oh-so temptingly…):
It’s morally indefensible.
She would never trust you again.
You probably know it all anyway…
So what harm could the tiniest peek do…? Answer: Lots! The best reason for never reading your best friend’s diary:
You might just find out something you really didn’t want to know!
Learning her fiancé, Ed – the guy she’s supposed to marry this weekend! – is having an affair with her best friend, is a devastating bombshell for bride-to-be Anna. Confused, hurt and absolutely livid, she hops on the first train to anywhere-but-here in need of some serious soul searching.
Can she ever forgive Ed? Who is Anna ‘sans Ed’? And more importantly, should she go through with the wedding or should she just call the whole thing off?
Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off
Jill Steeples
Copyright (#ulink_1031a9bd-1e7a-51f9-a754-55e4701fb0ef)
HQ
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2014
Copyright © Jill Steeples 2014
Jill Steeples asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
E-book Edition © June 2014 ISBN: 978 1 472 07428 7
Version date: 2018-06-08
Also available by Jill Steeples:
Desperately Seeking Heaven
Jill Steeples lives in a small market town in Bedfordshire with her husband and two children.
From an early age she fell in love with the fabulously funny romances of Jilly Cooper, and vowed, one day, she would have a go at writing one of her own.
Jill loves writing short stories, particularly those with a twist in the tail, and her work has appeared in popular women’s magazines around the world and in a number of charity anthologies.
Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off is her second novel.
Contents
Cover (#ue545f25e-2070-50c2-841b-77ab40bf9cc4)
Blurb (#u39253c4e-5128-5253-8462-93b03bdc3b8d)
Title Page (#ud97b5150-c4b7-563d-b3b1-5f229e9a37f6)
Copyright (#udfd004f2-fa76-593a-ac13-71a136a80e71)
Booklist (#ub61ba17b-9a35-55f7-9470-cb1f21010339)
Author Bio (#u5bf8c571-b9c6-5244-ac70-c68741e3cbff)
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Excerpt (#litres_trial_promo)
Endpages (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#uf2c26a5c-f92b-533e-8008-62d7821e52be)
There are 101 reasons (listed below) why you should never, ever, read anyone’s personal diary, especially not your best friend’s diary, even if said item just so happens to fall off their bedside cabinet laying open all those pages of hastily scribbled blue ink in a tempting array.
I took a deep breath …
It is a morally indefensible thing to do.
This is my bestie, for Christ’s sake. If she’d wanted me to know the stuff in there she would have told me.
I probably know all the stuff in there anyway.
My best friend trusts me implicitly.
I wouldn’t do anything to betray my friend’s trust.
I am not the sort of lowlife person to even consider such a thing.
I would be incensed if anybody did the same thing to me.
I know everything there is to know about my friend. She knows everything about me. We share absolutely everything. Best friends. Forever. Together.
It’s probably full of boring everyday stuff. Went to work. Had pizza. Got drunk.
So if I know it all anyway, have lived through most of it with her anyway, listened to the work woes, shared the pizza, got drunk along with acquiring my very own version of the T-shirt, then does it really matter about those other ninety-one trifling reasons?
No.
So what possible harm could the tiniest, sneakiest peek do?
I took another deeper breath and picked up the diary …
Sunday 31 March
Feel crap. Crap, crap, crap. My head is in a constant state of fuzziness, my thoughts banging against my temples and I just don’t know what the hell to do. I feel sick the whole time, I’m not eating and I’m not sleeping. Only five days to go! Oh god! Just kill me now. What will I do? How will I get through it? I feel so totally alone, there’s no one I can talk to and yet half of me wants to shout it from the rooftops. Put it right out there and … and then what? It’s hopeless. And Anna is just so fucking happy. It’s not fair.
My legs gave way beneath me and I sank down onto the bed, reeling from the spikiness of the words, the emotion jumping off the page and slapping me hard across the face. What the hell did it mean? My eyes scanned the neatly looped handwriting, trying to make sense of something that could have been written in Swahili for all the sense it was making. My heart thumped against my chest, my hands clammy.
Nothing on the page was recognisable as being about Sophie. There was no sign in the torrent of words of the happy-go-lucky, vivacious girl I’d shared a flat with for the last three years. It was like reading the thoughts of a stranger. My quirky funny friend had done a bunk. Either that or she’d turned into a manic depressive overnight. Or had her mind and body taken over by an alien.
Only five days to go? What was that all about? I was counting down the days in an excitable, couldn’t-wait way, but Sophie was talking as if she was preparing for her own funeral. Unease spread through my body, reaching the tips of my fingers and toes. Tears brimmed in my eyes and I blinked them away. Why shouldn’t I be happy? It was meant to be the happiest time of my life. And I’d thought Sophie shared that happiness. Wasn’t that what best friends were meant to do? But Sophie, for reasons known only to Sophie, was choosing this moment of all moments to throw a hissy fit, to act like a prima donna because … because of what? Was she jealous? Was that it?
I closed the diary shut, a shudder prickling at my skin. Holding it at arm’s length I put it back carefully on the bedside cabinet as though the whole thing might explode in front of me. Which it might. Along with our friendship.
If Sophie hadn’t wanted to be chief-sodding-bridesmaid then all she’d had to do was say so.
***
Reason number ninety-something or other for not reading your best friend’s diary – although to be honest I was way past caring now –would have to be: You might just find out something you really didn’t want to know.
And the danger with that is when you do find out whatever it is you didn’t want to know there’s no way of undoing that knowledge, of stuffing it back in the box and slamming the lid shut. It was out there, hovering like an ugly wart over my shoulder.
And now I’d have to say something, put it right out there, as Sophie had said, but how could I without her finding out that I’d been snooping around where I shouldn’t have been.
Oh by the way, Sophie, that whole bridesmaid thing? Don’t worry about it. I mean, if you’d really rather not, then I quite understand. I mean, it must be a real drag for you wondering how you’ll manage to get through such a tiresome event, having to take on the responsibility of looking after me on what should be the happiest day of my life. Let’s just forget about the whole thing, shall we?
It just didn’t make any sense.
Maybe it was the dress. Thinking about it, Sophie had been distinctly underwhelmed when she’d tried it on. She’d twirled around self-consciously in the fitting room of the bridal shop, looking glum.
‘It’s a bit purple, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, perfectly purple, it looks gorgeous against your blonde hair and your lovely skin. Crikey, Sophie, you’ve lost so much weight. What’s going on?’ I’d grabbed hold of the excess material in a fistful at the back of the dress. ‘It’ll need taking in.’
‘I’ve stepped up my sessions at the gym. Need to look good for your big day, don’t I?’
‘You’d look good with a paper bag over your head.’ I sighed, distracted by six small lilac lovelies who were swooshing in and out of the curtains of the changing cubicles, whooping with delight.
‘Girls! Settle down. You need to behave like proper princesses when you’re wearing your special dresses. Sophie will be your Fairy Godmother, but she might turn into the Wicked Witch if you’re too naughty. Isn’t that right, Sophie?’
Sophie had nodded with a scowl, adopting her witch persona a bit too convincingly, looking as if she didn’t care what the hell they did.
Maybe it wasn’t the dress.
Perhaps it was the kids. Sophie was an only child. She had no experience of looking after little ones. And my cousins and second cousins were cute, but a bit like live grenades, they needed constant monitoring and careful handling. If Sophie was worried about controlling the mini terrorists then why hadn’t she said something? We could have come up with a plan.
No, none of it made any sense whatsoever.
**
I raced down the stairs, poured myself a glass of water from the tap and then paced up and down the kitchen. I’d never really paced before and the kitchen was tiny so it didn’t take a lot of pacing, but some situations needed concentrated pacing and this was one of them. There was a nervous energy pumping around my veins that I needed to get rid of.
That morning I’d woken up feeling so happy and excited and nervous, knowing I was a step closer to my big day. There was still so much to do: dresses to collect, the florist to contact, hair and make-up appointments to confirm, legs to wax, last-minute honeymoon shopping for bikini no. 4 just to be on the safe side and dozens of other calls to make, but now all I had running through my head was Sophie’s plaintive it’s not fair.
What wasn’t fair?
A sense of doom lodged in my heart and I had a feeling it had no intention of moving out anytime soon. I took another glug of water, a steadying breath and taking the stairs two at a time raced back up to the bedroom.
Grabbing the diary, my eyes devoured the words on the first page that fell open.
Friday 16 February
What an amazing day! We went to the park and walked round the lake holding hands like a proper couple and it all felt so normal and lovely. And we didn’t talk about the ‘situation’ because he told me not to and I knew it would only end in a row and I didn’t want that to happen, not today. I just wanted it to be special. And it was! We came back and fell into bed and stayed there for the rest of the afternoon. God, he makes me laugh that man! It just feels so right when we’re together, as though we were made for one another. And the sex is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. I can never imagine tiring of his firm, hard body and those sweet, insistent kisses of his make my toes curl in delight. He’s always so hungry for me and it just makes me feel so wonderful and beautiful. Like a goddess! Aargh, he takes me to heights I didn’t think possible.
Oh, well, that made perfect sense. Relief seeped out through my shoulders. A man! It would have to be a man. A sex god to boot. Typical! My fingers fast forwarded a couple of pages.
Monday 19 February
The bastard! I can’t believe it! He called round today and told me it was over. WTF! After last week as well, when I thought we’d reached a new understanding and intimacy. We can’t carry on because it isn’t fair on me (!) and as much as he adores me there isn’t anything else he has to offer. Funny how he’s suddenly developed a conscience. Gave me a load of crap about how it was only ever meant to be a bit of fun and falling in love wasn’t part of the plan. But it’s a bit too late for that now! I love him more than any man I’ve ever loved and I know he loves me too. I told him I was prepared to wait, but he said ‘No’, he couldn’t do it any more. And then he told me straight – he was never going to leave her and I’ve got to get used to the idea – we have no future together. My heart is breaking. Not sure how I’ll ever get over this.
Oh God, poor Sophie. A broken heart explained everything. The loss of weight, all that mooning around, her lack of interest in anything bridal. No wonder she was dreading the wedding. Clearly she’d got herself involved with some toerag, a married toerag at that, and he was giving her the run-around. And all this time she’s been keeping this huge secret to herself so as not to burden me in the run-up to my special day. That was just like Sophie, thinking of others first. What a sweetheart! Probably all the talk of marriage and lifelong commitment had brought home to her just what she was missing out on.
Of course it seemed unfair. I had my Happy Ever After to look forward to, but what did Sophie have? A bit of afternoon delight when it suited her fancy man. And however good he was in the sack, it couldn’t be worth all the sneaking around, the lies and the hurt. She probably felt miserable that she couldn’t bring him along to the wedding. That she couldn’t show off her new man to all her friends, but no doubt he went running back to wifey at the weekends. And now, despite all his promises, he’d dumped her for good. But for goodness’ sake, what was she doing with a married man in the first place? Wasn’t that regulation No. 1 of the girls’ club – no married men?
Had I really been so preoccupied with the wedding that Sophie had felt unable to confide in me? I stretched out my arms behind me, my hands resting on my best friend’s bed as I looked for answers in the Artex ceiling.
I cursed inwardly. If only I’d picked up on the signs earlier and had the chance to sit down with Sophie and counsel her on the futility of dating a married guy then I might just have been able to make her see sense and all this heartbreak could have been avoided. Okay, I’d been manic busy these last few months, but never too busy to listen to Sophie’s problems. We’d always been there for each other and now I felt absolutely dreadful! Like the worst friend in the world. In all my bubbling excitement for the big day I’d completely neglected my friend’s needs.
I would have to talk to Sophie, coax it out of her, hold her hand while she told me all the gory details about this man and their torrid love affair. And then, being the good friend I’d failed to be lately, I’d make it up to her by seeing her through these next few weeks (barring the honeymoon, of course, although I would make an effort to counsel her by text). Yes, I’d help her get the no-good scumbag out of her system once and for all.
The diary felt heavy in my hands. I really ought to get on and make some of those phone calls, but now I knew about Sophie’s troubles I had a moral responsibility to make sure she was okay. She’d sounded completely and utterly distraught in that last entry and unrequited love can do funny things to you, can tip you over the edge. I didn’t want Sophie to do anything stupid.
I just needed to check. Make sure she was absolutely okay.
Tuesday 12 March
Mmmm, mmm. Only twenty minutes today, but when they are the most exciting moments of my week, what does it matter!? No, scrub that, the most exciting moments of the last month, the last year, my entire lifetime! My insides are still zinging with excitement and my legs, oh God, I’m not sure they can even function any more. They’re all wobbly, a bit like my heart. Xx
Oh good grief, Sophie! What’s happened? One minute it’s off, the next it’s on. What on earth are you doing? Why, why, why? You’re such a glutton for punishment. (What exactly is the guy doing to you to turn your legs to jelly?)
Hurriedly, I ran my fingers back through the pages.
Friday 9March
I knew it! He turned up on the doorstep looking dreadful, really awful, standing there with dark rings around his eyes and I just couldn’t turn him away. All my anger and disappointment disappeared at the sight of him and all I felt was complete relief that he was back again. I’m sure my heart literally swooned. We fell into each other’s arms and oh, he made soft, sweet love to me and it was as if we’d never been apart. I’m not sure what it means for us, what we’ll do, but none of that matters now. All that matters is that he’s back.
Why did you have to fall for it, Sophie? I punched my clenched fist down on the bed in frustration. He turns up on the doorstep with puppy-dog eyes and in an instant you’re eating out of his hand again! This wasn’t the Sophie I knew; the independent, vivacious, self-assured woman who wouldn’t take crap from any man. What was she doing putting her life on hold for the sake of a two-timing rat? It was obviously why Sophie hadn’t been able to confide in me. She probably felt ashamed that she’d got herself in so deep and knew that I’d give it to her straight, tell her she was acting like a complete and utter fool and the sooner she got the creep out of her life the better.
Thursday 15 March
He bought me a present! A solid silver trinket box in the shape of a butterfly. He knows how much I love butterflies. It’s so beautiful and I’ve put it on my bedside cabinet where I can see it. I’ve doused it with his aftershave as well just to have his delicious scent around me. Every time I look at it I’m reminded of him, although that’s not difficult because I think about him every single moment of the day. I just can’t get him out of my head and all I’m doing is counting down the minutes until I can get to see him again, although Lord knows when that will be now!!! Oh God, I don’t know how I’ll get through these next few weeks. He said he’s got to lie low, he’s got too much on and it’s far too risky for us to meet, but when it’s all over then we can pick up where we left off, that’s if I want to. If I want to!? NO!! I don’t want to. Doesn’t he get it? I don’t want to be someone he picks up and drops off just when he wants to. But what can I do? The alternative is far too horrible to even contemplate. Those weeks without him were the worst time of my life. I can’t live like this and yet I can’t live without him. I love him too much. I want this whole horrible situation to end. I don’t know why he can’t just come to his senses and call the whole thing off…
It was like picking up the final piece of the jigsaw but still being unable to fit it into the picture. I leant over and picked up the butterfly box, my fingers tracing over the intricate design. I pulled off the lid and raised the trinket to my nose, that familiar scent sending a stabbing pain to my chest, my stomach into free fall and bile rising at the back of my throat. My breath came in heavy, laboured motions. For a moment, I thought I might actually forget how to breathe. That I might stop doing that whole breathing thing, there on the bed.
He can’t really love her. Not if he can’t give me up. I just don’t understand it. It won’t last, I know it won’t. But he insists on going through with it. My only hope now is that she gets run over by a bus or that she has a sudden blow to the head and decides that she wants to join a nunnery. Or maybe she’s struck by Cupid and meets her soul mate who’ll whisk her off into the sunset. Sigh. To be honest, the nunnery is looking like my best option. Whichever. I’ll be waiting for him at the other side. However long it takes.
Furiously I hurled the silver box across the room, the lid parting company with the base and ricocheting off the wall, before spinning onto the carpet. I took a deep breath and returned the diary to its spot on the cabinet, before standing up, my legs wobbly like Sophie’s had been, but for entirely different reasons. My breathing laboured, I leant down and picked up the silver box, reuniting it with its lid, the familiar scent making me retch. I replaced it very carefully next to the diary.
Chapter Two (#uf2c26a5c-f92b-533e-8008-62d7821e52be)
Somehow, despite my wobbly legs, I made it downstairs, ignoring the palpitations in my chest and the ringing in my ears until I realised that what I thought were brain cells playing Space Invaders in my head was actually a phone. Somewhere. Outside of my head, demanding attention.
I snatched up the handset, only registering at the last moment that I wasn’t sure if my mouth still worked. What if it was Sophie or, worse still, Ed? What words were there?
‘Hello?’
‘Oh hi, Anna, it’s Louise Bailey here.’ The woman chirruped, actually chirruped, like an annoying little bird.
‘Sorry?’
‘Louise Bailey from St Michael’s Manor. How are you?’ What did she have to sound so goddam happy about? Chirrup, chirrup, chirrup. ‘Not long to go now. You must be so excited?’
‘What? Oh yes.’ The slow realisation of who this annoying woman was spread through my veins as my mouth operated on auto-pilot.
‘I just wanted to confirm the final numbers for Saturday. I think we’d pencilled in three hundred.’
Oh shit. Oh bum. Oh bust.
I scrabbled for the ‘folder’, flipped open the cover and looked at the papers clipped to the front. A lifetime’s work. Well, not really, but at that moment it seemed that way. Eighteen months’ work, at the very least. The list of names ran over three pages, some had ticks against them, others had been scratched out and at the top I’d circled the magic number in red.
‘Two hundred and eighty-two,’ I said more to myself than to the tweetering bird on the other end of the phone.
‘Two … hundred … and … eighty … two,’ repeated Birdie, as though she was announcing the winner of the Golden Globe. ‘That’s fabulous. Well, just to reassure you that everything is in hand at this end. We are very much looking forward to welcoming you and Ed to the Manor this weekend and making sure your special day is as wonderful and memorable as it can possibly be. Now, if there’s anything else you need, any worries you might have, then just feel free to ask. We are here to help.’
‘Help?’
‘Yes. If there’s anything, absolutely anything, then you only need ask.’
I thought about it. She was so frigging organised and efficient. She probably had a section in her wedding bible for ‘dealing with cheating intendeds’. A master plan for such eventualities, but I had a feeling I was way beyond anyone’s help now.
‘The doorbell,’ I heard myself say.
‘Sorry?’
‘The doorbell. It’s ringing. I need to go.’
‘Oh right, yes, of course,’ Birdie said, losing some of her tweet. ‘I’ll let you go. And we’ll look forward to seeing you at the weekend.’
I put down the phone with a sigh, deciding to ignore the doorbell, but not knowing what, if anything, I could do beyond that. My whole body had gone into an elaborate non-functioning state. I should have been crying or screaming or throwing even more things across the room, but I had neither the energy nor the inclination to do any of those things. Instead, I keeled over on to the sofa, arms wide, sacrificing myself to the wedding God.
Only half an hour ago, my life had been perfect. My future mapped out like a Cath Kidston photo collage, full of impossibly cheerful moments in a perpetually sunny, floral vista. And now – well, it wasn’t.
‘Open the bloody door.’ A muffled voice wafted down the hallway.
I jumped up in my seat, fear racing through my body. I slipped the backs of my hands beneath my knees, bit on my lip and held my body tight with tension, hoping if I stayed like that for any length of time the annoying person ringing my bell would get the message and leave. Then I might think about breathing again. And decide what the hell I was going to do next.
‘Anna, I know you’re in there. Come on, open up. I need a coffee and a piss. Hurry up.’
Ben! After Ed and Sophie, he was possibly the last person in the world I wanted to see.
‘Ben!’ I wailed, putting on my most sickly, leave-me-alone, I-really-am- dying voice. ‘I’m on the sofa. Feeling rough. Really rough. Sickness, diarrhoea. Virulent and catching. Sorry! I can’t … I can’t … I’ll call you.’
‘Open the door, Anna.’
Aaargh, God. I prised myself off the sofa with a huge effort, my body suddenly taking on super-heavyweight proportions and lumbered towards the door.
‘You took your time.’ Ben breezed into the flat, looking like he just wandered in off a Boden menswear shoot. In fawn-coloured cargo shorts and hot-pink polo shirt, the collar popped, he cast his gaze over me, scratching his head distractedly. ‘Christ, you look rough. What’s up?’
‘Ill. Very ill.’ I braved a glance at his concerned expression and immediately wished I hadn’t. Ben represented everything that was familiar and reassuring in my life, only now he’d taken on an altogether different appearance. I’d known him for ever, or for what seemed like for ever, ever since we’d started senior school. It seemed only natural when we ended up at the same university too. We shared everything together, all those angst-ridden teenage traumas, all the highs and lows. I’d seen him through his break-ups with various highly unsuitable girls, and he’d seen me through all the boys I’d just been practising on before I met Ed. And then when I met Ed, everything fell into place and Ben seemed to like Ed, almost as much as I did. So much so that their bromance developed to such an extent that Ed asked Ben to be his best man. That had to be a good omen, didn’t it? But now, uncovering the secrets of that wretched diary, our merry little band was about to be blown into tiny smithereens.
‘You need to go,’ I said, clutching my stomach as though I might just die. ‘You might catch it.’
‘What? And leave you like this? No way. I’ll take my chances, thanks. Let me make you a cup of tea. It’s probably all the stress of the wedding finally catching up with you. Hey, I’d be throwing up all the time too if I knew I was getting married at the weekend. Back in a mo!’ he said, dashing off to the bathroom.
I jumped up, fired by an urgency to do something, anything, but most importantly to get Ben out of the flat. And me too, I decided, in that instant. I needed to get out of the claustrophobic confines of this God-awful place .
Just being here was suffocating me. I couldn’t be here when Sophie came back or if Ed turned up. Although that looked unlikely. They were probably holed up somewhere together, shagging each other senseless.
‘Hey, what are you doing?’ Ben was back, standing in the doorway, brandishing a mug of tea in his hand.
‘I’m just going to pack up a couple of bits, that’s all. I need to get away for a few days. Take a bit of a break.’
‘Whoa, whoa, whoa.’ He put the mug down on the coffee table and dashed over to where I was rooting through my handbag. ‘What’s this all about?’
‘It’s nothing.’ My whole body prickled with suppressed emotion. When he took hold of my arms, gazing deep into my eyes, I knew I couldn’t hold it together a moment longer. Tears rushed down my cheeks, short, shuddering breaths escaping my mouth. Ben peered closer, but I pushed him away, grabbing my bag.
‘Leave it, Ben. Don’t worry. I have to go. Please don’t say anything to Ed, will you?’
‘What? No. I won’t. But I’m not letting you go anywhere. You’re ill.’ He tilted his head, peering into my eyes. ‘You are ill, aren’t you? Or is there something else that you’re not telling me about? Come on, Anna, what’s going on?’ The tenderness in his voice broke what was left of my heart into smithereens. He put an arm around my waist pulling me into his side, my breathing still ragged. He mopped away my tears with the back of his thumb, tidying away the stray strands of my newly highlighted blonde hair behind my ears.
‘As your husband-to-be’s best man, I would be failing in my duty if I didn’t make sure you were okay. I can’t let you just wander off days before the wedding without telling anyone where you’re going. Besides, I’m guessing it’s only natural to get cold feet. If that’s what this is all about? Are you feeling a bit overwhelmed by the whole occasion? I must admit, I’m feeling overwhelmed and I’m not the one getting married!’ He gave a rueful shrug. ‘You’ve been rushing around like a maniac these last few weeks; it’s bound to catch up with you. Look at you,’ he said, doing a secondary mopping up on the tears, ‘you’re completely wrung out.’
‘Oh God, Ben, it’s awful, really awful.’ I dropped the bag to the floor, along with the last vestiges of energy, my shoulders slumping in defeat. ‘I don’t even know if there is going to be a wedding now.’
‘Shit, no.’ He took a step backwards, his gaze scanning my face. ‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘Do I look as though I’m kidding?’ I sniffed, my whole body shuddering at the effort involved. ‘No, Ben. It looks as though Ed, my wonderful husband-to-be, has been screwing Sophie, my so-called best friend. There! Now do you think I’m kidding?’
His eyes closed as he exhaled a deep and heavy breath.
‘How do you know?’
‘How do I know? I’ve just read it in her diary, that’s how I know.’
He reeled backwards, his eyes now wide.
‘You read Sophie’s diary?’
‘That is not the point, Ben. That is so not the point. The point is that my fiancé and my best friend have been sleeping with each other behind my back and my whole world has collapsed like a failed soufflé.
‘I’m supposed to be getting married on Saturday, a day that has been planned with military precision to ensure that not a single piece of confetti will be out of place. I have two hundred and eight-two people turning up, hundreds of canapés being prepared probably as we speak, feathered butterflies and rose petals being drafted in by the lorry load and a whole bloody team of experts on stand-by to make sure my big day is as fabulously wonderful as one day can possibly be.
‘That is the point, Ben. That is the real point. And my mum!’ I screamed, as if I’d only just remembered I had one. Pain stabbed at my chest and I looked down just to check someone wasn’t stabbing knitting needles into my heart. I dropped my head into my hands, not knowing how I would ever face her again.
‘Oh no! She’ll be absolutely devastated. She’s been looking forward to this day ever since … well, ever since she put me into that first pink Babygro! And you’ll never know the lengths we’ve been to to find her bloody dress and hat. We’ve been in every boutique in the country looking for just the right shade of aquamarine. It’ll break her heart if she doesn’t get the chance to wear it. And all our family and friends! She’ll be mortified if she has to tell them the wedding is cancelled.’
‘Hey. You’re talking as if it’s all over. You don’t know that yet. You can’t make any decisions until you’ve talked to Ed. Have you spoken to him?’
‘No.’ I bit on my lip, my foot tapping away at the floor as though it didn’t actually belong to me. ‘I have no desire to speak to Ed. Ever again. Ever.’ Just in case Ben was in any doubt whatsoever. I pushed back my cuticles with a thumbnail, turning my gaze on him. ‘What did you mean how do I know?’
‘Sorry?’ I saw the flicker of panic in his eyes, the shift of his jaw.
‘When I told you about Ed and Sophie, you said, “How do you know?” Not, “Jesus, Anna, you’ve got that wrong. You must be mistaken. Ed would never do that to you.” You said, “How do you know?”, as though you knew all along. Did you?’
He dropped his gaze, literally squirming on the spot.
‘Did you know, Ben?’
‘Look, Anna—’
‘Fucking hell! You did know! The three people in the world who are my closest friends, who I thought would never do anything to hurt me, have all been lying to me, laughing at me behind my back. Have you any idea how that feels? I don’t understand, Ben. I just don’t understand it. You’re supposed to be my friend!’
‘It wasn’t like that, Anna.’ He grabbed hold of me by the shoulders and I pushed him away, both hands on his chest, feeling my face flaring. ‘I only just found out this week. I promise you. No one’s been laughing behind your back. Especially not me.’
I sniffed back the tears and ran upstairs, scooping up my toothbrush, knickers, jeans and T-shirts and came running back downstairs again, stuffing the contents of my arms into a holdall. Ben circled me, giving me a wide berth as though I was a highly dangerous animal, which at that moment I probably was. His hands twitched to reach out to me, but my body prickled with ‘don’t come anywhere near me’ vibes. I still couldn’t believe he’d been in on all of this.
‘Ed told me the other day. I think he was desperate to get it off his chest, to get all this cleared and out of the way before the wedding. Hell, I was as shocked as you are now. I can’t believe what an idiot he’s been. I told him he had to tell you or else I would. That’s why I came here today. To see if you knew. . You shouldn’t have found out this way.’
We both fell silent for a moment, eyeing each other warily.
‘But honestly, Anna, you need to speak to him, hear what he has to say. I’m not defending him, I promise, but I do know Ed loves you more than anything else in this world. He’s in a hell of state over all this. He got in way too deep and didn’t know how to get out of it. Marrying you, making you his wife, it’s absolutely the most important thing to him.’
‘Ha, well, he has a funny way of showing it,’ I said, picking up my keys from the coffee table, jingling them in my hands and looking around the flat where I’d shared so many happy times with Sophie. Things would never be the same between us again.
‘Wait, Anna! Where will you go?’
The question pulled me up short. I felt a pain deep in my chest and wondered briefly if I was having a heart attack. Then the pain took over and my body gave way beneath me as I fell onto the sofa, huge gulping sobs wracking my body.
‘I don’t know,’ I gulped through the tears. ‘There isn’t anywhere I can go.’ I thought of my parents sitting in their lovely home, looking forward excitedly to the wedding of their only daughter, completely oblivious to the fact that all their hard work and planning had just gone up in a puff of smoke. I imagined my mum’s crestfallen face when I told her what Ed had done. ‘I can’t tell Mum, not yet. It will kill her. No, I need to get my head straight,’ I said, thinking aloud. ‘Work out what I’m going to do. Promise me you won’t tell anyone. Especially not Ed or Sophie. Please don’t tell them I know, not yet.’
‘Yeah, but …’ He scrunched up his face and lowered his voice, as if he hardly dared to utter the words hovering on his tongue. ‘I hate to say this, Anna, but you haven’t got a lot of time. You’re getting married in a few days’ time. You can’t just bury your head in the sand and pretend none of this has happened. I mean, do you even still want to marry Ed?’
‘No! Definitely not.’ Sadness swept over me. ‘I don’t know. How can we marry after this? It was meant to be the day of my dreams and now he’s gone and ruined everything.’ I sighed, still unable to quite believe what had happened. The thought of my stunning silk dress hanging in the wardrobe at my parents’ house brought even more tears to my eyes. Would I even get the chance to wear it now? What about all my little bridesmaids and their lovely dresses? They would be so disappointed. And all those delicious canapés I’d ordered. The five-course wedding breakfast. The champagne. The string quartet and the live band for the evening do. The disco. This was all Sophie’s fault. The cow! So much work and effort had gone into my one special day. I couldn’t bear the thought that it would all come to nothing. ‘Maybe Ed and Sophie should be getting married instead!’
Ben gave a rueful smile, but his expression was pained.
‘Don’t be silly. It’s you he wants to marry. But you need to talk all this through with him.’
‘I’m not even sure what I’d say to him.’
‘Look, come and stay with me. This has been one hell of a shock. You won’t be thinking straight. Come to mine; take a day or two to think about it, and then decide what you’re going to do. You don’t want to make any rash decisions. I won’t say anything to Sophie or Ed, not until you’re ready to face them. We can come up with an excuse, tell them you’ve gone to your mum’s a few days early or something.’
‘Could I? You don’t mind? What about Ed? He’s your friend.’
‘Yes, but so are you, Anna. And besides, you were my friend first,’ he said, in a touching show of allegiance. There was a smile hovering on his lips that went a small way to making me feel a bit better.
‘Oh Ben!’ I threw my around his neck, and dropped my head onto his chest, dampening his lovely pink polo with my tears and snot. Very gallantly, he wiped them away with his arm, only cringing slightly at the grossness. ‘Why do you think he did it? Wasn’t I enough for him? Sophie’s not even his type.’
‘I don’t know. He’s a bloody idiot, if you ask me.’ He made circular movements with his hand on my back, holding himself at a distance from my soggy warmth. ‘I don’t think it was planned or premeditated, if that’s any consolation. I think it just happened. A mistake, and then, well, I guess he just kept on repeating that mistake. You know what it’s like.’
Was I hearing him right?
‘Actually, Ben, forgive me, but I don’t know what it’s like. I would never have done anything like that to him. He’s supposed to love me. You don’t do that to someone you love. Especially not with her best friend. Oh God. Don’t you see what this means? I’ve lost my fiancé, my best friend and my bloody home in one fell swoop. What will I do?’
He shrugged, looking woefully out of his depth.
‘It didn’t mean anything to Ed. That’s what he told me. And I believe him on that score. But once he got himself involved with Sophie, I think it took on a life force of its own. It wasn’t easy for him to get out of it.’
‘Huh! Poor him! But that really isn’t my problem. As far as I’m concerned, they’re welcome to each other.’
At the sound of the key in the front door, we both jumped in our seats, the fear I was feeling reflected in Ben’s startled expression.
‘Oh, shit, shit, shit.’ I leapt up off the sofa, doing an Irish jig on the spot. ‘I can’t see her. Not like this. I might cry or break down or … or murder her or something.’
Ben’s eyebrow did a doubtful dance as he put a finger to my lips.
‘Just act normal,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll do all the talking. And, don’t worry, I’ll make sure you don’t actually murder her.’
Act normal, act normal. What was normal behaviour when you’d just found out your best friend had been screwing your fiancé? I think murder had to be high up there.
‘Hi!’ Sophie wandered in through the front door looking as though she owned the place, which strictly speaking she did, but in the circumstances I thought it was a bit insensitive of her to look quite so damn smug about it. ‘Oh hi, Ben. What are you doing here?’ she said casually.
I couldn’t have murdered her even if I’d wanted to, which I obviously did, but at that moment I found my whole body rooted to the spot. I’d completely lost the power of speech and was aware that my mouth had dropped open unflatteringly. It was like seeing Sophie for the first time. Only now she’d grown horns and fanged teeth.
‘We were just going through the honeymoon list, weren’t we, Anna?’ Ben nudged me in the ribs. ‘I need to make sure Ed gets on that plane with everything he needs for a fortnight in the sun. If he forgets his swimming cozzie then it’s down to me. Huge responsibility, eh?’
We’d spent weeks poring over travel brochures comparing one exotic Caribbean island to another, the thought of those golden, sweeping beaches, the beach huts on stilts, the roasting-hot sun, sustaining us through the stresses of organising the wedding. Although strictly speaking, I’d been the one doing all the organising. Ed’s contribution was in a chief-executive, advisory and signing-off capacity only. Clearly he’d had other much more important matters on his mind.
Whatever else happened, I knew, standing there, looking at Sophie as though she were a stranger, that there was absolutely no way I was cancelling that bloody honeymoon. I’d been looking forward to it for so long that if necessary I’d go on my own.
‘You okay?’ Sophie was trying, but failing, to make eye contact with me.
‘Fine thanks.’ It took all my will-power to raise my head and flash her my most insincere smile. ‘Just feeling a bit rough, that’s all.’
‘Yeah, I’ve persuaded her to go to her mum’s for a few days,’ Ben added brightly. ‘She could probably do with a bit of pampering in the run-up to the big day.’
‘Oh right. That sounds like a good idea. Um … I hope you feel better soon then.’
I bit on the inside of my lip, my gaze locking with Ben’s as we heard her wander upstairs. Had the atmosphere always been this awkward between us? Or only since Sophie had been sleeping with my fiancé? Had I been so wrapped up in my own smug soon-to-be-married bubble that I hadn’t even noticed that Sophie could barely talk to me, that her underlying resentment wafted through the air like the stench of gone-off vegetables?
‘Can we go?’ I said, desperate now to get out of the flat.
‘Yeah. I’ll take your bag.’ Ben ushered me into the hallway, calling up the stairs. ‘We’re off now, Sophie. We’ll catch up with you later in the week, yeah?’
‘Okay! Oh, Anna,’ she called, coming halfway down the steps, the lightest of smiles resting on her lips, ‘have you been in my bedroom?’
‘What?’ My heart froze. It felt as if my whole life stopped in that moment. My breath caught in the back of my throat.
I looked her directly in the eye. If I had been standing behind her at that moment it would have been so easy to give her a shove, to hear the thump, thump, thump of her body falling down the stairs. An image of the diary, its pages ripped out, blood trailing the carpet, crumpled bodies on the floor, flashed into my mind. My pulse thumped so rapidly from every part of my body I felt certain they’d both hear it.
‘Oh yeah, I was looking for my earrings,’ I said, brazening it out.
Sophie giggled, her relief echoing through the hall.
‘Oh sorry, babe,’ she said, not looking in the remotest part sorry. ‘I completely forgot. Here.’ She unscrewed them from her ears and handed them back to me.
It took all my will-power not to fling them straight back at her.
Chapter Three (#uf2c26a5c-f92b-533e-8008-62d7821e52be)
‘Bitch. I hate her. Not content with stealing my man, she thinks it’s okay to help herself to my jewellery too. What else does she want? My clothes? My job? Does she want my whole fucking life? Is that what this is all about?’
Ben clipped in his seatbelt and leant across and did the same to me, before pulling the Range Rover out into the street outside the flat.
‘I don’t know, Anna,’ he said, his voice heavy with regret and frustration.
‘I thought she was my best friend. I thought she was happy for me. God, all the time I’ve been with Ed, I’ve seen her through dozens of boyfriends, listening as she went on and on about how marvellous this latest one was, how this one might be the one. Then propping her up when it all went horribly wrong. Which it always did. She’s got rotten bloody taste in men,’ I said indignantly, the irony not lost of me. ‘Did she look at me and think, Oh, Anna’s got it right. Her life’s settled. I’ll just help myself to her boyfriend instead.
‘Don’t torture yourself with it, Anna. It’s not worth it. And you’ll only make yourself miserable imagining what’s gone on.’
‘Good advice, Ben. Good advice. I won’t think about it. That’ll be easy. I’ll just forget all about it, shall I? Pretend it hasn’t happened. Why didn’t I think of that? Drop me off here and I’ll run back home and get on with my wedding plans.’
‘Sorry. I’m not saying that. I just hate seeing you like this. It breaks my heart, really it does. I wish I could do something to make it all better, but I can’t. Speak to Ed. He’s the one who should be giving you all the answers.’
‘Humph!’ I stared out of the passenger-side window, tears blurring my view of the world outside, a world where people were going about their daily business as though a huge boulder hadn’t rolled into their lives today, crushing everything in sight. ‘I told you. I’m not sure I want to speak to Ed ever again.’
I hated sniping at Ben; it wasn’t his fault I’d been cheated on. It wasn’t his fault my fiancé was a cheating, lying toerag. It wasn’t his fault the wedding of the century looked to be on the brink of being cancelled. It wasn’t his fault he was driving me away from the life I thought I’d been destined to see out, happily ever after, to a bleak and uncertain future.
‘Didn’t you think to tell me, Ben? As soon as you found out? I know you’re good friends and everything, but didn’t you think when Ed told you that juicy little snippet about his love life, that you ought to mention it to me? To save me from making the biggest mistake of my life. I think if the boot had been on the other foot, I might have done that for you.’
‘I was going to, I promise you, but it was difficult. I was put in the worst possible position. I thought it would be better if Ed told you. I told him if he didn’t then I would.’
‘Oh right, and when was that going to happen, then? Before the wedding? After the wedding? On our twentieth wedding anniversary?’
He shrugged.
‘He begged me not to tell you and he promised, on his life, that it was over between him and Sophie. I think he realised he’d made the biggest mistake of his life. I felt as though he deserved a second chance, that your relationship deserved a second chance,
‘It wasn’t your decision to make, though,’ I said furiously. ‘I should have been told what was going on. So that I could make up my own mind.’
I didn’t know what was worse: that Ed and Sophie had been at in the first place or that Ben had been prepared to cover up their lies.
‘I know. I’ve not been able to stop thinking about it. That’s why I came to see you today. I couldn’t let you marry Ed without you knowing what’s been going on. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but if Ed wasn’t going to tell you, then I knew I needed to do it for myself. Only you got there first.’
I turned my body away again, resting my head on the passenger-door window. Would it have made any difference if Ben had told me or if it had come from Ed instead? Either way it couldn’t have taken away the shock or pain of finding out that my whole life had been a massive lie.
For the rest of the journey, we stayed in silence, locked in our own thoughts until Ben pulled the car into the driveway of the white-washed cottage that sat alone at the end of a twisting country lane. He sighed as he turned off the ignition. ‘Look, I’m sorry if you feel I’ve let you down. That wasn’t my intention at all. Come on,’ he said, laying a hand on my knee, ‘let’s go inside, I’ll make you that cup of tea.’
***
‘Look, you’re going to have to speak to him sometime. And the sooner the better if you don’t want him suspecting anything’s up. Why don’t you text him – let him know what you’re up to?’
My phone had just vibrated for the umpteenth time that day, but I was doing a pretty good job of ignoring it. I liked the feeling of being removed from my own reality, of taking myself out of the game, but Ben had a point. The last thing I needed was Ed chasing after me. That was assuming he would chase after me. He might just kick back with a sigh of relief and think, Job done. Perhaps this was what he’d wanted all along. My heart twisted in pain.
‘There,’ I said, snatching up my phone and tapping furiously at the buttons. ‘Does that make you feel better?’ My message to Ed was short and to the point.
Hey, going to Mum’s for a few days. See you Saturday!
I hoped the exclamation mark would cover up the lack of kisses and the text would give me some much-needed distance for a day or two.
We’d been sitting at Ben’s kitchen table for the last couple of hours, drinking cups of tea and eating biscuits, before moving on to the wine and crisps. My broken heart was obviously not going to lead to a new incarnation as a gloriously thin and wan supermodel-type creature. At this rate I’d be into the Rubenesque category soon, but what did I care? Fitting into my wedding dress was hardly a priority now.
My mind was a complete fog and that wasn’t entirely down to the alcohol consumption. I felt all floaty and wafty, as though I’d been uprooted and transplanted into someone else’s life, vaguely recognising the other characters but having no idea how I was now supposed to relate to them.
‘This is a really lovely cottage,’ I said, looking around, suddenly realising I wanted nothing more than to drop my head on the kitchen table and fall asleep there. ‘Why have I never been here before?’
Ben laughed.
‘I don’t know. You’d have been welcome, you know that. I’m sure I must have invited you.’
I felt a pang of unease, thinking how we’d drifted apart these last few years. Ben was always there in the background, a definite fixture in my life, but one that had slipped into the shadowy sidelines. At one stage we’d been inseparable, spending every single weekend with the same crowd of people doing something or nothing, going to a pub or a club, getting out in the hills for a walk, making bacon sandwiches together. When was it that things had changed? Was it when I got together with Ed ?
‘I’ve been here three years now, but it’s pretty much in the same state as when I moved in. If I’d known you were coming I’d have blitzed the place. And made a cake.’
He swept his arm across the table, brushing crumbs onto the floor, in a deft move. I suspected that it might be the full extent of Ben’s domestic skills. His dark brown eyes smiled at me warmly, a reminder if I needed one today that life was grossly unfair. Ben had impossibly long dark eyelashes; mine were fair and short and stumpy.
‘It’s a bit of a tip. I don’t have many visitors.’
‘It’s cosy,’ I said, only now noticing the overflowing piles of papers and magazines, the dirty cups and plates. ‘Is this where you do your painting?’
‘I have a studio out the back. I’ll show you in the morning, if you like.’
I nodded, feeling a surge of gratitude for Ben’s easy, reassuring presence. I’d been quick to blame him for being part of the web of deceit, but what would I have done in his shoes? It was an impossible situation he’d been put in. None of this was his fault.
‘I’m sorry that you’ve been caught up in all this.’ I ran my fingernail along the groove in his table. ‘I won’t stay for long, I promise. A couple of days at the most and then I’ll be out of your way.’
‘You can stay as long as you like. As long as it takes.’
I sighed, grabbing fistfuls of hair at my temples. Sitting chatting to Ben I could almost forget what had happened, for a moment, but then the shocking memory of those words written with such casual abandon in Sophie’s diary came back to hit me with a renewed vengeance.
‘What do you think I should do?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Anna.’ He sighed and mirrored my action with his hair. ‘I think only you can decide on that. But a good place to start would be to talk to Ed. Hear what he has to say.’
The warmth and softness in Ben’s voice brought tears to my eyes again, and I wondered that I had any left to cry. Despair swept over me, my bones aching with tiredness.
‘Ed’s the master salesman, you know that. He’ll have all the answers, he always does. I don’t want to talk to him because I know already what he’s going to say. I don’t want to look into his eyes and hear his excuses. I think it might break my heart.’
‘I know. ’ Ben reached his hand across the table, taking hold of mine. ‘But he loves you. And you love him. You can get over this if you want to. All those hopes and plans you had for the future – you can still have those. You don’t have to throw everything away just because of a silly little mistake.’
‘Hardly a little mistake. They’ve been seeing each other for months, according to Sophie’s diary. He told her he adored her. That sounds pretty serious to me. And hardly forgivable. What I don’t understand is why he did it. If he wanted Sophie then why didn’t he just leave me to be with her?’
Ben splayed his fingers on the table.
‘That’s not what he told me. He told me it was you he loved. You, he wanted to share his life with.’
I shrugged my shoulders, unswayed by Ben’s words of comfort.
‘Honestly, I’m not sure Ed and I can come back from this. Even if we postpone the wedding, put if off for another day, how can we ever forget what’s happened? How could I look forward to my wedding day in the same way now? To spending my life with him. It’s all been ruined. It was supposed to be the happiest day of my life with Ed on one side of me and Sophie, my best friend and bridesmaid, on the other. If it wasn’t so bloody tragic it might be funny.
‘This is the sort of thing you might be unlucky to have happen to you when you’ve been married for years. Finding out your husband’s having an affair. Then you might be able to find a way to work through it; to come out the other side, but it’s not something that should ever happen before you actually get married. If he didn’t love me enough to stay loyal then can there be any future for us? Besides, I’m not sure that I’d want that now. I don’t know whether I want to be married to a man capable of that kind of deceit.’
I took another glug of wine as Ben observed me thoughtfully, nodding his head in all the right places.
‘Can you ever imagine forgiving someone for doing that to you, Ben? Can you?’
‘I’m hardly the right person to ask. I don’t have much of a track record when it comes to successful relationships. But I’m guessing if you love someone enough you could probably forgive them anything, within reason. Enough at least to give them a second chance.’
‘You’re obviously more forgiving than I am. I’m not sure I want to give Ed a second chance.’ The act of saying the words aloud clarifying the fact in my own mind. ‘Or perhaps I don’t love him enough. Not enough to let him lie and cheat on me. One thing’s for sure: he didn’t love me enough.’
‘Come on.’ He stood up, looking as though he’d really had enough of my self-pitying wailing. ‘You need to get some rest. I’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping.’
***
Ben’s guest bedroom had clearly not seen any guests in a long while. There was a single bed, or at least I think it was a bed beneath an impressive collection of cardboard boxes overflowing with stuff. To the side of the bed was an exercise bike, presumably in case I got the urge in the middle of the night, and a bare light bulb hanging forlornly in the centre of the room.
‘Lovely,’ I said, looking around and smiling as though I’d just been shown into the Presidential Suite of the Waldorf Astoria.
‘I’ll just clear these,’ said Ben, tackling the boxes and moving them onto the floor where they spilled out into the hallway. I helped with the removal job or else we might still have been there at dawn.
‘I’m only in the room next door,’ he said, giving me an awkward hug when we’d finally finished. ‘Just give me a shout if there’s anything you need.’
I don’t think he means room service, I considered with a rueful smile. I sank down onto the bed with a sigh. If I wasn’t depressed before I arrived then I soon would be if I had to spend any length of time here. It wasn’t Ben’s fault; he’d been a complete star taking me in like this, but my shabby surroundings only seemed to highlight the neglect and loneliness I was feeling.
I pulled off my jeans and T-shirt and slipped beneath the covers, knowing that I had as much chance of falling asleep as I did of getting married at the weekend.
Weariness washed around my body, but my mind was still buzzing with the events of the day. When was their first time? How and when had it happened? Was it at the flat? I shuddered at the thought. Or was it at Ed’s place? And what the hell was I doing when my fiancé and my best friend were getting to know the intimacies of each other’s underwear?
I couldn’t imagine it. Being with another man. There’d only ever been Ed, and Brian before him, and then that unfortunate one-night stand with Russell after my Halloween party. In my defence, his usual pasty demeanour had been transformed by a pair of fangs, some blood-red lips and a liberal application of hair gel, which had given him a dangerously glamorous air that only lasted for as long as the plastic cape, made from a black bin liner, that swept over his shoulders.
But I’d been single then and that was fair game. Sophie and Ed were playing by their own dirty rules. For goodness’ sake, it was like me making a pass at Ben! It was totally off bounds.
The sound of Sophie’s laughter tinkled around my head, tormenting me. Sophie laughed a lot. When she wasn’t grumping about wearing her bridesmaid dress, that is. Thinking about her laughing with Ed was almost worse than imagining the pair of them in bed together.
Sophie was spontaneous and adventurous and glamorous. Not to mention treacherous! In fact, there were infinitesimal ‘ous’-ending adjectives that could be applied to Sophie.
Maybe if I’d been a little bit more ‘ous’ like Sophie and a little less like … less like sensible, good old Anna, then maybe I wouldn’t be in this mess now.
I tossed and turned in my bed, a restless energy pumping my veins. I wouldn’t be able to spend the night in this God-awful room. It was too easy to conjure up the feeling of Ed’s arms around me, the warmth of his embrace, his breath against my cheek, making my whole body tingle with frustrated anticipation. And sadness. I wondered if all those times he’d held me, he’d been thinking of Sophie instead, wishing he could be with her rather than with me.
I swung my legs out of bed and undid my bra, dropping it to the floor, my nipples instantly responding to the chill in the air.
I wandered over to the window and peered outside. There wasn’t a streetlight in sight. Just pitch-black nothingness. A bit like my mood.
My hands reached out in the darkness for anything that would help guide me around the unfamiliar room. I found the old oak wardrobe and my leg brushed against the end of the bed before I almost tripped over one of those goddam boxes. The floorboards creaked as I made my way to the door. I turned the handle and found myself in the hallway.
I took a deep breath.
Spontaneous and adventurous and glamorous. How hard could it be?
My eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the darkness, but I knew the next room had to be Ben’s. I could just make out the sound of the gentle rustling of a duvet coming from behind the door. Standing in my white M&S knickers and nothing else, I eased open the door and that’s when all holy hell broke loose.
‘Get out now or I’ll blow your fucking head off!’ Suddenly everything came into startling focus. Ben was standing on the bed, legs wide, brandishing a shotgun in my direction, fury blazing in his eyes.
‘Aarggghhhh!’ I screamed. And then I screamed some more, wrapping my arms around my tits, before thinking better of it and holding my arms up in the air.
‘Please don’t shoot me,’ I whimpered, fear holding my body rigid.
‘Oh, Jesus, Anna! Jesus, Jesus, Anna. What the hell do you think you’re doing? You scared the shit out of me. I thought you were an intruder.’
‘No! No, I’m not an intruder,’ I said, feeling it necessary to explain. ‘I’m sorry. I just …’
‘Christ!’ Utter disbelief coloured his features. ‘And why haven’t you got any clothes on?’
He was actually looking at me with horror in his eyes. I dropped my arms wrapping them around my chest, only now feeling self-conscious. To be honest, I hadn’t thought much beyond slipping into bed with him, desperate for the warmth and reassurance of another human body.
I could never have imagined he would react so extremely. Not good extremely. But very bad extremely. Had he not seen a naked women before?
‘I, um …’
Suddenly I had no idea what I was doing here. I saw relief escape his shoulders as he tended to his gun, before putting it back safely beneath the bed. With the weapon out of the way, it felt safe enough at least to let my gaze roam over his body. It was Ben, but not as I knew him. Certainly not as I remembered him, when I’d last seen his near naked body, which would have been as a teenager, when we had day trips out to the beach together. Then he was just a spotty adolescent boy, my mate, and now … well, he’d filled out a bit. He was a proper man, with all the proper men’s bits, although why that should have been a surprise to me, I don’t know.
He had on a pair of short cotton black trunks that skimmed his thighs. He was lean and muscular, his shoulders wide, the faint hint of dark hair blazing a trail from his belly button down to his trunks. Mussed-up hair and dark sleepy eyes completed the ‘sex-god- just woken from good night’s sleep’ look.
‘Here, put this on,’ he said, picking up the polo shirt he’d been wearing earlier that day and flinging it my way, carefully avoiding looking at my nakedness. I snatched it up and did as I was told. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘Couldn’t you sleep?’
Obviously a bad-tempered sex-god who didn’t take kindly to being woken up in the middle of the night.
I ran my hand through my hair, wondering what possible excuse I could come up with and then, remembering I’d been trying for spontaneous, decided not to bother.
‘I was hoping I wouldn’t need the shirt.’ I held the polo shirt to one side, jutting a hip out in what I hoped was a vaguely provocative way. ‘I was thinking …’ Deep breath, Anna. ‘I was thinking … we could have sex together.’
‘Ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha!’ He laughed just like that, as though I’d said something really stupid or funny. Which I hadn’t. ‘Sex? Oh, Anna, that’s funny!’
‘What’s so funny about it?’ His reaction was really rather insulting, I thought. ‘I was being spontaneous. I thought maybe you might want to have sex with me. Why would that be so ridiculous? Am I not attractive, is that it? Everybody else seems to be having sex all over the place. Why not me?’ I folded my arms crossly and turned away from him, feeling a heat rise in my cheeks. I felt silly and self-conscious.
‘Come here. ’ He opened his arms wide. ‘I’m flattered, Anna, really I am,’ he said, trying but failing to keep the smile from his face. ‘And you are very attractive. But I don’t think that would be a good idea, do you? You’d only be doing it to get at Ed and it would make you feel so much worse tomorrow morning.’
He hugged me, our bare upper bodies touching and I rested my head on his chest. He smelt so good, my arms around his body felt so entirely natural, his bare body strong and firm beneath my hands and almost overwhelmingly enticing. My body’s reaction was immediate and intense. So wrong and yet so right too. At this moment I felt sure sleeping with him would make me feel a whole lot better. Trust Ben to have his sensible head on tonight.
‘Jump into bed then,’ he said, indicating with a sweep of his head for me to join him.
‘Really?’
‘Well, I’m clearly not going to be getting any sleep with you stalking around the house all night. Although you must promise to stay over your side of the bed. I don’t want you taking advantage of me.’ He was grinning as he climbed back into bed and I slipped in beside him. Instantly everything felt so much better. My legs gently touching his, I closed my eyes and was asleep in a moment.
Chapter Four (#uf2c26a5c-f92b-533e-8008-62d7821e52be)
When I woke, it was just gone seven. Shame washed over me as I looked across at Ben’s empty place in the bed, feeling a pang of disappointment that he wasn’t there. He’d been right. Even without having seduced him I felt much worse this morning as all the events of yesterday crashed in on me. I wasn’t sure if my pounding head was down to the awful memories of the day that would surely rank as the worst of my life or the number of glasses of wine I’d drunk.
I located my jeans in the guest room, pulled them on and wandered downstairs to find Ben.
‘Hey!’ He turned round from where he was standing at the stove and flashed me a big grin. ‘I was just doing you a bacon sandwich.’
‘Oh, lovely,’ I said, my nose twitching at the delicious smells wafting my way. For the first time ever, I felt self-conscious in his company, the memory of standing half-naked in front of him making me cringe with embarrassment. I dropped my gaze to the floor. ‘Look, Ben, I just wanted to apologise for last night. Really,’ I said, catching his eye, ‘I don’t know what came over me.’
‘Forget about it. I have.’ Clearly my spectacular entrance into his bedroom hadn’t been as memorable as I thought. ‘You’d had a tough day; it was perfectly understandable,’ he said, in the understatement of the year. He fell silent as he spread butter onto bread and then scooped the bacon out of the pan and onto the bread, squirting ketchup on the top. He handed me a plate and it felt like the loveliest thing anyone had ever done for me. I wasn’t sure Ed had ever fixed me breakfast in all the years we’d been together.
‘So how are you feeling today?’ He brought over mugs of tea and sat down at the table with me.
‘Fine,’ I said, not really meaning it, although I felt a resolve that hadn’t been there the day before. I didn’t think I could shed a tear now even if I wanted to. ‘I suppose I ought to get ready if I don’t want to be late.’
‘You’re not going in to work today?’
I nodded. It was the last thing I wanted to do, especially after yesterday’s bombshell. I was supposed to have ticked off dozens of jobs on my to-do list, but I hadn’t managed any. Not that it mattered any more. My wedding to-do list was now clearly redundant. Now I didn’t know whether I should be ringing round and telling everybody the wedding was off. The thought that all my dreams and hard work could be undone in a couple of phone calls made me shudder.
I wondered if the universe had been testing me, putting me through some elaborate pre-wedding initiation task. One which I’d clearly failed. If I hadn’t read that diary then I would never have known about Sophie and Ed and our wedding would have gone ahead as planned. Perhaps it was only a last-minute fling on Ed’s part and their relationship would have fizzled out once we’d married and I would have been none the wiser. Blissfully ignorant and happy.
Only I wasn’t. Now I was very much in the know and miserable.
‘So have you decided what you’re going to do? Are you still set on going ahead with the wedding?’ He paused, his sandwich in mid-air.
‘I think so.’ I couldn’t meet Ben’s eye. Instead, I ran my tongue around the outside of the doorstop of a sandwich, mopping up the oozing ketchup. Did I even still want to marry Ed after what he’d done? The thought of cancelling the wedding was the worst thing I’d ever contemplated, but did I have any other choice? Maybe I needed to postpone it at least, to work out with Ed if we even had a relationship worth saving.
Aargh. Frustration surged around my body. One minute I wanted to rush round to Ed’s place and commit serious bodily harm upon him, the next minute I wanted to forget I’d even read that stupid diary and pretend none of this had happened.
I needed to buy myself some time. Get things straight in my own mind before I faced everyone else.
‘We’ve been together such a long time. We were so looking forward to being married. Well, I was,’ I said, wondering if Ed had ever felt the same. ‘I don’t see why I should throw my whole life away because of Sophie. If what you say is true, that it’s me Ed really loves, then maybe there is some way of coming back from this?’ I could hear the desperation in my own voice. ‘Maybe this was just a pre-wedding blip. Something he needed to get out of his system.’
Ben shrugged, taking a sip from his tea, and I felt so grateful that he was there, allowing me to talk rubbish, nodding in all the right places, without making me feel worse than I already did.
‘You might be right.’ He looked at me closely, his gaze on my face unnerving. ‘Listen, can’t you call in sick? If I’m being honest you’re looking pretty rough.’
I smiled wryly. Perhaps I could rely on Ben to give it to me straight after all. I smoothed my hair back off my face and wiped the back of my hand across my mouth in what I realised, too late, was a particularly feminine and endearing move. Ben had certainly seen me at my best these last couple of days. Something else I wish I could scrub out and pretend had never happened.
‘Thanks, Ben, but I ought to go. Hopefully it will take my mind off things.’
***
Fat chance there was of that! It seemed like the whole world, or rather the entire workforce of Purcells, was conspiring against me by wanting to talk weddings, and my wedding in particular. Head down, I’d raced up the stairs to the accounts department floor, past Helen in credit control, past Sue and Bev in purchase ledger, past the entire sale ledger, trying to avoid eye contact with any of them, but I swear each and every one of them called out as I passed, ‘not long to go now, Anna!’
And now that young lad Adam from the warehouse was standing in front of my desk with a soppy grin on his face.
‘So how’s the blooming bride?’
‘What?’ It came out much more tersely than I’d intended.
He shifted uneasily on the spot.
‘How are you?’ His grin lost some of its previous sparkle. ‘Not long to go now, eh?’
Why hadn’t I noticed before that everyone at work seemed to talk in trite little clichés?
‘What’s that then, Adam? Month end? Pay day? The end of the world?’ I knew which one was most apt for my new circumstances.
‘Er, no, I meant your wedding, it’s this Saturday, isn’t it?’
‘Ah right, yes, silly me. How could I have forgotten? Ha ha, well, that’s hardly likely, is it, with everyone around here reminding me of the fact.’ I looked up at Adam’s crestfallen face and felt a momentary pang of guilt. I’d clearly just gained another label across my forehead. ‘Office bitch’ as well as ‘office bride-to-be’.
Only I wasn’t the office bride-to-be now, I was the office laughing stock, even if the office weren’t yet aware of the fact. And if they weren’t aware of it now, they soon would be if I returned to work after the honeymoon without that magic ring on my finger, or even on Saturday for the lucky few who had been invited to witness the wedding crash of the year. Oh yes, I was definitely on the fast track to obtaining company notoriety. Maybe I should just climb up onto my desk right now and make the big announcement.
Ladies and Gentlemen! Sorry to interrupt your early-morning internet browsing disguised as working, but my wedding, which seems to be the hottest gossip on the office floor, is officially off! Cue stunned faces and hushed whispers. So maybe we could all stop dissecting the finer details of my non-big day and move on to discussing someone else’s life. Yes?
That customary prickle of shame ran across my skin again. I knew I’d never be able to return to work if the wedding didn’t go ahead, facing everyone’s sympathetic looks, hearing the furtive whispers. No, I just couldn’t do it. I’d have to run off and join the circus or something or find another job at least.
I looked up at Adam who’d turned a fetching pink colour.
‘Sorry,’ I muttered, grabbing the contents of my in-tray and straightening them in my hands, ‘it’s just that I’ve got lots to do here before I can even think about marrying the man of my dreams. Was there something in particular you wanted?’
‘Oh right, yes, of course. No, it was nothing. Nothing important. Just a chat. I’ll let you get on with … your, um, work then.’ He shuffled backwards in to the corridor looking like a man desperate for a means of escape.
Huh, the man of my dreams! Had Ed ever been the man of my dreams? If you’d asked me before yesterday morning then I would have said a categorical yes. Now, he’d morphed into the man of my nightmares and I felt as though I didn’t know diddly-squat about anything.
Mum thought Ed was God’s gift. In fact, I sometimes wondered if she didn’t get on better with Ed than I did! They chatted incessantly, bonded over obscure American TV thrillers and shared silly little jokes. Admittedly she’d put him through an extensive and arduous interview process for the position of ideal son-in-law, over several Sunday lunches, and he’d passed with flying colours. But what would she say when she found out that the golden boy was nothing more than a two-faced conman?
He’d appeared to be all the things a mother would want in a potential son-in-law: he was kind and friendly, clean-cut and polite, with impeccable manners and good prospects. In fact, he possessed all the things a woman would want in a potential husband, but all those good traits had now been wiped clean away by the discovery that he was just another low-life, lying little toerag.
I took a sip of my coffee, put down the wad of papers in my hand and clicked on my inbox. Ninety-six unread emails in one day. Yuk. I had no idea where to start, what my job was even or what I’d been doing when I’d left the office on Friday night, – full of hope, heading off for my last weekend as a single woman. Now it would be forever remembered as my last weekend as a happily engaged woman before the bolt of lightning struck, with the upcoming weekend looming like a toxic cloud over my head. Somehow I had to get through the next few days pretending everything was normal and that I was perfectly capable of carrying out my job, which at that moment seemed way beyond my reach.
‘Anna?’
I jumped and my hand flung out involuntarily, knocking my mug of coffee and spilling the entire contents over my desk. The huge heap of papers I’d been aimlessly shuffling around were now drenched.
‘Oh, Christ! What is it? Look what you made me do! If you’ve come to make small talk about my wedding that’s very nice of you, but I really don’t have the time. I do have a job to do, you know, and if I don’t get this lot cleared by Friday, then there’s every chance I won’t have a job to come back to.’ I picked up the soggy mass of papers and held them up in the air over my bin, watching the brown water drip out. They were past saving, I knew. I slumped down into my seat and finally looked up with a scowl at the person who was frankly the cause of my current damp predicament.
‘Oh shit! Helloo!’ I said, sitting up straight again in my chair. My boss, the official holder of the title ‘Office Bitch Numero Uno’ was looking at me darkly.
‘Everything okay, Anna?’
‘Yes, yes, absolutely fine. Sorry! Just spilt my coffee.’ As if that really needed explaining.
‘Yes. I can see. Well, I’m glad to hear you’re attempting to clear your desk, but had you forgotten about our meeting?’
‘Oh shit!’ My three-month review with Nina Palmer, how the hell could I have forgotten? The meeting I’d been dreading for weeks, it had been uppermost in my mind until yesterday when it had been trumped in spectacular style by the discovery that my boyfriend was a complete shit. It was the meeting where she would tell me how I’d been getting on in the company and whether I had any future with them. Judging by her tight-lipped expression, I guessed I already knew the answer to that one.
‘I am so sorry,’ I said, apologising in my head for the over-use of the shit word, which was the only one that seemed to want to come into my head at the moment and then apologising for completely forgetting about our meeting. I glanced at my watch. It was 9.25 a.m. and from the recesses of my memory our meeting was set for 9.00 a.m. I was clearly not in the line-up for the ‘most punctual employee of the month award’.
‘Get yourself cleaned up and then come into my office, would you?’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ I said, feeling my skin turning a bright shade of pink as Nina waltzed off.
Oh well, this is just bloody marvellous, I thought, when I returned to my desk armed with a wad of kitchen towels, making a half-hearted attempt at mopping up the mess. Somehow not only had I managed to alienate my fiancé and send him running into the arms of my best friend, it looked as though there was every chance I could lose my job as well and all in the space of a couple of days. Everything was Ed’s fault. I looked down at the warm soggy patch on my jeans and sighed again. Had I got dressed in the dark this morning? Jeans and T-shirt, what had I been thinking? I never dressed so casually for work. If I’d been looking to make a good impression, I’d clearly failed.
‘So,’ Nina said, when I stumbled in to her office and she beckoned me to sit down opposite her, ‘how do you feel your first three months at Purcells has gone?’ She sat back in her chair, and crossed one stockinged leg over the other.
‘Okay, I think.’
‘Just okay?’
What the hell did she expect me to say? I’d been stuck in the corner of the office entering invoices and manipulating spread sheets for three months. It was hardly very taxing. I could quite easily have done it standing on my head, but it was a job and I needed a job after being made redundant from my dream job only four months earlier. This was never meant as a long-term career move, just as something to pay the bills, a stop-gap until something better came along, only nothing better had come along.
‘Well, you know, good-ish, I think.’ I had lost the capacity to construct a coherent sentence. It didn’t help that I felt like a completely disorganised and inefficient slouch in my old clothes, especially when Nina was dressed in a grey silk slub suit that oozed authority and class.
She nodded and looked at me intently.
‘Is there something wrong, Anna?’
‘No, no, nothing wrong at all.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, absolutely!’ I said, trying to look and sound like someone who was perfectly employable.
‘And do you enjoy working here, Anna?’
‘Yes!’ I gave a little leap in my seat and banged my hand on her desk. ‘Sorry … I love my job,’ I said, not entirely convincingly.
Please don’t sack me. Please don’t sack me. Please don’t sack me.
‘Good. It’s just that I couldn’t help noticing you’ve been a bit short with everyone this morning. Poor Adam couldn’t get away from your desk fast enough. There was the incident with the coffee. You completely forgot our meeting and I’ve just had an email from you that I think was intended for one of our suppliers.’ She turned her computer screen around so I could see for myself the incriminating evidence. ‘Is the stress of the wedding getting to you?’
‘Oh God. I am so sorry.’ I cringed in my seat. That was definitely the email I’d sent but no way had it been meant for Nina. Of all the people I could have mistakenly sent it to, it had to be my boss and on the day she was doing my appraisal too. ‘That email …’ The words trailed away. What words were there? Apart from disorganised, inefficient and ‘what job?’
Nina widened her eyes, looking at me expectantly.
‘Right, well, let’s not worry about that for the moment, shall we?’ she said with an imperceptible sigh. ‘If I’m being honest with you, Anna, I think you’ve done a reasonable job within the department, although I’m pretty certain this wouldn’t be your ideal choice of career?’
‘No, but—’
‘I wonder if it wouldn’t be better if …’
Oh God no. Please don’t sack me. I was pleading with my power of thought, but my subliminal suggestions were clearly not reaching the other side of the desk. Obviously there was some wonky celestial alignment at work, Mercury was in retrograde or Pluto was at odds with Neptune or Uranus was having an off day. It was the only explanation for everything going wrong in my life at the moment.
‘Nina, sorry to interrupt you but if you’re going to sack me I would much rather you come straight out and say so. Don’t worry about sparing my feelings. I’m really getting quite good at dealing with bad news right now.’
Nina put down her pen and sat back in her chair, chewing on the inside of her lip.
‘Ah, so there is something wrong. I knew it.’ She gave a supercilious smile, the smug bitch. ‘Why don’t you tell me what’s been going on, Anna?’
I looked at her, feeling all the energy slump out of me. What did it matter now? People were bound to find out sooner or later and if I was about to lose my job it wasn’t as if I’d have to come back and face everyone. I could disappear into the sunset with my pride hanging precariously in place.
‘Oh, it’s nothing really. Just the wedding, my wedding, this Saturday, it’s, um, well, it’s all a bit iffy now.’
Nina’s perfectly sculptured eyebrows shot up her forehead.
‘That’s hardly nothing. I’m sorry to hear it. But if you were having second thoughts about the marriage then maybe it’s for the best.’
‘Oh, I wasn’t having second thoughts. I just found out Ed was doing a bit of last-minute sampling of other models currently available on the market, that’s all.’
‘I see.’ She put down her pen and pulled down the lid on her laptop, nodding sagely, as if she knew everything about being dropped from a great height. Which was highly unlikely. Nina was definitely the type of person to be doing all the dropping. Boyfriends. And now employees, by the look of things. ‘Look, Anna, why don’t you go home?’
‘Home?’ Oh God, my worst nightmares were coming true, but surely she’d have to give me some kind of warning, let me work my notice period. I know I’d been cocking up left, right and centre today, but nothing that warranted being sacked on the spot.
‘Take the rest of the week off. Your mind is clearly not here, which is perfectly understandable in the circumstances. We can do this meeting when you get back.’
‘So you’re not sacking me, then?’
She gave a wry smile.
‘I never had any intention of sacking you, Anna. I actually wanted to discuss a new opportunity within the company that I think might better suit your skill set, but it can wait until another day. You need to go home and get things sorted out.’
‘Thanks, Nina,’ I said, feeling totally wrong-footed by her uncharacteristic show of kindness, ‘but I haven’t got any holiday left. I’ve used it all up for my honeymoon. Well, exotic holiday for one now, I suspect!’ I said brightly, trying to inject a note of humour into the whole sorry saga.
‘I know. Don’t worry about it. Just take it as compassionate leave.’
‘Really?’ I felt a huge lump rise in the back of my throat and tears gather in my eyes. Nina was showing me compassion. I wasn’t sure I could handle it. I’d never really liked her, considering her uppity, hard-edged and tight-lipped, but for the first time I was seeing a softer side to her character. ‘Thanks, Nina. I really appreciate it,’ I said, feeling bad at having misjudged her.
I wondered for the first time if we could actually be friends. As I turned to walk out of her office, I wanted to say, Hey, Nina, if you’re not doing anything on Saturday, why don’t you come along to the evening reception for a few drinks, but I didn’t even know if there would be a wedding ceremony, let alone an evening ‘do’ now. I quashed the pang of guilt I felt for not having previously invited her.
‘Absolutely. You go and try to enjoy yourself. We can talk when you get back.’
‘Thanks.’ My hand grabbed the edge of the door, emotion threatening to overwhelm me. ‘You know, what everyone says about you, all that rubbishy stuff, it isn’t true. You’re absolutely lovely, you really are?’
I don’t know what my mouth was thinking of. It was working totally independently of my brain. I saw the look of incredulity spread across Nina’s face.
‘Not that anybody says anything too—’
‘You have a great time, Anna,’ she interrupted.
I walked out of her office with my dignity somewhere around my nether regions.
Obviously Nina didn’t bear grudges. Obviously I was a rotten judge of character. Sophie, Ed and, most surprisingly, Nina had taught me that these last couple of days.
Chapter 5 (#ulink_1031a9bd-1e7a-51f9-a754-55e4701fb0ef)
Ben was a complete sweetheart and rushed down to pick me up from work as soon as he received my call.
‘I said you should never have gone in the first place,’ he said, after I detailed the morning’s disastrous catalogue of events on our journey back to the cottage. ‘Look at it this way: you certainly made an impression on your appraisal day. Your boss will never be able to forget who you are now.’
‘That’s true,’ I said, smiling. ‘She was so lovely to me, though, Ben. Talked about offering me another job in the company. I wanted to jump across the desk and throw my arms around her for a girly hug, but I think that may have been too much even for her.’
Ben shook his head, laughing wryly.
‘No, well, this is definitely for the best. You won’t be bothered at the cottage. I can field any telephone calls and I’m there to feed you and provide this to cry on.’ He tapped on his shoulder with a smile. ‘But otherwise you can just relax and decide what it is you want to do.’
‘Oh Ben, thanks so much.’ It sounded so very tempting being holed up with this lovely man for a few days, but I knew I had to get away. Too many memories, too many distractions. ‘You’ve been a complete sweetheart, but I won’t be staying. I need to get away, from everybody and everything. A complete change of scene will do me the power of good.’
‘Are you sure? Where will you go?’
‘I don’t know. The seaside, maybe. I love the coast.’
‘Hmmm. Will you be all right on your own?’
I looked up into Ben’s dark brown eyes, seeing the concern flickering there.
‘Of course I’ll be all right. I’m not going to the other side of the world. You don’t need to worry about me, honestly. I’m only going for a couple of days. I’ve got to come back at some stage and sort out all this mess.’ I gave him a resigned smile. ‘Besides, some sea air will do me the world of good.’
‘Okay,’ he said, sighing resignedly. ‘As long as you promise to phone me every day. And not to do anything stupid while you’re away.’
‘I promise. Well, nothing as stupid as anything I’ve done in the last day or so, at least.’
***
Ben dropped me off at the station and no sooner had I settled into my seat on the train and was gazing out of the window marvelling at how spontaneous I was being, then a huge sense of abandonment enveloped me. Thinking about Ed and Sophie, then leaving behind my job for a couple of weeks and finally watching Ben as he waved goodbye from the platform edge made me feel soppily nostalgic. It was like everything and everybody that I knew and loved was being ripped from my soul.
I could feel the tears forming in my eyes, but I was determined not to let them fall, not until Ben was out of sight at least, or else I knew he’d be on that train in a jiffy insisting I went home with him. Right at that moment he wouldn’t have to insist too hard.
I’d secretly hoped that he might beg me to stay, even just a little bit, although if he had I knew I’d have been sitting at his kitchen table right now finishing off his supplies of chocolate biscuits.
Just thinking about Ben’s kindness, the warmth in his eyes when he looked at me, the affection in his voice when he reassured me and the memory of his strong, defiant body when he confronted me with that shotgun, it was all too disturbing for words. Everything could have changed between us in that moment if he’d acted as recklessly as I’d been feeling last night.
And I didn’t mean shooting me in the heart either. Ed and Sophie had already done that to me earlier. I meant giving into my mad, ill-thought-through attempt at seduction.
Thank goodness Ben had seen it for what it was! I couldn’t believe I’d actually thought about jeopardising all those years of friendship for the sake of a sympathy shag.
Of course I loved Ben. I’d loved him since I was a kid. I loved him in the way you love your best friend, but last night, in my wrought and vulnerable condition, I’d mistaken that affection for something much much stronger.
Our friendship would have been blown to smithereens and that would have been awful because I valued Ben’s friendship above all else and at the moment I needed all the friends I could get. I wondered what he was thinking. Was he skipping back to his car, kicking his heels together in relief, knowing he’d narrowly escaped the clutches of a mad, unhinged woman who was as likely to burst into tears at any moment as she was to drop her knickers given half the chance? Would I ever recover from the shame?
Definitely, once this awful episode in my life was over and things had returned to some kind of normality, if that was possible, then one of the first things I would do was make it up to Ben. I would take him out for a slap-up meal. Who knew, I might be living in a different place then, a place of my own, and I might even have a new and proper boyfriend, one that wouldn’t cheat on me. And Ben and I would go to a swanky restaurant and I’d tell him all about my wonderful new life and my wonderful new boyfriend and we would look back at this time and laugh. We’d laugh about our lucky escapes. Mine from making the biggest mistake of my life by marrying Ed and Ben’s from that wacky night when we both nearly made a huge mistake and ended up in bed together.
I pulled out my phone and logged into my bank account. I had precisely £10327.65 to last me until payday. Admittedly £10K of that was money Ed had transferred across from his savings account earlier in the week to pay off some of the wedding expenses. But if it wasn’t for him and his stupid, selfish behaviour, I reasoned, then I wouldn’t be in this mess now so I was perfectly entitled to help myself to that money as … as my severance pay. That would teach him!
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