The Guilt Trip(65)

She’d kept her face deadpan for all four of the puns, until, exasperated, he’d thrown his piece of paper in the air.

“You’re supposed to laugh,” he’d sighed.

“Well, maybe I just don’t find you funny,” she’d jested.

“No?” he challenged. “So, you don’t think I can make you smile?”

“Nope,” she’d said, as his head disappeared under the end of the duvet. She’d spread her legs as her book that had been lying dormant on her chest dropped to the floor.

“Still not smiling?” he’d mumbled through the quilt.

“Uh-uh,” Rachel had managed as she arched her back.

She looks at him standing beside her now and can’t help but wonder how many times he’s made Ali smile like that.

Bile rises, burning the lining of her throat with a poker-hot ferocity. If she stays here, she’s going to purge the remnants of her lobster casserole all over the table. With her face burning, more from embarrassment than the pressure of holding it in, she pushes her chair back and scoots behind a bewildered Jack toward where she hopes the toilets are. There are two doors; one’s clearly the kitchen, so she opts for the other, without looking back to see the trail of onlookers she might have left in her wake. Shutting herself into a cubicle, she pours cold water on the insides of her wrists and wills herself to calm down. But she can’t shake the image of Jack’s head buried between Ali’s legs from her mind.

“Rach!” comes Paige’s voice through the door. “You okay?”

Rachel lets her in and falls into her arms. “I can’t do this,” she says.

Paige stiffens. “Do you want me to take you back to the villa?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know how I’m supposed to carry on and pretend that everything’s normal, when the best man, my husband, is fucking the bride.” She knows she’s had too much to drink as she’s lost all volume control as well as the propensity to care who might hear.

“Okay,” says Paige, backing Rachel onto the closed toilet seat. “You’ve got two choices here; you either find a way of getting through the next few hours without driving yourself insane, or we’ll say that you’re sick and I’ll take you back.”

“I should have stopped it,” cries Rachel, ashamed to acknowledge that if Ali didn’t have what she has over her, she would have. But instead of giving Will the chance to get out of a marriage that is destined to fail before it has even begun, she’d taken the coward’s way out, too scared of Ali’s recrimination; selfishly saving her own skin at the expense of Will’s. “He’s not done anything to deserve this and he’s going to be so devastated when he finds out he’s been betrayed by his brother and his wife. It’s him I’m most worried about in all of this. I couldn’t give a shit about Jack or Ali, or even me, but he’s done nothing wrong.”

Paige looks taken aback. “Er, neither have you.”

Rachel has never felt more compelled to tell Paige about Noah than now. She has done something wrong. So very wrong, and now, quite rightly, she has to suffer the consequences. She’s under no illusions about the double standards she’s currently living by.

“Paige, listen…” she starts.

“No, you listen to me,” says Paige, crouching down to Rachel’s height. “Will is not your responsibility. Ali’s got form—she’s done it before and, no doubt, she’ll do it again—that’s just who she is. What you now need to do is to find out if anything’s going on between her and Jack, because if it is, I swear to God…”

Rachel nods, willing herself to get her act together. To gather the strength and resilience she needs to get through the rest of the day.

“I assume you haven’t said anything to Jack yet?” asks Paige.

“I haven’t had the chance, but I will, tonight or tomorrow, depending on how drunk he’s planning on getting.”

“And have you thought about what you’re going to do if he admits it?”

A lump instantaneously forms in Rachel’s throat. “I need time to think about that,” she says.

“Can you live with a man who’s been unfaithful? Or are you always going to be thinking that, every time he’s late from work, he’s with her?”

“I don’t know,” she cries. “What if he wants to be with her?”

“If he wanted to be with her, and her with him, then she wouldn’t have just married his brother, would she?”

“I just don’t know what to think anymore.”

“Whatever’s going on, it needs to be stopped,” says Paige in a threatening tone. “Because I won’t stand for it.”

“Anyone would think he’s your husband,” says Rachel, laughing snottily.

“I’m only thinking about you,” says Paige, rubbing her hands up and down Rachel’s arms. “Do you want your husband back or not?”

Rachel wasn’t aware that he’d gone anywhere … yet.

“So, are you going to put your big-girl pants on and go out there, or am I calling a taxi?”

Rachel stands up, shakes herself down and peers into the badly lit mirror. She rubs at the streaks of mascara that are smeared under her eyes and pinches her skin to get a rush of color to her cheeks.