The Other Woman(65)

My expression didn’t change.

‘But when Mum told us her news, it just felt as if my whole world had imploded. It felt like everything had crashed down around me. I thought of the wedding, the honeymoon, Mum’s diagnosis, and none of it felt real.’

‘You lost perspective,’ I offered.

‘Yes, maybe I did. But it just didn’t feel like I could function. I couldn’t have walked into that chapel and held it all together.’

‘No one was asking you to,’ I said. ‘You were getting married, and had been told that your mother has cancer. No one would have expected you to be anything other than emotional.’

‘But it was like a full-on panic attack, Em. I had this crushing feeling in my chest, and my brain just seemed paralysed. I couldn’t have got myself together in time for the wedding.’

‘Yet here you are, seemingly out the other side, with forty-five minutes still to go,’ I commented bitterly.

‘Are we going to be able to get past this?’ he asked, his head down.

‘I need to be on my own for a bit, to work this out.’

He looked up at me, his face desolate.

‘I don’t care where you go, but I don’t want you here, not until I’ve decided what I want.’

‘Are you serious?’ he asked.

His words didn’t warrant a reply.

‘Mum and Dad are staying here tonight, as they thought they were going to their daughter’s wedding, and have now got nothing better to do. And Pippa and Seb will be here too, so . . .’

He lifted himself out of the chair. ‘I’ll go and pack some things.’

‘You do that,’ I said, turning my back on him to walk into the kitchen, where I poured myself a generous glass of Sauvignon Blanc.

I heard the front door gently shut a little while later and fell down onto the sofa, crying. I didn’t know whether it was because today should have been my wedding day, or because Pammie had finally won. I’d literally laughed in her face when she said Adam would marry me over her dead body. Now who was laughing?





32

I didn’t take Adam’s calls for ten days. Not because I was playing mind games, or seeking attention, but because I genuinely needed to be on my own, without his influence, to work out what I wanted. I forced myself to go back to work, even though I had the time booked off, naively believing that having a purpose would make me feel better, but when I found Adam loitering outside my office, I could no longer ignore him. I’d spent all that time not knowing how I was going to feel when I next saw him, or if I was going to feel anything, so when my breath was literally taken away just at the sight of him, I thought it must mean something. I felt winded, as if the air had been sucked out of me.

‘This isn’t fair. You can’t cut me off like this,’ he begged.

‘Don’t tell me what’s fair,’ I said, without breaking my stride as I headed towards Tottenham Court Road tube station. ‘I need time and I need space.’

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘I’m not ready to have this conversation here and now,’ I said, increasing my speed.

‘Can you just stop for a minute?’

I turned to face him. He’d lost weight. His well-made suit hung off him and his belt didn’t have enough holes to pull it tight around his waistband, leaving a gap big enough to fit my hand. His face looked gaunt, and it seemed as if he hadn’t shaved since I’d last seen him.

‘What for?’ I barked, already knowing that it was worse than my bite. I didn’t have the energy anymore, it had all been spent.

‘Can’t we please just sit down, talk things through?’

I looked across at Golden Square, its daffodils standing proud, yet, with the sun going down, it wasn’t quite warm enough to take up one of the benches. There was a cafe on the corner and I signalled to it. ‘Five minutes,’ I said. ‘We can go over there for a coffee.’ Though I could have killed for something stronger.

‘Thank you,’ he said gratefully.

Ironically, those coveted five minutes were spent talking about everything other than the reason we were there. I told him that baby Sophie was walking, and he told me his gym membership needed renewing. It felt unbearably awkward making small talk with the man I had lived with. He may as well have been a stranger, I felt that detached from him. A hot tear threatened to fall at the realization, but I stopped myself from blinking and held it in.

Another five minutes was going slowly by, with both of us, at one point, looking out of the window, lost for words to say.

‘We’ve been here ten minutes and you haven’t even asked about Mum,’ he said.

It hadn’t occurred to me. Why would it? Because I knew that she was perfectly fine: free of cancer, free of conscience, and free of morality.

‘So sorry,’ I said, unable to keep the vitriol out of my voice. ‘How is Pammie?’

‘We’re not going to be able to move on if you can’t accept her, and accept what’s happened,’ he said. ‘This is nobody’s fault, Em. It’s just how life pans out sometimes.’

‘Am I supposed to forgive her because she says she’s ill?’ I asked.

‘She doesn’t say she’s ill, she is ill,’ he said sternly. ‘How are you going to feel if, God forbid, something happens?’