It Started With A Tweet(81)

Anyway, I want to know about you and your men? How’s that search for a holiday fling going? You’d better get some action before you come home, with either handsome Jack or hottie Alexis, or else you’ll be in trouble with me! A fling is just what Dr Erica ordered. I want to hear all the gossip!

Love and miss you,

Erica xxx



I can’t believe she sent a postcard! It would have been bad enough if Rosie had intercepted it, but for it to have landed in Jack’s mailbox? Man alive. I reread it, and try and calm myself down, convincing myself that there were worse things she could have written. At least she only called him handsome .?.?.

‘So, we’re all set for the barn dance on Friday. Are you going?’ Rosie asks Jack.

‘I’m not sure. I’ve got quite a lot on work wise, and it’s a bit complicated.’

Work, my arse; I know exactly why it’s complicated.

‘Oh, right, work,’ I say a little sarcastically.

He looks at me, the scolding still there. ‘Yes, actually it is work. It’s very busy at the moment, and recently I didn’t get an important message,’ he says raising an eyebrow. I raise mine back and purse my lips. He’s not getting a confession out of me that easily.

‘It’s a shame you won’t be there,’ says Rosie, blowing on her tea, oblivious to the subtext of the conversation. ‘Oh well, Alexis will have to do lots of dancing with us, then.’

‘I’m an excellent dancer,’ he says.

‘Modest too,’ I say.

‘Bien s?r, of course, and my first dance will be with you,’ he says looking at me with his dimpled grin. ‘I am happy to be your boyfriend again.’

I notice Rosie looking at us with alarm, but before she can say what she’s thinking, Jack stands up, his chair dragging noisily across the floor.

‘Right, I’m off. I’m going for a walk with Buster over to Angel Hill. I’ll see you around, then.’

‘I guess you will,’ I say a little frostily. He might be pissed off at me that I rifled through his things and accidentally deleted a message, but that’s hardly the same as him concealing a secret girlfriend, is it?

‘This ’ill,’ says Alexis, ‘it’s tall?’

‘Yeah, it’s the biggest around.’

‘Can I go with you?’ he says quickly, his eyes lighting up.

‘Sure,’ says Jack, shrugging his shoulders with indifference.

‘It’s OK?’ he says looking at Rosie.

‘Fine with me, you’ve already done more than enough work this morning. Unlike some people.’

I try and hide my shame of waking after eleven.

‘I’ll get my shoes,’ he says hurtling up the stairs.

‘Thanks for the tea, Rosie,’ Jack says, heading towards the door, and it’s then that I realise Buster has been nestled under the table as he starts to jump excitedly around.

‘No problem,’ she says standing up and glancing out of the window. ‘Ah, there’s the electrician, I want to grab him before he starts work to talk to him about the barn.’

She hurries out the door to accost the poor electrician while he’s unloading his tools from the car.

Great. Now it’s just me and Jack while he waits for Alexis. Neither of us says a word to one another, and I’m just waiting for the tumbleweed to roll through.

‘It’s always a shame when you find out someone’s being lying to you,’ he says eventually, in almost a whisper.

At first I wonder if I heard him correctly. It’s as if he could read my mind.

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ I say, standing up and folding my arms defensively.

‘All that stuff you said about it being so hard to find a man who actually wants to commit, and how you’re ready to settle down but that men only seem to be after one thing,’ he says, shaking his head.

Now I’m confused.

‘What does that have to do with anything?’

‘The postcard and that article. I know you shouldn’t believe everything you read, but .?.?.’

Rosie comes through the door, chattering away to the electrician as she leads him to the lounge. She briefly looks at us, as if she senses the atmosphere, but she carries on explaining the work that needs doing.

I’m so lost in this conversation. What’s Jack talking about? What article?

He opens the door and it looks like he’s not even going to elaborate.

‘You can’t just go,’ I say, frustrated that he’s started something he’s not going to finish.

He hesitates as he steps over the threshold, before turning back and thrusting a piece of paper towards me.

‘You left this at my house,’ he says, handing me the letter from E.D.S.M.

My heart sinks. That incriminates me. It puts me at the scene of the crime of the answerphone.

I stare at the letter, I’d totally forgotten all about it, what with finding out about him and Jenny.

Jack doesn’t wait for a reaction, he simply follows Buster as he bounds off across the courtyard.

‘That was a swift exit,’ says Rosie as she walks back into the kitchen alone.

I try and laugh it off as I shut the door, but I can’t.

‘It’s a shame that he won’t be there for the dance,’ she says, not realising the magnitude of what just happened.