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***
‘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
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?