Page 37 of My Husband’s Wife

Thirty-Six

Madison darts out of the salon, heart racing like she’s about to go into cardiac arrest. Theo had called earlier to say he was going to bring Emily to see her during his lunch break.

What if Emily has been injured? All she can think about is her baby.

She clacks up the hill in her low heels, struggling to put one foot in front of the other as her legs grow more jelly-like with each step.

She sees Theo’s car ahead and it’s in the middle of the road.

Then she spots Eva standing on the pavement, her car crashed into a fence.

‘Theo,’ she calls but he can’t hear her. He’s too busy talking to Eva.

Where’s Emily? He’s not holding her. She must be hurt. As she reaches them, she runs over to Theo. ‘Emily,’ she says under her breath. ‘Has anyone been hurt?’ she calls out.

‘No.’ He steps towards the car and lifts Emily out of her seat. Emily’s still asleep. Relief floods through Madison’s veins, and she almost wants to slump with relief but instead she snatches Emily and holds her closely, rocking her tiny baby in her arms.

Madison looks over at Eva. ‘Are you okay?’

‘She’s fine. I just stopped to see if she needed an ambulance but I think she’s okay.

It was just a little accident.’ Theo looks at Eva coldly, and in that moment, Madison feels like she’s interrupted them.

She feels like a spare part who has just turned up and isn’t welcome given the looks between her husband-to-be and Eva.

‘I am worried about you, though, Eva. You seem to think I’m someone else. You might have a concussion and not know it.’

‘No, no, no. I haven’t even hit my head.’ Eva looks at him with furrowed brows.

Emily starts to cry as Theo helps Eva back her car out of the fence. Madison knows Emily needs a feed and she needs to get her daughter away from the chaos. ‘Theo, I’m going to take her to the salon and feed her. Eva, I’m glad you’re okay.’

Madison kisses Emily’s soft head as she enters the salon and heads towards the treatment room to feed her. Her breasts are starting to leak, responding to Emily’s cries.

‘Is she okay?’ Orla asks as Madison stands in the treatment room doorway.

She nods. ‘Yes, nothing to worry about. Our last customer hit a fence and Theo was just seeing if she was okay.’ With that, Madison closes the door on everyone and sits on the treatment table.

She pulls down her top and unclips her nursing bra, ready for Emily to latch on.

Her baby suckles away eagerly in huge gulps until her tired eyes start to close again.

There is a slight tap on the door and Theo opens it. ‘Hi.’ He walks in and pulls up the chair from the corner of the room, the one she normally throws used towels onto. ‘She’s gone now. At least she crashed into a fence and not us,’ he says with a smile.

All Madison keeps thinking about is what she heard Theo saying to Eva: that she mistook him for someone else and that she might have a concussion.

That’s the second time Eva has mistaken Theo for another person.

She called him Hugo when they had their meeting at the Sea Horse Hotel.

What seemed more disturbing was the way Theo spoke to her, like he was insinuating she was crazy.

She’s also a bit confused about Theo and how quick he’d been to diagnose Eva with concussion when she claimed not to have hurt her head.

And why did he say those things so loudly in front of Madison?

Did he think she’d heard more than she had?

She wished she’d appeared on the scene a minute or two earlier because she feels as though she’d interrupted something.

Madison has a feeling that Eva didn’t come to the salon just for a haircut; she’d come to see her. Could Theo be lying? Doubt creeps in and she doesn’t know what to do with that doubt. Was it pre-wedding nerves or a genuine worry? Or maybe it was the stress of being a new parent.

‘Eva seems to think she knows you. The way she looks at you…’ She doesn’t know where the sentence is going so she leaves it hanging.

‘How could I know her? That’s ridiculous. The woman is mad. She seems to think I’m someone else.’

The woman is mad. Madison doesn’t like the way he said that but she’s going to let it lie for now.

It’s in that moment she realises she doesn’t know Theo as well as she thought.

Their whole relationship has mostly been played out in his cottage.

She feels claustrophobic, which is ironic as he claims to be agoraphobic.

She wants to laugh but that would look mad.

Would he then accuse her of being a mad woman?

Their wedding is just around the corner and she has this overwhelming urge to postpone everything, but she can’t put her finger on the exact reason why.