Page 132 of The Honeymoon Affair

I feel my equilibrium, already under immense strain from dinner, begin to crack.

‘You’re in my effing house, eating my food and drinking my drink because I’m the only one who’d look after you,’ I retort. ‘I really don’t think that dissing me over your mother is the way to go here, Steve.’

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ His tone is contrite. ‘It’s probably the painkillers.’

‘The beer, you mean?’

‘Don’t let’s fight, Izzy. I was out of line.’

‘Yes, you were. You always bloody are.’

‘You’ve been wonderful to me. You really have. I appreciate it very much. And that idiot you’re engaged to doesn’t appreciate you half enough.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘If he did, he wouldn’t have let you come home on your own.’

‘I’m not sure he would’ve wanted to walk in and find you here.’

‘He already knows I’m here.’

‘Nonetheless . . .’

He reaches out his hand and catches mine. ‘I made a right mess of things, didn’t I? Can I put it right?’

‘I hate to have to remind you yet again, Steve, but you cancelled our wedding. As a result, I met someone else. If “putting it right” means interfering in my life, you can forget it.’ I slide my hand free of his.

‘I don’t want to interfere. I want—’

‘Steve, I don’t care what you want,’ I say. ‘You didn’t want to be with me, but you’re pissed off that someone else does. I’m with Charles now and we’re engaged.’

‘Do you love him the way you loved me?’

It’s a good question and I don’t know the answer. My feelings for Charles are very different to my feelings for Steve. Steve was love at first sight. Charles . . . well, falling in love with him was a gradual, unexpected thing. I thought I was having a fling and it turned into something much deeper. When I’m with him, I feel complete in a way I didn’t with Steve.

But I don’t know how I feel now. When I left his house earlier, I was furious with him. But that was because the key question wasn’t whether I loved him.

It was whether he loved me.

Because I can still hear his words to Ariel.

I love you, you know that.

Steve is looking at me enquiringly. I don’t bother replying to him and walk out of the room.

Ariel

I’ve eaten all four mango trifles, and now I’m sitting on the sofa in the kitchen thinking that I should go home but without the energy to get up and make it happen. All I want to do is put my head down and sleep for a week. Not that I have time to sleep for a week, because I’ve got new contracts to negotiate and new deals to do and new authors to sign. But for the first time in my life, none of that makes me feel any better.

I keep hearing Charles’s words. I love you, you know that. What I know is that he once loved me but that he doesn’t now. And that he said what he said to comfort me. But what really bothers me is that I needed to be comforted. Because usually I don’t. Usually I can comfort myself, thanks very much.

I feel like a character in an Edwardian novel, where the downstairs staff gossip about the upstairs drama and a cook or a parlourmaid falls hopelessly in love with the lord of the manor, who leaves her pregnant and marries a third cousin to keep the stately home. I always thought I should be an upstairs sort of person, but here I am, huddled in the kitchen nursing my sore hand and scoffing food meant for the toffs.

I definitely should go, although the kitchen is still a mess and I hate to leave it like this. But it’s not my kitchen, is it? Nothing here is mine. Not even the eaten trifles.

I retrieve my coat from the utility room and am putting it on, gingerly avoiding my sore hand, when I see Ellis at the kitchen door.

‘You’re leaving?’ She sounds surprised.