Page 121 of The Surrender

“Anything else I can help you with?”

I look at my bandaged hand, and then extend it towards her. “I cut it nearly two weeks ago. It’s not healing very well.”

“Did you visit a hospital?” she asks, taking my hand gingerly and feeling the skin around the bandage.

“Yes. It was stitched up.”

“You should make an appointment with your doctor. It’s hot to the touch, maybe infected.”

“Right. Okay.”

“The pregnancy test is twelve ninety-nine.”

I tap my card and stuff the box in my bag before my payment’s authorised, picking up Clark’s call as I’m hurrying out. My heart is still in my stomach, my tummy still churning, my anxious shakes not improving.

“Hey,” I say, breaking free from the stifling space and dragging in air. I take a moment under a tree to switch my heels for my trainers. “What’s up?”

“It’s been bugging me,” he says, his breathing a little laboured. He’s walking to the Tube.

“What’s bugging you?”

“Nick. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of planner who’d fuck up so monumentally. Because it would have to be monumental to spike such an act of revenge, right?”

My hand wedged into the tree trunk, I bend a leg in turn and get my trainers on, my phone held to my ear by my shoulder. “I haven’t really thought about it.”I’m busy having a meltdown of epic proportions and nursing a broken heart.

“I did a bit of digging.”

“Why? I want to forget it ever happened.” And deal with this ... issue. And yet I haven’t really paid much thought to how I’m going to deal with it.IfI need to deal with it. Oh, please let menothave to deal with this.

“Did you know Nick changed his name?” Clark asks.

“What?”

“He worked at Flagstar when the bank went tits-up ten years ago.”

I laugh, getting my bag back on my shoulder. “No, that can’t be right. I’d know something like that.”

“I’m telling you, Amelia. I’m looking at a picture of him when he was, I don’t know, early twenties maybe. It’s definitely him, but it says his name is Nicolas Green, not Phillips.”

“Nicolas Green?” I ask, my face bunching. “Why would he change his name?”

“I don’t know.”

My mind takes me back to the bar, the standoff between Nick and Jude after I stupidly introduced them. But I quickly pull myself back into line, adamant I won’t waste any more thinking space on them. “Look, Clark, I want nothing to do with either of them, so you can stop wasting your time on an undercover investigation.”

“You’re not curious?”

“No, I’m too busy in a crisis.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” I pick up my feet. “I won’t make it to Mum and Dad’s this evening.”

“Again? What’s going on?”

“Nothing, Clark. I just found out the man I was seeing was using me, so forgive me if I’m feeling a little wounded and unsociable.” I sigh, wishing I hadn’t said that. But what’s the alternative? Telling him I think I’ve been even more stupid and got myself pregnant? A bench a few feet away catches my eye, and my tired bones relent to its lure. My arse hits the wood, and I take a moment to try and breathe steady for the first time since ...

I don’t know when. Maybe it was before I met Jude. Everything feels blurred and distorted.