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“No,” he responded calmly. “I’ve done it to make this programme fly. You and Leigh aren’t the only ones in need of a job after this series comes to an end, you know.”

“So you thought you’d get yourself one by hanging me out to dry?”

“Jeez, stop being such a bloody drama queen.” Jonas took a delicate bite of his croissant, flicking crumbs off his chest. I had a good mind to ram it down his throat. “Let me ask you something, Caspy my old fella. Why do you think people watch this crap in the first place?” He threw his arms up, waving the pastry around as if he was Martin fucking Scorsese holding an audience from his director’s chair. “It’s because they’re waiting for it all to kick off! Arguments, rows, and spats are the lifeblood of any programme putting real people into pressured situations and pointing cameras at them.”

“I hadn’t realised I was in a pressured situation!”

“What, you thought this programme was about growing vines?” He barked an ugly laugh. “That’s cute. No, more likeputting an estranged couple in close proximity with very little to occupy them and then watching them burn.”

The reality of his words hit me. What a fucking idiot I’d been.You thought this programme was about growing vines? About rows of twigs slowly turning green? After a high-stress Michelin-starred kitchen, a racetrack, and a Broadway show? Had I really been so fucking naïve to believe people would tune in to watchthat?

“What? Fuck. Jonas, tell me you haven’t.” Leigh, never the brightest tool in the box, realised his new man was an absolute arse wipe at the same moment I twisted away to retch sour coffee and bile into the dry dirt between my feet.

That Twitter clip? It was just the beginning.

“Haven’t what, hon?” Jonas asked.

“Did you keep the cameras rolling? During our arguments? When Caspian banged his head? And after, when we rowed about us frontingWake Up Britain?”

“I might have done.” Jonas had the gall to sound smug. “Honestly, hon, you look amazing in the footage. Especially next to this fruitcake. You’re going to love it. Mind you, I’m not sure the brekkie telly people will be too keen to give Caspy a long-term contract after they’ve seen it.” Dropping his voice to a stage whisper, he made a throat cutting gesture. “A bit flaky, you know? But you’ll be fine. They’re going to love you.”

“I don’t want to do it without him!” Leigh leapt up, his twisted, angry features bearing down on Jonas. “Show me the footage. Now!”

Even as Leigh launched into full, yelling hissy fit mode, nothing would come of it. They’d have this spat, and Jonas would smooth it over with empty promises and great blowjobs. He’d shoot some of Leigh’s scenes again, showing his best side, both inside and out. And where would that leave me?

I pointed to our oldest friend. “He’s a cokehead, by the way,” I puffed, wiping my mouth and coming away with drool. A low blow, but all I had left. “Thought you might want to know.”

God, I felt ill. The heat, the row, the shock, the panic, Jonas placating, Leigh screaming. All merging into one, stabbing at my brain like an axe intent on splitting it into two hemispheres. I sucked in big gulping breaths, holding onto my head. A crushing pain thrummed in my chest, and I staggered, reaching out to the awning for support. My rational mind insisted I was too young for angina; the crazy one whispered I was dying.

Oblivious, Leigh laid into Jonas, and Jonas gave him a piece of his mind back. A crowd had gathered, people were murmuring, someone was laughing, a dog was barking. Emma was sobbing. All those things and people had crawled inside my head; everything was happening right inside my skull.

Self-preservation suddenly felt a lot like running away, if my wobbly legs would let me. Escaping to my home, slamming the door behind me, locking myself in and everyone else out. Ridding myself of the weight pressing down on my chest, the screams squeezing my head. But, try as I might, my brain refused to issue the instruction to my legs, leaving me spiralling, fracturing, cleaving into a thousand pieces, like shattered glass.

Flashes of a cheap razorblade, patiently waiting for me on the chilled white enamel of the bathroom sink, cut through every thought. If I shut my eyes, I could even feel it, like a bow across a violin string, the fucking glorious glide of cold metal against damp tender skin. Slicing it crisply. Cutting out places for the pain to bleed from, hurtful words streaming out, hot and angry and red against cool white flesh.

“Leigh, I…” I began. Someone needed to notice I was dying. Why had nobody noticed I was dying? But I never got any farther.

My legs, having held me up way longer than they or I ever anticipated they would, buckled underneath me. As part of me braced for the fall, another welcomed it with open arms.

CHAPTER 17

MAX

“Breathe,” I screamed at Caspian, making the dog flinch. “Breathe.”

I’d heard all the commotion. Who in the fucking vineyard hadn’t? But no one except me sprinted across to the source, because no one except me cared about Caspian, except for perhaps his friend Emma. But she was in her own pool of misery, slumped against a wall of the big house with tears streaming down her cheeks.

I didn’t understand the words, of course, but I didn’t need to. All I saw was Caspian’s ex-husband and another big man looming over him as he cowered, white-faced and trembling. A fly trapped in one of the frosted silk webs stretching between the vines, back when winter had blanketed everything.

And no one except me caught him before he fell. I swept him up and over my shoulder a split-second before his headthunkedon the ground, spiriting him away somewhere safe.

His breaths were coming faster than a man half drowned in a shipwreck. We needed to break the spiral, change the programme on the radio. Colette had taught me that, formoments my agitation threatened to swamp me. “Tell me three types of fish,” I barked, shaking his shoulder. “Go on. I’ll start: carp, haddock, cod.”

“What? I…” His eyes, glassy and unfocused like the sea on a foggy day, squinted up at me. He weighed nothing, lighter than the last time I’d carried him, nothing but a lifeless sack of bones and flesh and sadness.

The sadness I’d deal with afterwards. Right now, I needed him back in the present. “Just do it! Now!”

Noir cringed behind my legs.

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