Page 55 of The Plot Twist

‘Angie insisted,’ he replied, somewhat bleakly.

Of course, she did. That made much more sense now.

‘She said that if I was serious about saving our marriage then it was going to take more than an extended trip down memory lane and that I was going to have to put in the hard work and agree to go to therapy with her so that we could discuss the intimate details of our lives with a complete stranger. Again, I paraphrase.’

‘Not a fan of therapy then?’ Allie was smiling already. Martin was infuriating at times, opinionated, obstinate and completely stuck in the past. But he also had an uncanny knack of making Allie laugh, just when she was least expecting to.

Martin harrumphed. ‘I mean I’m sure it’s all very well, but I just don’t know what talking to a stranger is going to do to help.’

‘Like with me?’

‘What do you mean?’ he asked sharply.

‘Just that I’m a stranger, you’ve been telling me your life story and don’t you think it’s been helping a little bit?’

‘With my writing! This is completely different.’

Allie wasn’t sure that it was, but decided that Martin was obviously in one of his moods and perhaps now wasn’t the time to tell him he was wrong. She could park this with all of the other things she planned to tell people at the right time. Like telling Martin that she was seeing his son, and really hoped to be ‘seeing’ a whole lot more of him. Allie went all hot and shivery; half fantasizing about Will, and half terrified of not having confessed to either Will or Martin. She cleared her throat to dislodge the feelings of awkwardness and guilt that seemed to be uncomfortably lodged there.

‘Anyway, well done for going,’ she said in what she hoped wouldn’t come across as a patronising tone. ‘I think it’s great you’re agreeing to do this with Angie.’

There was silence from Martin which suggested that Allie had failed to strike the right note and he was quietly seething at her words. Eventually he spoke.

‘So, what’s going on with you?’

Allie considered this and decided that if she was going to tell either Martin or Will about the other one, she should probably tell Will first, so now wasn’t the time for complete honesty.

‘I’m stuck again, can’t write. I’ve barely written a word since we last met.’

‘Oh.’

Allie waited, hoping that Martin might have more to offer than this.

‘So, the dating thing isn’t going so well then?’

Back in the before, when Allie didn’t know that the hot waiter she had started developing a thing for was Martin’s son, it hadn’t seemed such a big deal to tell Martin that she was seeing someone. Martin had been rather excited by the news and so she had tried to downplay this with the result that Martin had come away with the impression that Allie was merely using the nameless man in question to get her rocks off and as literary inspiration for her writing. In hindsight, Allie recognised that it was less than ideal that Martin had this opinion of the man Allie was seeing because the man Allie was seeing was Martin’s son. And, although she had no first-hand experience, she presumed that most fathers wouldn’t take kindly to their sons being used in such a way. Especially as Martin had now indicated on more than one occasion that he believed his son (Will/Liam) to be seeing someone, and that his son (Liam/Will) seemed really rather keen on this mystery person, (Allie.) Sometimes, Allie was pleased to actually be so invested in this scenario that she could (kind of) keep up with what was going on and who was what to whom, because she wasn’t sure she could manage to keep tabs on the subterfuge if she was merely a bystander. But mostly she just wished that Martin and Will could miraculously become unrelated so that she didn’t have to expend so much emotional bandwidth thinking about the whole mess.

‘It’s fine.’

‘Doesn’t sound it.’

‘He’s away at the moment,’ Allie said through gritted teeth and then immediately regretted giving Martin even this tiny insight into things with Will.

‘Ah … not getting your inspiration right now?’

Allie rolled her eyes, not that Martin would appreciate this. ‘Martin, that sounds lascivious.’

‘Ah,’ repeated Martin, the intonation in his voice changing completely. ‘Sorry, that wasn’t what I intended.’

‘It’s fine, just … let’s not discuss my love life, OK? I’m not sure it’s helping.’

There was a long silence.

‘Hmm.’ Martin sounded thoughtful. ‘What are you doing right now?’

‘Right now?’ Allie sounded startled. ‘Honestly? I’ve just woken up from a nap.’

She could hear Martin chuckling on the end of the line. ‘That’s what I do too when I can’t write.’

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