Page 92 of The Wedding Game

‘I think I’ve always loved her. I just didn’t know it,’ he says quietly, more to himself than to me. I swing round and stare at him. ‘Can you come back inside, so we can talk?’ he asks.

‘No. I can’t be here,’ I reply.

He nods, looks at the ground. ‘I’m not expecting you to forgive me or …’

‘Good,’ I cry between sobs. ‘Because I never will. Who does this to someone? I’m leaving.’

‘Don’t go,’ Josh begs. ‘Not like this.’

‘What else am I supposed to do? We were building a life together,’ I shout.

‘I know,’ he says.

‘But you wanted her more than you wanted me.’

‘I don’t know,’ he goes on. ‘I’ve not had any time to process what happened. I thought you were coming back today, not yesterday. I saw your messages this morning and I felt awful.’

‘While you were still in bed with her? But you didn’t feel awful up until that point?’

‘I did,’ he replies, but I don’t believe him. He was too wrapped up in shagging his best friend to feel anything for me. How is this happening? I trusted him. I thought I knew him. But clearly I didn’t know Josh at all. I’m an idiot, in so many ways. Scarlet told me from the outset that Tamara was trouble, and I didn’t believe her. I just … trusted Josh. I trusted Tamara too – we were building a friendship. And then the two of them betrayed me.

‘I crept around the house last night, trying not to wake you, and you weren’t even here. You were in bed with her,’ I say. I want him to feel guilty. He needs to feel guilty.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he says.

Tears stream down my face. I want to tell Josh I hate him, but I don’t. And now I hate myself because of that. The pain in my throat, from trying to hold all the sobs in, is hurting too much.

‘I can’t say anything that will lessen the hurt I’ve caused you,’ he says, so woodenly that I feel he’s read it somewhere, or that Tamara’s coached him to say it.

I can’t believe I’ve been cheated on again. I can’t believe this. Why? Why? I hate him. I hate them both right now. ‘I can’t be here,’ I reply and move past him, ignoring his pleas for me to stand and listen to him justify his actions. Ordering Josh not to follow me, I phone the local taxi company. And while I wait for them to send a car, I throw as many things as I can back into my case.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Scarlet’s lips are clamped together tightly as we sit in her flat analysing everything. I’d only left Edinburgh yesterday and now I’m back again. I feel sure she wants to explode with the words ‘I told you so.’ Only she doesn’t. She’s nodding, listening, restraining herself magnificently, yet again, while I pour out the hatred and sadness that have built up inside me. I could hardly stay in Josh’s house. I couldn’t deal with the fallout from going to either of my parents’ houses, as they adored Josh, and my sadness would be their sadness. Plus, they’d want to be calm and adult about it all. So Scarlet’s seemed the safest place for me to spit pure venom until I calmed down. I knew she’d encourage me – which is what I want and need.

Scarlet has had the chance to get over the initial shock of it all, after my intense phone call from the train station telling her what had happened, and begging to come and stay again through epic amounts of racking, heaving sobs. I have not got over the initial shock, but I have had a seven-hour journey back to Edinburgh in which to torture myself by imagining Josh and Tamara together, wondering how they started, how they finished, whether he felt any guilty thoughts, whetherhe even tried to stop himself, or if she did. Every time I think about it, it hurts so much. I can’t stop seeing them in bed together. While I was climbing into bed, expecting to find Josh there, they were on the other side of the village having sex. Thank God they didn’t do it in our bed. I can’t imagine coming home to find that in front of me.

I think of the first time I had sex with Josh: how good it was, how much effort he put in. That will have been Tamara. He’s in love with her. Josh is in love with Tamara. I hate them both.

Days later I make a long, drawn-out noise while trying to plan out the seating arrangements of one of the communal working areas. I’m on the floor with my laptop. I’ve done something wrong on this drawing, only I can’t work out what. The chairs I’d almost settled on don’t look right at all. I need to talk to Max and see what he thinks. Papers are spread out in front of me. Scarlet’s in her boxroom of an office and her head pops out of the door. She gives me a sympathetic look.

‘Do you want to drown your sorrows in another cinnamon bun?’ she asks. ‘Or the biscoff bun? I got the good ones with all the icing from Mimi’s Little Bakehouse.’

‘Yes, please. Both, please,’ I say quietly, and she goes to the kitchen to fetch them for me.

When I first arrived, Scarlet asked if I wanted to drown my sorrows in ice cream, as is traditional for a break-up.

Ice cream.

I could have screamed. Instead I cried. I don’t think I’ll beable to eat ice cream ever again. Bloody Tamara. Now I’m on a perpetual rotation of buns. The good ones. With all the icing.

I’m trying to work and, in truth, it’s helping to take my mind off Josh for a little while, though I’m struggling to match Max’s effervescent enthusiasm as we bat ideas back and forth for the upcoming Dublin hotel. We were having a conversation about how much green we should incorporate and, in my grief at my failed relationship, I missed the fact it was a joke and have started pulling together ideas for a mood board with far too much emerald. I sort of think it would work and be regal, elegant, refined, but Max is horrified I’ve gone down this route. I’m really off my game.

We’ve got a call scheduled later on, when I will have to either plead insanity for not cottoning onto his joke quickly enough or confess what’s happened to me, so he goes easy and doesn’t fire me for having suddenly turned into a moron. It could go either way. I love working with Max, but I’m dreading this call.

I don’t even have Chris to moan to at work any more, because he’s long gone. I miss our emailing and work calls, which always segued into other subjects. When Max let it drop that they were on the hunt for a new fit-out manager and asked if I knew of someone suitable, he mentioned that I’d be able to get a bonus as part of the recommend-a-friend scheme. I thought I’d ring Chris and bask in the fact that the tables had turned, but somehow it felt odd calling to tell him this when we were no longer working together. Now we’re not colleagues, we haven’t spoken since he said goodbye. Again.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

---