Page 55 of The Pop-Up Cake Shop

‘It’s okay. Just forget I ever said anything.’ I felt so uncomfortable. I’d only been trying to sympathise with Dot but somehow, I’d managed to put my foot in it.

‘What did she say about my Pete, my ex?’ asked Dot.

‘Erm... well, just that he was a bit controlling so you were forced to escape?’

She laughed and shook her head in disbelief. ‘Talk about an exaggeration! That’s typical Mo.’

‘So he wasn’t? Controlling?’

‘No! Well, he was in that wehadto watch the football if it was on, regardless of whether I wanted to watch my favourite soap. But that was just a standing joke between us. He’s the biggest football fan ever and I totally understood.’ She shrugged. ‘We bought another telly and then we were both happy.’

‘Right. So . . . you didn’t split because . . .?’

‘Pete was controlling? No! We just drifted apart.’

‘But why would Mo say all of that?’ I murmured, wondering if I’d somehow misunderstood what she’d told me about Dot.

She sighed. ‘It’s because she doesn’t think logically when it comes to men treating women badly. It all stems from when she was in her early twenties and due to marry her long-term fiancé Will. The rotten bastard left her standing on her own at the altar.’

‘What?’ I stared at Dot in horror. ‘You mean he was actually at the church and then he bolted when Mo arrived?’

Dot nodded sadly. ‘I was her chief bridesmaid and the night before the wedding, I spotted Will in a bar, sitting with a woman he worked with. I assumed it must be just a friendly good luck drink and I mentioned it to Mo. But later, it turned out they’d been getting close for months and Will realised as he waited for Mo at the church that he couldn’t go through with it because he was in love with this woman.’

‘Oh, that’s awful. Poor Mo. She must have been absolutely devastated.’

‘She was. And it really affected her psychologically. For years she wouldn’t even contemplate seeing other guys. And thenwhen she finally did start dating, if she found herself getting too close to a man, she’d always find a reason to end it – even if they were perfectly lovely guys. I thought with Gaz it might be different. But I think she’s still trapped in that awful self-destructive cycle. I don’t think she can bear the thought that she might get hurt again, like she was that day at the church. More than ten years later, she still can’t trust a man with her heart. It’s all so sad.’

‘It really is. So... what about Gaz? She said she ended it because she found out he’d been unfaithful to her with her sister?’

Dot shook her head sadly. ‘Not true. He and Mo’s sister did have a drunken fumble but that was before he even met Mo. In fact, it was her sister who introduced them.’

‘So she was kind of using that discovery as an excuse to end things with Gaz?’

‘Well, I think so. She seems really into him and then suddenly, she’s calling it off again. She’s just so terrified of getting too involved.’

‘Why did she say that about you and the women’s refuge, though?’ I wondered.

‘Oh, I guess because she’s really protective of me. We’ve been friends since schooldays. And she never thought Pete was good enough for me. She’d have picked up on things like our friendly fights over the remote control and interpreted them as bad behaviour on Pete’s part. But it definitely wasn’t controlling. Pete was actually a real softie. It’s just that Mo’s view of men is really skewed.’

‘That’s so sad,’ I murmured, thinking about poor Mo, all excited about getting married to the love of her life and then being dumped so cruelly at the church.

It was a good lesson in how you shouldn’t judge people on first appearance without knowing their back stories. Because thethings that happened to you in your life tended to shape the person you became.

I’d been quite scathing about Mo’s tendency to be rather brusque and domineering.

Now, I just wanted to give her a big hug...

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

It was the day of Ellie’s house-warming.

As it was such a lovely afternoon, I’d decided to get the bus over so I could have a drink. But when I finally arrived, who was the first person I should spy through the open garden gate – but Caleb!

He was walking around the garden, in earnest conversation with Maisie – and I recalled Ellie, after her tour round the eco house, saying that Caleb had offered to help Maisie design a ‘wildlife habitat’ in their new garden.

I flicked my eyes to the sky. This man really was too good to be true with his mission to single-handedly save the planet!

Not that I disagreed with him in principle, of course. Not at all. We all had to do our bit.

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