Page 144 of Never Tell Lies

I smiled, my heart warming as I awkwardly typed with just one hand, the other still wrapped around my nephew's middle.

Effusive as ever, Mr Tell. I’m not a fan of it either. How’s London?

I pressed send and within seconds my phone pinged again.

Suppliers have fucked up. Distract me please.

A.

Distract him? I could just imagine the kind of distraction he was after.

I’m not sending you nudes, Alfie.

Again, his reply was immediate.

Good. I don’t want them. Just talk to me.

A.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Nudes just seemed beneath him somehow. A Botticelli-style portrait of my bare arse would be more up his street.

But he wanted me to talk to him? Talk to him about what? My phone buzzed again and I opened the message.

Tell me what you’re doing. I want to imagine you.

A.

Instead of typing a reply, I took a photo of what was directly in front of me. The back of Ryan's head, some rejected sketches of a fat giraffe, two plates that once contained blueberry muffins and a half-drunk mug of chamomile tea. It was my life in a heartbeat. I expected another instant reply but it didn’t come. I waited. And waited. Then my patience ran out.

What’re you doing?

After another moment I finally got a reply. It was a photo and my jaw dropped.

Are you on a helipad?!

The image was of a helicopter, clearly on a rooftop somewhere, with the deep night sky filling the background.

Yes, I have to go to Paris. I hope to return tomorrow.

A.

I sat back in my chair and chewed my lip. The thought of him leaving the country made me feel nauseous. I gave myself a mental slap. I could handle this, it would be fine. If I chose to take my college place I was going to have to put up with us being a lot farther apart than this. In fact, whether I pursued my dream or not, we were going to have to be apart a lot whilst he was at work, unless I became his personal fuck slave and followed at his heels wherever he went. Any and all roads in front of me seemed bleak at the moment. I sighed and tried to push the grim thoughts away.

Ryan was still scribbling away, blissfully oblivious to my worries. I read Alfie’s text again, trying to read between the lines.He was trying to tell me something without saying it. Every day I spent with Alfie seemed to bring me closer to him. I was learning that work, for whatever reason, filled him with a deep sadness that I didn’t understand yet.

When you get back, we’re eating gateaux in the jacuzzi while I whisper sweet nothings in your ear.

I sent the message off and worried at my lip. Had that been the right call? What if that was stupid and not at all what he wanted? I gave myself another mental slap and clamped down on the self-doubt spiral. I squeezed my eyes shut and only opened them again when my phone pinged with a single worded message.

Agreed.

A.

Agreed? He really wasn’t giving me much to work with, but then again, he was about to cross the channel in a helicopter so he probably had other things on his mind.

I decided not to send another reply. He would text me again if he wanted to. I was about to lock my phone when I noticed something. I clicked on the photo Alfie had sent. What was that red thing inside the helicopter? My stomach sank as suspicion grew. I zoomed in on the flash of red and yes, there they were. Attached to a pair of thin legs, seated comfortably inside the helicopter my man was about to board, were the tell tale red shoes of Angie Carter.

She was his assistant. Hispersonal assistant. I was trying really hard not to bite on that, but no matter what I did I couldn’t shake the thought that my man was on his way to the most romanticcity in the world with my sworn enemy. Okay, so ‘sworn enemy’might be a little melodramatic, but I really hated that woman.

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