Chapter 13 #2
The traffic was heavy with all the commuters making their way home.
She spent a lot of time sitting in queues and fretting about work.
Sam wasn’t going to be happy about this, and she was heading in completely the wrong direction for Kelsea Sands.
At this rate it wouldn’t be worth her going into The North Star at all.
But there was a part of her that simply couldn’t give up. She had to see this through. With grim determination she edged the car forward again, cheering herself up by reminding herself that Joel and his bit of stuff must face this drive home every night. Serve them right!
Eventually they left Hull and arrived in one of its closest villages. The yellow saloon made its way up a road then turned into a driveway.
Jenna pulled up on the street and watched Joel’s car head towards a block of flats then disappear into the car park at the rear.
She stared at the flats. It was a newish block – probably not more than five years old.
The top row flats had double doors with balconies, and the ground floor flats had small patio areas outside.
She guessed those on the first floor were cheaper, as they had no outside space.
She hoped Annette lived in one of those.
It was a nice-looking building, though, and seemed to be well maintained. Clearly there was parking for residents, and it was in a lovely village location.
Deep down, she’d sort of hoped it would be a horrible house that looked as if it should be demolished, in some rundown area where Joel wouldn’t last five minutes.
She could imagine him living quite comfortably somewhere like this, even though he generally scorned new-builds and wasn’t keen on flats anyway. He’d be in no hurry to leave it…
There was no point sitting here. There would be a back entrance, and Joel and Annette would no doubt enter the building that way. She was wasting her time, and she didn’t have time to waste. She had to get to work.
Somehow, she had to put all this out of her mind and get on with it.
It was a relief to arrive back in Kelsea Sands, to see the sunlight gleaming on the Humber and pass the welcoming white walls of The North Star.
She turned into the drive at Watersmeet and rushed inside to greet her daughters and assure her mum and Mac that she was fine, but traffic had been horrendous.
Then she bid them all farewell and dashed across the road to the pub.
‘Thought you’d got lost,’ Sam joked when she walked through the door at last.
‘I’m really sorry,’ she told him. ‘It was the traffic. It was just awful. Never seen anything like it.’
‘No worries,’ he said. ‘As long as you’re okay, that’s all that matters.’
The guilt burned deep within her. She shouldn’t have lied to him, and she shouldn’t have made herself late in the first place by chasing after Joel.
What on earth had possessed her? The pub was heaving with customers who’d decided that today was the perfect day to have dinner – or tea, as most of them called it – at The North Star, many of them choosing to sit at the outside tables.
Sam was clearly rushed off his feet, and she should have been there helping him.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, when she apologised again a little later, ‘It wasn’t so much of a problem now that Cathy’s back.’
Cathy had returned to work the previous day and had been very friendly towards Jenna.
She was a smiley sort of person, probably in her fifties, and lived in Weltringham with her husband and two dogs.
She’d spent every spare minute telling the rest of the staff all about her recent holiday in Lloret de Mar and sighing because she now had a whole year before she’d be able to return there.
Even so, she’d thrown herself back into work with gusto, and Jenna realised she was invaluable to Sam and a great asset to The North Star.
‘Briar will be back tomorrow, too,’ he said, sounding relieved.
‘She flies home first thing in the morning, and she’s offered to come in for the evening shift.
I told her there was no need, but she said she didn’t mind, and she needed money as she’d pretty much blown every penny she had in Majorca. ’
‘Will I be surplus to requirements then?’ Jenna queried, not sure how to feel about that.
Sam’s smile died and he shook his head. ‘Never.’
There was a moment when Jenna completely forgot to breathe as she stared into his blue eyes, held captive by the intensity of his gaze.
Then he turned away and the spell was broken. She blinked, feeling dazed as he headed into the kitchen. What the hell was that?
‘It’s nothing,’ she muttered to herself. ‘You’re just reading too much into things because you’re feeling lonely and rejected. Sam’s just a nice man, remember that. Don’t mess this up, for goodness’ sake!’
The rest of the shift passed without complications, but Jenna couldn’t shake the guilt about lying to Sam.
She’d also realised that her need to see Annette was far from over.
She wanted to repeat the exercise. She wanted to return to the block of flats.
She wanted to watch them until she finally got the answer she needed.
What did Annette look like?
‘Sam,’ she said hesitantly after the final customer said goodnight and the two of them were wiping down tables in the bar. ‘Can I have a word with you?’
Sam straightened and gave her a nervous look. ‘Sounds serious.’
‘It is. I’m afraid I owe you an apology.’
He looked puzzled. ‘You do? For what?’
‘Thing is…’ She could hardly look at him as she stood there, anxiously twisting the cleaning cloth between her fingers. ‘The thing is, I lied to you earlier. I wasn’t stuck in traffic at all. I was on a mission.’
Sam pulled up a chair and sat down, eyeing her with some amusement. ‘A mission? Sounds very important.’
‘I suppose it was. Or it seemed it at the time. But even if it was, I shouldn’t have done it when I was supposed to be at work. I feel terribly guilty. I’m so sorry.’
‘So, you didn’t go to the dentist’s then?’
‘Oh, yes! That was true.’ She sat down beside him at the table and absently rubbed at a mark with the cloth. ‘It was afterwards, when I should have been coming back to work. I-I went to my husband’s workplace.’
Sam’s expression changed from one of amusement to one of studied neutrality. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Well, that’s understandable. You’ve been here in Kelsea Sands away from him a while now, and you must be missing him.’
‘Not to talk to him,’ she said awkwardly. ‘To… to see who he was with.’
Sam nodded. ‘Right.’
She had the weirdest feeling that he’d guessed what was going on. Was that possible? Even her mum and Mac knew nothing about it, so how could Sam?
She watched him as he sat there, his gaze steady and open. There was no guile in Sam. No hint of slyness or duplicity. He was one of those people that you just felt you could trust with anything. However dark the secret.
‘He’s having an affair,’ she burst out. ‘Mum doesn’t know. I don’t want her to know. I don’t want anyone to know. The twins…’
Sam’s teeth nipped his lower lip and his gaze lowered for a moment. Then he met her anxious gaze calmly, with a hint of concern in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Jenna,’ he said.
It was enough.
Without any further prodding, she found herself telling him all about it – everything.
From the affair Joel had before their wedding to the time he’d left her when she was pregnant with the twins, and all the other times she’d suspected he was seeing other women but hadn’t wanted to prove it for fear he would leave her again.
And now this. This ultimate humiliation. His secretary.
Sam listened without interrupting. He let her pour it all out – and out it came.
But strangely, there was little emotion attached to her words.
It was like she was telling him a story that had nothing to do with her.
Someone else’s life that she’d been observing, but which had no emotional impact on her.
‘So I just wanted to see her,’ she finished. ‘I needed to see her. To see what she looked like. Know your enemy, isn’t that what they say?’
‘Is she your enemy?’ he asked quietly.
‘Of course she is! She took Joel away from his home, his marriage – his children!’
‘Right.’ Sam said nothing but it looked as if he was thinking. A lot. ‘So you didn’t get to see her after all that?’ he asked eventually.
Jenna sighed, feeling stupid. ‘No. But,’ she added, sitting up straight with purpose, ‘I’ve decided to go back. Tomorrow evening is my night off, and the twins are sleeping over at Kendra and Niall’s place. I’m going to drive back to the block of flats.’
Sam frowned. ‘To do what?’
‘To watch the flats! To see if they go in or out. To get a glimpse of them at the window. Anything!’
‘You know, if you carry on like that, you’ll drive yourself mad,’ he said gently. ‘It’s not making things any easier for you, is it?’
‘So what do you want me to do? Just put it out of my mind and forget it? Is it too much to ask that I know what she looks like? This bloody woman has taken everything from me and my children! Don’t I at least deserve that much closure?’
‘I’m just not sure it will give you closure,’ he said. ‘What will you do if you see them together? Have you thought about how much that will hurt?’
Jenna wrapped her arms around herself and stayed quiet. Of course she’d thought about it and she knew it would kill her. Even so…
‘I need to see her,’ she repeated. ‘I need to see them together. I need to know.’
Sam studied her closely for a moment then he ran a hand through his dark hair and sighed. ‘Okay, well in that case I’ll come with you.’
‘Wh-what?’
‘I can’t let you go through that alone. If you do see him…’ He broke off and shook his head. ‘No, it doesn’t bear thinking about. Let me come with you.’
‘But you have this place!’
‘Cathy and Briar will be here. The pub can do without me for once.’
‘You’d really do that?’ she asked, astonished.
‘Yes, of course. Look, why don’t we take my car?’ he suggested. ‘That way, if your husband happens to be gazing out of his window, watching the street in case of random lunatics sitting outside spying on him, he won’t see your car, and he need never know that you were there.’
Jenna managed a smile. ‘Random lunatics?’ she asked, raising an eyebrow.
‘Well, let’s face it, it’s hardly the act of a sane, well-balanced person, is it?’
‘You don’t think I’m sane or well-balanced?’
‘I don’t think I am! You’ve had your marriage torn apart by these two. What’s my excuse?’
‘Thank you, Sam,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s really kind of you. But are you absolutely sure?’
‘Nope,’ he admitted. ‘Like I said, I think it’s bonkers, but I can see I’m not going to be able to talk you out of it. Your mind’s made up and that’s that. So the least I can do is go with you and make sure you’re okay, and you don’t end up getting arrested or anything like that.’
‘That would be terrible,’ she agreed.
‘It would. I have the reputation of The North Star to consider, after all.’
‘Eight o’clock tomorrow evening?’
He held out his hand. ‘Eight o’clock tomorrow evening.’
Jenna clasped his hand in hers and shook it. Sam dropped it immediately and got to his feet.
‘Right, well I’d better get on with cleaning up this place.’
‘Shall I mop the floor?’ she suggested but he shook his head.
‘You get off home,’ he told her. ‘I can deal with this now.’
‘But I don’t mind, honestly.’
‘Go home, Jenna,’ he said, not looking at her. ‘I’ll manage, and you’ve had an eventful day. I’ll see you tomorrow at eight, okay?’
Jenna wondered if he’d just realised how totally insane she really was. Had he changed his mind? But if he had, he would have told her. Sam’s honesty was one of the things she loved best about him. Liked best about him.
‘Goodnight, Sam,’ she said, heading past him towards the door.
He raised a hand and waved but didn’t reply, and she closed the door behind her and headed over the road to Watersmeet with a strange feeling that, somehow, she’d missed something important.