Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Stella
Another day, another dollar, so the phrase goes.
But for me another day meant another twelve hours at my crappy office with the crappiest boss who ever lived.
Placing people I didn’t know into jobs they didn’t want was the worst. It might have only been two months into the role, but I’d never get used to being a recruitment consultant.
My mobile buzzed on my desk beside me and I glanced over my shoulder toward my boss’s empty office. She hated people taking personal calls. If breathing took time out of the day, she’d ban that too.
It was Florence. She never called me at work. Taking my life in my hands, I swiped to accept the call. “Hey,” I whispered.
“Are you in front of your computer?” she asked.
“Of course I am. I’m chained to it, what—”
“I’m five minutes away. Whatever you do, don’t check your emails. Get your coat and meet me downstairs.”
Florence must be crazy. I was constantly checking my emails. “I’m staring at my inbox, Florence.”
“I mean your personal emails. Promise me. Log off and meet me downstairs or I’m going to march into your office and haul you out.”
“It’s only just gone six. I can’t just leave. What’s the problem?” It sounded serious. “Are you and Gordy okay?” She and Gordy were the perfect couple. If there was trouble in paradise, then anything was possible.
“I’ve just turned into Monmouth Street. Have you got your jacket on?”
Oh God. She didn’t say that they were okay. Florence needed me. And she trumped the wrath of my boss. “I’m coming,” I said, wedging the phone between my shoulder and my chin as I logged out.
I pulled my jacket off the back of my chair and headed to the exit, ignoring my boss’s assistant’s pointed look at the clock as she saw me leave.
I saw Florence as soon as I stepped out of the lift. She was facing me from the other side of the glass doors of the office, her shoulders slumped, her forehead furrowed, and her face as pale as a corpse. It was clear something catastrophic had happened.
I was going to kill Gordy.
“I’m so sorry, Florence,” I said, and I opened my arms and pulled her into a hug.
She held me so tight, I struggled to breathe. She must be devastated. We all thought Gordy was one of the good guys.
“I wanted you to hear this from me,” Florence said as she pulled away and snuck her arm around my shoulder.
“Of course. I’m here for you,” I replied as I grabbed her hand. “I’ll help you bury the body if you want me to.”
She frowned as if she was surprised by my offer, but how could she be? There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for Florence. For either of my two best friends.
We crossed the street and found an outside table at the bar opposite my office on Monmouth Street. One of the few positives about my job was that it was based in the West End and surrounded by bars and restaurants. “We’re going to need wine,” I said.
We were going to need a shovel. If she didn’t kill Gordy, I would.
We ordered a bottle of wine and took a seat. “So you saw?” Florence said. “You seem very calm.”
“Saw what?” I asked. “Oh,” I said, pulling out my phone. “You said there was something in my personal email.”
“You didn’t see?” Florence asked.
“What?”
She pulled my phone from my grasp and grabbed my hands. “What body are you helping me bury?” she asked.
“Gordy’s, of course. Tell me what he’s done.”
She shook her head. “It’s not Gordy. It’s Matt.”
My stomach dropped straight through the seat of my chair and I froze. If Florence had raced over here from where she worked in the City at six on a Wednesday, it couldn’t be good news. Had he been in an accident? Had his dad died?
“He’s getting married,” she said, squeezing my hands.
I pulled away from her as I tried to understand what she was saying.
“Of course he’s not getting married. We’ve only been apart two months.
” I didn’t like to say we’d split up because it wasn’t an accurate description of what was happening.
We were just apart right now. It was just a temporary thing.
He was just freaked out that all our friends were getting married and people kept asking us when we were next.
He was just doing that guy thing where, just before they pop the question, they have a man meltdown.
Just look at Prince William and Kate Middleton.
They had a three-month break before William proposed.
“I’m so sorry, Stella.”
Florence looked up at me, her eyes filled with tears, and my heart began to gallop. She was serious. “What do you mean? Who to? How do you know?”
“The invitation was delivered to Gordy’s office. And then there was the email follow-up with the schedule. Never mind.”
I tried to swallow but my throat was too tight.
I reached for the glass of wine that Florence was hastily pouring.
“I don’t get it. There must be some mistake.
” How could Matt be getting married? He hadn’t proposed to me, and we’d been going out for seven years.
We’d been living together for six. It wasn’t possible. Florence must have it wrong.
Florence shook her head. “It gets worse. I really don’t know how to say this, but he’s marrying Karen.”
I shivered as my body turned cold.
I couldn’t speak.
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t think.
Florence slid a white card in front of me.
I traced the embossed writing with my fingertip as my stomach churned slowly and relentlessly, like it was mixing concrete. It was the invitation I would have picked out for my own wedding—thick white card, a thin gold surround, and an elegant black font. Simple. Classic. Refined.
Apparently stealing the love of my life wasn’t enough. My best friend had to have my taste in wedding invitations, too.
“Karen and Matt?” I searched Florence’s face, looking for answers. “My Matt? My Karen?”
Florence tilted her head to the side. “For some reason, they’ve invited you. I had no idea they were even a thing. Neither did Gordy.”
They sent me an invitation? I suppose I was the common denominator between them. “How long have they . . .?” Was this the real reason Matt left me? His excuses when he left seemed so lacking, looking back—
I’m not sure we were meant to be together forever.
We don’t want the same things in life.
I’d assumed he was just getting jittery as we approached the time for weddings and babies.
Apparently, I was wrong.
“Karen swears it’s since you two split up but . . .”
“You spoke to her?” Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t had an actual conversation with Karen or an in-person catch-up for . . . Well, I couldn’t remember how long. We messaged each other. All the time. Most days. But I hadn’t seen her or spoken to her in weeks.
“Called her as soon as Gordy called me when he got the invite. It was delivered to his office. Which was weird. It wasn’t like I wasn’t going to find out.”
I was only taking in half of the words that Florence was speaking. “What did she say?”
“Just that . . .” Florence paused and drew breath. “She and Matt had realized they had feelings for each other and it was serious, and she didn’t really say anything more. As soon as I mentioned you, she made up some excuse about another call and rang off.”
So my boyfriend was getting married. Ex-boyfriend. Potaytoes Potahtoes. The man I’d shared a bed with for seven years up until two months ago was getting married. On any other day, that would have been the worst thing that could have possibly happened. But to my best friend?
Why?
“Is she pregnant?”
Florence sat back in her chair. “You think that’s why?”
Why was any of this happening?
Why was Matt getting married to someone else when he was supposed to be marrying me?
Why was my best friend getting married and hadn’t told me?
Why were they marrying each other?
“I’m not sure any explanation would really be an answer,” I said.
“But if they’d shagged and she’d got knocked up that might be some kind of logical reason for a quick wedding.
” It was certainly easier to understand than my best friend catching feelings for my boyfriend because that led to questions—how long had they had feelings for each other?
Had Matt always wanted Karen when he was with me?
Had they been having an affair? For a few months?
Years? Since the beginning of our relationship?
“I don’t understand why she didn’t tell me,” I said. “It wasn’t like I wouldn’t find out. She was going to let me find out by opening my invitation.”
“I don’t have an answer to that, other than she’s a total bitch.”
That would have to do. For now. “I guess that’s why she invited me. To announce the news. Because she was too much of a traitorous coward to tell me to my face that she’d stolen my boyfriend.”
“Do you think they were having an affair while you two were still living together?”
“That’s at the top of my list of questions I have for them both.” Had I seen any signs? Since we’d moved to London, Matt had worked late a lot. But we’d come down from Manchester because he was offered his dream job. Of course he was going to put body and soul into it.
When had he had time for an affair?
We were at the stage where I bought Matt’s underpants and he reminded me that I’d not called my brother for three weeks.
We were a team.
We were in love.
We were going to spend the rest of our lives together.
Or so I’d thought.
I should be crying, but for some reason the tears hadn’t arrived. Perhaps I didn’t believe it was true. Perhaps the fizzle of anger I was beginning to feel had dried them out.
Karen had been a part of my life since the day we’d both started school.
I always felt slightly unkempt next to her.
Even then. At five, her knee-high white socks never fell down, wrinkling at the ankles like mine did.
At thirteen she never suffered with acne and wrestled with cover-up, and in our twenties, I’d never seen her with a single clump of mascara or eyeliner that was smudged.
Karen had known Matt since before we were a couple.
She’d come up to visit me in Manchester, during our first term at university, twirling in, making the boys drool and swapping make-up tips with the girls in my block.
She’d been struggling to fit in at Exeter, which made no sense to me. All my friends loved her.
When Matt pulled me onto the dance floor during the summer ball, told me I brought out the best in him, and he liked my boobs, I was thrilled Karen had already met him so she could help me overanalyze every part of our relationship.
Seven years later, Karen knew Matt almost as well as I did.
“Maybe you should go to the wedding and when they do that bit about impediments, you can stand up and ask that question,” Florence suggested. “But obviously, you can’t go.”
“Of course, I can’t go,” I replied. Despite the invitation, I was almost certainly the last person Karen wanted at her wedding.
It wasn’t as if seeing my ex-boyfriend—the man I’d thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with—marrying my ex-best friend was top of my list of things to do this summer.
“Are you going to go?” I loved Florence like a sister, and if Karen was capable of sleeping with my boyfriend, what could she do to Florence?
“Of course not,” she replied.
“But Gordy will want to go. And he won’t want to go without you. If more time had passed and I was married or at least dating someone, I’d definitely go.” If nothing else, I’d love to see Karen’s face when she got my RSVP.
“There was a schedule that came with the invitation,” Florence said.
I frowned. I’d been so focused on the white card that looked so much like the one I would have chosen, I’d forgotten about the email.
“It’s like a week-long thing up in Scotland.”
I slumped back in my chair, grateful that my jacket covered the mole-hill sized goosebumps that popped up all over my arms. “His uncle’s castle?” I asked.
Florence nodded and the dull churning in my stomach kicked up a gear like an idling car put into drive.
“That’s where he always said he wanted to get married.” We’d visited last summer and hiked, ridden horses, slept under the stars. It had been amazing. Magical even.
“He’s a ginormous wanker,” Florence said.
Matt Gordon was having the life he and I had always planned—with someone else.