Chapter 3
Tabitha
“What’s wrong, Tabs?” My friend Isla handed me a glass of champers, and I marveled at how her red curls glowed in London’s golden dusk.
“Everything’s fine.” I forced a smile. The last thing I wanted to do was cast a pall over her baby shower by explaining about seeing Perry having sex with another woman this morning, followed by the fight with Tim.
Isla narrowed her eyes at me, skeptical. “I know you too well, Ms. Responsible—she who clears the empties at the work booze-up while everyone else gets hammered. For one second, take a break from being the person who looks after everyone else. Let me help you.”
I glanced around the leafy garden of The Bell pub, where friends gathered.
Isla wasn’t showing much, even though she was in her second trimester, but her thirteen-year-old stepdaughter, Sephy, had insisted on getting a head start on the celebrations and had put herself in charge of tonight’s baby shower.
We sat around a table laden with animal-shaped snacks and bouncing with elephant balloons.
Our closest friends had arrived first. Her old flatmate—with a beautiful baby boy grinning gleefully in her front pack—was laughing with Ishani, dressed in white linen shorts, and Sunny, in purple trousers.
Due to appear soon were Isla’s new mum friends from Sephy’s school.
“This is your special day,” I insisted. “Let’s not talk about me.”
“It’s the first in a series of baby showers, apparently. Sephy wanted to have this one at the zoo, and we talked her down. She’s keen to try out a number of themes—quite the party planner, as it turns out.”
Isla smiled at Sephy, who was dressed in wide jeans and a crochet top.
I felt a pang of envy at their special relationship.
And Isla and her partner Declan were besotted with each other.
Would I ever have that? Since this morning, I felt very far from even a hint of romance, let alone having a family.
“Seriously, Tabitha, I want to know,” Isla insisted.
I’d seen Isla’s tenacity as an investigative journalist firsthand. She wasn’t going to give up. I took a deep breath. “Perry and I split up,” I said.
She scrunched her nose, her smattering of freckles pressing together, and sighed, as if to say, Finally.
Perry was a stickler for etiquette and a bit of a snob, which was cringeworthy at times, but I thought he was a reliable, decent bloke underneath his starched shirt and endless scolding about pronunciation. Had thought. Past tense.
“So how did you come to that decision?” she asked tactfully. What she meant was, What made you finally see the light?
“It wasn’t my decision.” My stomach went tight admitting that. “He dumped me, in a manner of speaking.”
She did a double take. “You. Are. Freaking. Kidding.” Then a quiet scream. “This defies the laws of the universe.”
A warmth burst through my chest that she thought so highly of me, followed by a knotted twist that she thought so little of Perry. “I’m not kidding.”
“How? What? When?”
I wasn’t ready to lay out the whole story right now. I needed to stay numb to get through the evening, but I knew Isla the journalist wouldn’t let it go until she’d heard the whole sordid tale. “As you know, he’d been doing yoga, which I thought was very odd…”
“Yes, you did mention that. I wanted to ask what he’d wear, but I never got the courage. Go on.”
“Turns out, he and his female instructor were bending like pretzels in a new partner-yoga class. And evidently, they couldn’t stop twisting into each other after class and then took it into the bedroom.
” Even though I was trying to make it funny, tears pushed at the backs of my eyes, and my voice cracked.
“Not their fault, just ‘an inevitable part of the normal exigencies of one’s practice,’ apparently. ”
His words. So Perry.
Isla’s face screwed up, appalled. “Oh God. I’m so sorry, Tabs. That’s awful and…bizarre. When did you find out?”
“This morning. I had my suspicions and turned up to his flat at seven a.m. They were full-on in flagrante. She is nothing if not flexible.” The scene of them on Perry’s bed, where I’d slept with him for four years, their arms and legs akimbo, exploded into my mind.
I still had no idea how long this had been going on.
Isla’s eyes flew open wide. She clutched my arm. “Oh Tabs, I wish you’d confided in me about your suspicions. Can I hug you?”
Though I squeezed the bridge of my nose with my thumb and index finger to stop the tears, my eyes pooled. “Better not. I’ll just blubber off all this eyeliner. It’s okay. It’s not like I would have stayed with him after this morning. And I know you didn’t like him. You didn’t show it, but I knew.”
“I, ah…er. As usual, you’re being nice. I did show it. I never thought he appreciated you, but I don’t like seeing you hurt like this. That bloody bastard.”
Her outrage on my behalf touched my heart. Which prompted me to make another confession. “He told me I was uptight, conservative, and status-conscious.”
“Whaaat? That’s not you, that’s him. He’s totally projecting. May he be frozen in a downward-facing dog, wearing a footie shirt and cargo shorts, for the rest of his days.”
I spluttered out my champers. Now I was feeling better because Isla always made me see the silly side of things. I loved having her on my work team, and I hoped she stayed. She’d cracked several big, complicated crime cases, and I worried she’d get bored with us in the Home and Garden section.
“He said he’d found his free spirit, and he wanted to allow himself to soar,” I said.
Her mouth dropped open. “I picture him soaring into the side of a building.”
I giggled again.
“And Perry, a free spirit?” Isla went on. “I find that hard to believe.”
“You’re right,” I said. “Turns out the yoga instructor is titled, has a trust fund, and holds retreats in the Seychelles, so he is soaring with someone who has jet propellant under her wings.”
“So, no wild transformation for Perry after all.”
She’d said it to be nice, but my bottom lip trembled. He was the same old Perry, but still, he’d cheated on me.
Isla touched my shoulder, like she’d noticed I was affected by her words. “Tabitha, you’re an amazing editor, but also a lovely person who doesn’t know how great she is. And you are hot. You’ll find someone who realizes how bloody brilliant you are.”
Her supportive words straightened my shoulders with resolve, but I could hear Perry’s words from this morning echoing louder.
“I suppose I am a bit stuffy,” I said. “Maybe I should lose the pearls.”
“Don’t change yourself.” She touched my necklace. “The pearls look perfect with that dress. You look incredible.”
I was wearing a red mini with a plunging neckline, a definite change of direction for me.
Sunny and Ishani wanted to go out clubbing afterward, and I’d dressed for the night.
A rebellion, I’d bought the dress on impulse some time ago and had never worn it.
Tonight, I was out to prove I wasn’t boring.
But I kept tugging at the revealing neckline, nervous the double-sided tape was going to give way and the not-insubstantial girls would tumble out into the night.
Isla’s gaze flicked to something behind me. She seemed surprised.
“Look who’s here,” she said.
“Who?”
It wasn’t Perry, was it? Thinking he could do some groveling? Yuck.
“No, really. Turn around. Look. Mr. Goodtimes.”
I was confused and eager to see who it was. Mr. Goodtimes? Definitely not Perry. A party song playing in my head, I turned.
Oh shit. My heart plummeted. Not him. Not again today, one of the lowest days of my life, and I was showing too much boob and leg to feel secure.
Tim bloody Langston.
He was laughing uproariously, as usual, his brown hair tousled, his annoyingly wide and muscled shoulders flung back, his stupidly chiseled face not as handsome as he thought it was.
He wore a fresh flannel shirt and sat at a table full of uncommonly good-looking guys in similar garb, clutching pints.
A bouncy blond woman with a clipboard was hanging over him and…
unbuttoning his shirt? How very on-brand.
He was such a flirt. I bet they were sleeping together. Why did that fill me with such rage?
Ishani appeared at our side. “It’s your hot contractor, Tabs. That guy is so fun.”
Her words soured inside my mind. Was he fun? Or did he always pretend to have fun to annoy me? Tabs, get a grip, woman.
“He was so brave,” Ishani said. “The presence of mind he displayed that day.”
It was true. Tim had helped Isla with a dangerous story about a murderous drug-smuggling ring.
But Ishani’s reverence toward him rankled.
Had he risked his life to smuggle Isla and Declan, an undercover cop, into a sinister castle nearby?
Yes. Saved lives? Yes. Well, all right, he’d been helpful.
But his heroism didn’t erase the rest of his personality. Or our history.
A commotion shook me out of my thoughts. Tim’s table was joined by two men hulking huge cameras on their shoulders, a woman holding a boom, and a scruffy man in an enormous scarf who started gesticulating, as if setting up for a shot.
“What on earth is that film crew doing here?” I asked. “And why are they filming him?” Yes, he was always good for a quick quip, but why now?
Isla waved to him. Tim looked over and squinted, and to my absolute horror, his face lit up and he shot to his feet. He conferred with the guy who seemed to be the director. Oh, please God, no.
But I knew that look.
He’s coming over here.
My only response? Run. Because the absolute last thing I needed tonight was to be in the presence of Tim bloody Langston. Dealing with him during the day was enough torture.