Chapter 32 Charlie
CHARLIE
Seeing the photos only proved what Charlie already knows.
Tess is trouble. He knew it from the moment he met her at the meeting, so why he would have been so stupid as to approach her a week later in that hotel bar doesn’t make any sense.
But if she thinks she’s got some kind of hold over him—over Freya—she’s very much mistaken.
He hears Anita’s voice as soon as he opens the front door and instinctively pulls his key out from the lock and steps back into the porch. He’s not got the energy to deal with her as well.
“Charlie?” Freya calls out blindly.
He closes his eyes and holds his breath, wondering if he can still extricate himself. But she rounds the kitchen doorway, looking puffy-eyed, and the opportunity has passed.
“You okay?” he asks.
She nods and rolls her eyes toward her mother’s woe-is-me diatribe, silently pleading with him to put an end to the monotony. If he thought he could get away with it, he’d be glad to.
“Ah, here he is!” exclaims Anita, sounding as if he’s been missing in action. “The philanderer returns.”
“Excuse me?” says Charlie, looking to Freya, dumbfounded.
She offers a weak smile.
“Now that you’re here, perhaps you can answer the question yourself,” Anita goes on.
“What’s going on?” he asks, as he tries to quell the overwhelming desire to hold her up against the wall by the scruff of her neck.
“Nothing,” says Freya, at the same time as Anita says, “Is this you?”
She flashes her phone screen toward him and despite not wanting to give her the satisfaction of leaning in, he can’t help himself. The grainy picture is undoubtedly of Coco de Luca, and the head nuzzling her neck looks a lot like him.
“Seriously?” he says, turning to Freya.
She shrugs her shoulders. He would have expected more from her than that.
Anita laughs, as if it’s all a game. “Well, obviously, it’s not you, but you’ve got to admit, even you did a double take.”
She picks up her bag and Charlies dares to hope that she’s leaving. “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” she says, waiting for everyone’s attention. “Pete’s back in London.”
Charlie hears Freya physically catch her breath, the soap-soaked plate she was washing up momentarily frozen in her hands. He imagines if he could see her face, he’d know how much her ex had once meant to her.
“I saw it on Facebook,” Anita goes on, oblivious to the mounting tension in the room, or perhaps that’s exactly what she was banking on. “Glad to see he got his visa issues sorted out in the end.”
When Freya turns around, the look on her face sucker punches Charlie, snatching the wind right out of him. She couldn’t disguise it even if she wanted to. She’s as in love with Pete as much as she ever was, and the realization floors him.