Chapter 45
MAGGIE OPENED ONE EYE . A strange bed and a strange room. Then she remembered: Gray. They’d gone to his room the previous night, sneaking upstairs when nobody was looking, absent as the party slowly dwindled two floors beneath them.
She rolled over hoping that they wouldn’t be awkward and polite with one another, and found an entirely different man sitting on the end of the bed.
‘Jamie, what are you doing in here?’ She rubbed her eyes to see if that would make him disappear. No, he was still very much there.
‘What am I doing in here? What are you doing in here, more like.’
She rubbed her eyes again and stretched. ‘What’s going on? I went to bed with one man and now you’re here and he isn’t.’
‘I know and I need to discuss every single detail of that with you, and I do mean every detail, but before that I need to tell you something.’
The happiness that Maggie felt at waking in Gray’s room shrank. Jamie’s voice was unusually serious.
‘Or actually show you, something.’ He turned his laptop to face her.
Onscreen was a news website with a large headline: EXCLUSIVE: HUDSON AND HOLLY JOIN THE BABY CLUB!
Beneath the headline was a photo of Holly Hernandez in gym kit and sunglasses, cradling her rounded stomach.
Maggie sat upright and Jamie shielded his face.
‘Jesus, careful.’
‘Shut up, pass me that,’ she said, gathering the sheet around her with one hand while reaching for his laptop with the other.
Holly Hernandez is about to embark on a new role: mom!
The How To Marry A Billionaire star stepped out in West Hollywood yesterday, debuting a growing baby bump, and confirmed she’s expecting.
‘It’s very exciting!’ she told E!’s reporter. ‘I feel great.’
Leaving the Zen Yoga studio, the 34-year-old flaunted her baby bump in Lululemon activewear and pink lip gloss.
The news puts an end to weeks of speculation about the relationship between Hernandez and her husband of seven years, Saloon star Gray Hudson. Rumours of difficulties surfaced last month, after Hudson was asked to leave the Paris in Spring set, following rumours of an altercation with fellow cast member, Dwayne L Davis.
But it now looks like the couple have put that behind them.
The only question is, a mini Hernandez or a mini Hudson?
‘You all right?’ Jamie checked, when she pushed the laptop away.
‘Yeah,’ she said, although her voice sounded faint. ‘Where is he? And where’s my phone?’
‘He’s gone.’
Maggie felt as if someone had punched her in the throat. ‘What?’
‘I didn’t see him. Audrey did.’
‘But … when?’
‘Early this morning, a car came and picked him up, but I don’t know any more than that.’
‘ When? When did she see him going?’
‘Audrey got here at eight so I guess around then?’
‘What’s the time now?’
‘Nearly ten.’
She clutched the sheet around her more tightly, as if it provided another layer of protection against the emotions suddenly jangling inside her: stupidity, disappointment, sadness, shame, even jealousy. A pang of loneliness too, which Maggie had become used to feeling whenever she saw a celebrity announce their pregnancy, or a poster for pregnancy vitamins on the Tube, or even a Clearblue advert, like the world was taunting her for what she couldn’t have.
‘I’m sorry, babe,’ Jamie said, reaching for her hand. ‘Coffee? Coffee might help?’
She puffed her cheeks out and exhaled. Stupidity, that was probably the main one. She felt stupid for last night. Stupid for all of it. Stupid for misreading the situation. Stupid for misreading him. She thought back to their conversation about children on their walk; she hadn’t even thought it was a possibility, the way he’d talked about his marriage.
‘At least you get to say you’ve slept with him,’ Jamie said, as she swung her legs free from the sheets.
‘Ja—’
‘Too soon? OK, too soon,’ he agreed quickly.
Downstairs, he busied himself with making breakfast while Maggie searched for her phone. Yesterday had been so crazy with the party that she couldn’t remember when she’d last seen it. No sign in the dining room, by the bar or in the kitchen.
‘It’ll be somewhere,’ Jamie told her, ‘but sit, drink this, and then I’ll help you look. I’ve put some honey in it.’ He passed her a mug. ‘Croissant?’
She shook her head.
‘Jesus, it must be bad if you can’t eat,’ he joked, before sitting opposite her. ‘I’m sorry, Mags.’
‘For what?’
‘For encouraging you. I didn’t realize they were still together, given all the stuff I read.’
‘Me either.’
‘He didn’t talk about it?’
‘A bit. But I got the sense that he didn’t really want to. I probably talked about my marriage more than he did. Or lack of it. And I kind of assumed he was on the same page.’ She looked over her mug. ‘I feel stupid, J. And embarrassed. And just … really, really stupid .’
‘Babe, you’re not stupid. I’m proud of you.’
She gave him a look.
‘I am! Seriously. It’s human to behave like you did last night. No one can be a saint forever.’
She definitely wasn’t a saint, Maggie thought, recalling the sensation of Gray’s torso against hers. It had been the supreme sexual experience of her life – drawn out and slow to begin with, as Gray had mapped every part of her body with his mouth, grazing his stubble against her chest, then her stomach, and then her inner thighs. And afterwards she’d done the same, marvelling that she was above him, could touch every part of him and, finally, feel him inside her. Maggie presumed that was why she’d slept in, because they’d been awake until late, very late, before she’d fallen into a deep, exhausted sleep.
‘I thought maybe,’ she said, staring at the table, ashamed at what she was about to say, ‘I thought perhaps he liked me. Last night, we sat outside, on the bench, and he said leaving here was going to be harder than he’d thought it would be. But it doesn’t look like it was that hard, does it? He’s gone! And that’s it. I’ll probably never see him again. But it makes me cringe saying this because … of course, that’s it! I’m acting like some kind of deranged, lovesick teenager and he’s Gray Hudson. What did I think was going to happen? We wake up and he proposes?’
‘Mags, there’s a middle ground between not liking someone at all and getting married,’ Jamie told her gently. ‘Gray likes you, I told you, I could see it. And he said as much himself. But you can like someone and sleep with them and it doesn’t mean you’re going to end up together, babe. You can just sleep together and have a good time, and he can’t have known this story was going to break today. I don’t think he did. He’s not that guy.’
‘Isn’t he?’ Maggie asked. ‘How do you know? How do you ever know? You know that certainty you can feel for someone at the start? Where does that go? I thought I was certain about Mungo and now I’m not. I was with Mungo because it was safe, because I didn’t want to go through what Phil went through, and now look! Everything’s a mess. And, OK, I wasn’t certain about Gray because I didn’t really know him but I thought I understood him, like, I got him? Like there was something the same about us.’ She paused and laughed at the ridiculousness of what she’d just said. ‘But looks like I was wrong. So how do you ever know about someone? Or am I just one of those women you see in soaps?’
Jamie frowned. ‘Which women?’
‘You know, the ones that everyone else pities. “Oh, look, there goes Cindy or whoever making the same mistake again. Poor old Cindy.” Is that me? Am I Cindy? I feel like maybe I am Cindy.’
As she spoke, tears blurred her eyes and she felt embarrassed all over again. What was she doing, crying at the kitchen table at Le Figuier on the penultimate morning she’d ever spend here?
‘Mags,’ Jamie said sternly, pushing his mug aside. ‘Firstly, I don’t know who Cindy is. Secondly, I think your hangover might be making this feel more dramatic than it will tomorrow. And thirdly, nobody can ever fully know another person. You just have to go with things and see, and if they don’t work out, whether it’s short-term or long-term, well, that’s just life. You can’t insulate yourself entirely from being hurt, that’s not how life works. The only way to protect your heart from being broken would be never to form any relationship at all. I’m sorry,’ he said again, as he reached for her hand over the table. ‘Maybe I’m more cut out for life as a shagger than you.’
She smiled.
‘There she is,’ Jamie said, squeezing her fingers. ‘Listen, do you remember what I said in the cellar that evening?’
She closed one eye and squinted at him. ‘Remind me?’
‘There aren’t right or wrong decisions. There are simply decisions that we make at a certain moment in time, and if those decisions turn out to let us down, then we make other decisions. You can’t avoid making them because you’re scared of the outcome. You decide and then deal with whatever that leads to. That’s all we can do.’
‘Are you talking about Gray still, or something else?’
‘Everything,’ he replied, with a shrug.
Maggie took in his words. No wrong decisions. No right decisions. Just decisions. Then she looked around the kitchen, mostly cleared. In the past few days, she’d packed up everything apart from what she’d needed for the party. She was shipping several boxes back to London, otherwise she’d donated pictures, books, plates and bowls, glasses, hurricane lamps and rattan baskets to Simone to sell from her ramshackle antiques shop.
‘I’m going to go,’ she announced.
‘Upstairs? A bath, good idea.’
‘No, I mean I’m going to go today. Home.’
‘Huh?’
‘I’m sure you’re right. I’m sure I’ll feel better about all this tomorrow, so I don’t want to sit around here moping all day. I want to go home.’
Jamie looked at her suspiciously. ‘You’re not fleeing just because you’re sad?’
‘No. I mean, yes, I am sad. But I’ll be fine. I just feel like I should go, now. That’s my decision. Last night was the perfect goodbye, but I don’t want to hang around all day feeling sadder and sadder, waiting for the moment tomorrow when I have to go. I’ll do it quickly now and then it’s done. Does that make sense?’
‘Yes, although what’re you going to say to Mungo?’
‘I’m going to say … we need to talk,’ she began.
‘Uh oh. The old we-need-to-talk chestnut.’
‘No, I’m going to say we need a break. We need time away from one another.’
‘A break which means a break-up or …’
‘Maybe, yeah. Because I keep thinking, if I can’t go through another round and keep trying, but he wants to, then there’s no other option, is there? Although it’s kind of more than that, now. It’s not just about whether we have children, it’s about us . I don’t know if there’s anything I want to save, from that, from us. But we do need to talk because …’ she paused and exhaled, ‘he’s been sulking ever since he left here.’
‘You can come stay with me, if you need?’ Jamie offered.
‘Thank you. I’ll just, well, I’ll see how our conversation goes later and let you know. As long as you really don’t mind me leaving you now? It’s all packed up. Boxes are labelled. And I’ll ring Georges and tell him, but the movers are briefed so you don’t need to do anything. Just let yourself out tomorrow.’
‘Babe, ’course I don’t mind. As long as you’re all right?’
‘I am, I promise. And thank you.’
‘Any time. You know that.’ Jamie squeezed her hands again, then looked at Maggie uncertainly. ‘Can I just ask one more thing before you go?’
‘Sure.’
‘What was his body like?’