Page 115 of Read My Lips

“...Why not?”

Matt sucking a breath in over his teeth had my stomach Fosbury flipping.

Sunshine glimmered through the window with deceptive innocence. The sky was blue. White fluffy clouds raced by. As I stepped closer, the houses across the street came into view, and⁠—

“Oh shit, seriously?”

Either we had half a dozen journalists milling in a snaky knot around our front gate, or we had a flash-mob going on.

What fresh hell was this?

My phone burbled. Right on cue.

Beau Monde: Whittaker the All Rounder. Ex-rugby player spills all on his (bi)sexual past.

Cultur’d: Borrowed and Blue. Phoebe Huntley-Templeton on eco-conscious choices for bridesmaid’s dresses.

The wedding train was unstoppable.

Gossip!: This is Definitely a Horse. L Cunningham’s on a quest for the truth.

Bingo.

Luke had run with his article then.

I sank onto the edge of my creaky mattress, ignoring the world wobbling out of control. “That’s it. I’m emigrating.”

Thanks to Luke the whole internet thought I’d lied so Richard bloody Whittaker could stay in the closet, and he still managed to come out on top. Why had I ever thought getting muddled up with this was a good idea?

Matt snorted. “You planning on retraining?”

Oh balls. “There’s got to be a Deaf British diplomat somewhere in the world in need of a new interpreter.”

See-sawing his hand, Matt wrinkled his nose. “Probably doesn’t want one who’s been recently embroiled in a sex scandal. Maybe you should talk to Cathy. She’s got students trying to double-book her to cover lectures.”

Fuck my life. No one who cared about integrity would hire me without a seriously glowing reference after this. Especially not into an educational setting. Slumping heavily onto the mattress, I keeled sideways like a felled tree, hitting the pillow face first, not even bothering to break my fall.

Why would Simon give me a decent reference? My gallant white knight attempt had been sheer delusion. I’d been prancing around with a saucepan on my head clip-clopping along with a pair of coconut shells, thinking I was on a medieval warhorse. Everyone else had known I wasn’t rescuing anyone from anything. Simon had never needed me to stand up and lie about the sex tape. Between him and Richard they could have had it all nicely in hand. All I’d done was make everything worse.

And then sleep with him, and act like it meant nothing. Because I thought he didn’t want it to.

But now every time I closed my eyes, there was Simon with that closed-off look flooding through him, after I’d said it was convenient. That dry twist of a laugh echoing against the bathroom tiles, rumbling round and round my head.

I had thought that. Yes.

I had thought that.

I had thought that.

Which one had he said? Was there even a difference, if it all came to meaning the same thing? We weren’t on the same page at all.

He didn’t like me. We’d never been friends.

The flickers of who he was, when he wasn’t spinning the truth like a bloke in Covent Garden with a dozen plates whirling, were my delusions. So what if I’d made him laugh a hundred times, and learnt his pulse, and he’d niggled and pushed and gritted in under my skin, telling me kind, beautiful things I’d always known better than to trust. I never belonged in the shiny world he wanted. Where he tried on hats and sought out old fashioned watches that sat in your hand like a kiss, and drank cocktails out of delicate glasses, and didn’t care what anybody thought.

He’d used me. And then he’d drawn a line under it all, and taken it away. Just like that.

He’d never wanted me really.