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My heart is in my throat.

‘What’s his name?’ I ask.

‘His nickname is Sharky, because he apparently had loads of posters of sharks on the wall in his study, but his real name, unsurprisingly, is Nathan.’

Fuck.

‘Have you got any pictures of your Nathan that I can show James?’ she asks. ‘That’s the only way to know for sure.’

‘I think I still have one,’ I tell her. I’m lying. I know I have it, because I’ve been unable to delete the picture of the two of us on the boat.

‘Send it through to me and I’ll forward to James.’

My hands are slippery with sweat as I locate the picture and send it to Trudi. Even though I know what the response is going to be, there’s a pause while we wait for it to arrive on James’s phone, and then his name and face start to flash on her screen.

I hear James’s voice when Trudi picks up. ‘Yup. That’s our Sharky.’

‘OK,’ Trudi cuts in. ‘James, I’m going to hand you over to Athena now. I think she needs to hear what you have to say.’

‘Hi, Athena.’ James’s posh voice is calm and reassuring. Exactly what I need. ‘Trudi’s asked me to fill you in on the whole Sharky/Kayleigh sitch. I’m a bit uncomfortable, because it’s not my story to tell, but Trudi says he tried to tell you himself and it all went a bit pear-shaped, is that right?’

‘Something like that,’ I agree.

‘That’s our Sharky. For a communications expert, he can be surprisingly dense at times. So I’ll summarise the bits I think you know. He meets Kayleigh, she’s a controlling cow who somehow bamboozles him into moving in with her, at which point, she declares she’s got one in the oven. Nathan does what he thinks is the right thing and proposes, but then it all goes tits up. Does that sound about right?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK, but she says you don’t know the real reason it all went tits up.’

‘That’s right.’ I can feel my frustration mounting again. Why can’t he just get on with it?

‘The bald truth is that there was no pregnancy. She was worried he was going to leave her, so she made it up to stop him from going. She knew he’d do the decent thing and she played him like a fucking banjo.’

I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. ‘But… but that doesn’t make sense!’ I splutter eventually. ‘What about the scan picture?’

‘Printed off from Google.’

‘He said she was starting to show.’

‘Prosthetics. Apparently, there are these pregnancy suit things you can get online to get a feel for what it feels like at different stages.’

‘How did he find out?’

‘One of her friends tipped him off. Apparently, there are some good people left in the world. Kayleigh had had one too many after work and was bragging about how easy it was to convince someone you were pregnant if you wanted to. She didn’t actually admit what she was up to, but it was enough for the friend to contact Sharky and ask him if she’d said anything to him. The rest, as they say, is history. Poor Sharky was heartbroken. I think he’d really come around to the idea of being a dad.’

I’m speechless. Suddenly, everything is starting to make sense. Of course she wouldn’t have wanted to get changed in front of him, or have his arms around her, because of the prosthetic. What a calculating cow. And to think I felt sympathy for her. I bawled out one of the kindest men I’ve ever met because of her. There aren’t two Nathans after all. There’s just one, and I called him so, so wrong.

There’s only one question running around in my head: how do I even begin to fix this?

30

‘The person you are trying to reach is not available. Please leave a message after the tone,’ the robotic voice tells me when I dial Nathan’s number. Of course he isn’t. And even if he was, he probably wouldn’t pick up.

Thankfully, before I can leave a garbled attempt at an apology, Trudi grabs my arm and I hang up.

‘This doesn’t seem like the kind of conversation you can have with an answerphone,’ she says, and I know she’s right. ‘But equally, I don’t want his shock at seeing you walking down the aisle with me tomorrow to be the most memorable thing about my wedding day.’

I look at her expectantly, desperately hoping she has a plan to help me fix this mess.