‘OK.’ More than anything, Zack hoped everything wouldn’t always carry on like before. At some stage in their future, please God, their situation would change. Because now, knowing what he did about her history, he was daring to allow himself the first faint flicker of hope.
It was still a shame, though, about Todd.
‘So, does this father-in-law approve of this new chap of yours?’
Say no, say no.
‘Tony? Oh, he’s delighted. You’d think he’d planned it himself. He couldn’t be happier.’ Ellie’s eyes were shining.
‘Right. Excellent.’ Zack nodded as if he was delighted too.
Damn.
‘Look, you need to get to your meeting.’ Bringing the subject to a close, Ellie said, ‘But about next Wednesday, I could ask Roo if she’s free to come with you to the Dorchester. Would that help you out?’
The mad friend with the risqué past and outrageous taste in T-shirts?
‘I don’t think so,’ Zack said firmly. ‘But thanks.’
***
Phew. Well, that was that cat out of the bag. When Zack had left the office, Ellie heaved a sigh of relief. She hadn’t planned for it to happen, but now that it had, she was glad. Hopefully, she and Zack had evolved a strong enough working relationship by this stage that his discovering the truth about her past wouldn’t alter the way he treated her. Plus, two other good things had happened. She hadn’t cried, which was a definite step forward.
And she’d described Todd as her boyfriend. This had been a bit of an experiment, saying it out loud, feeling how the word felt on her tongue. And it had felt, frankly, weird. But it was bound to, the first time. Call it a practice run for next week, when she would be meeting so many of Todd’s relatives. After being introduced as his girlfriend and casually dropping the b-word into conversation, it would—hopefully—start to sound normal and no longer as weird as, say, banana.
‘As I was saying the other day to my banana…’
‘Oh, I know, my banana’s mad about rugby too…’
‘My banana and I loved that film…’
‘Oh yes, I bought my banana a new shirt on Saturday…’
Anyway, the point was, she’d get used to saying boyfriend soon. Stop thinking about it.
Shame about the timing, though. A night out at the Dorchester with Zack would have been fun. Still, it couldn’t be helped.
The birthday barbecue would be good too.
Abruptly Ellie’s eyes stung and she blinked back tears. Sometimes it still happened without warning.
Don’t cry, don’t cry.
Oh, Jamie, where are you? Are you still there? Am I doing OK?
Chapter 26
Tony slowly massaged his aching temples; this was definitely a side effect of growing older he could do without. Back in the day, half a dozen large Scotches would barely have affected him. They definitely wouldn’t have given him a hangover of this magnitude.
But his headache was the least of his worries this morning.
What was that invention thingy he’d heard about? Some kind of dexterity test connected to your computer that you had to pass before it would allow you to access the Internet. So that if you just happened to down, say, half a dozen large Scotches during the course of the evening then be seized by a burning compulsion to send the kind of email you wouldn’t dream of sending if you were sober, you wouldn’t be able to send it.
Except you always could, of course, because this was Beverly Hills. You’d just call someone up, a member of staff or some employee from Geek Squad and arrange for them to come over to the house and for a small fee perform the necessary dexterous task in order to allow you onto your email account.
But since he hadn’t had that particular invention thingy installed, he hadn’t even needed to do that. Instead he’d opened his laptop, entered Martha’s email address, typed out his message, and pressed Send.
There, done. As easy as that.
Stupidly easy.
And he hadn’t been so trolleyed that he couldn’t remember what he’d written, either. Lacking in literary excellence his words may have been, but they’d come straight from the heart. His wounded, lonely, desperate, and inebriated heart.
Oh Martha,
I know I shouldn’t be doing this but I just have to. I miss you. I miss you so much, Martha, all the time. I know I shouldn’t, but that only makes it worse. I’m doing my best to get over you. Guess what? It’s not going so well.
I hope all is well with you. Have you sold lots of paintings? Not given any more away, I hope. And how is