enough for Cait, without the terrifying prospect of being thrust out into the world to fend for herself on top of it. The only morsel of hope she’d had left was that, despite his denial, Neil was in fact suffering from pre-wedding nerves and might be regretting his actions. So after she’d left the church Cait had gone round to his house, in the hope of a reconciliation.
It was his mother who answered the door to her. Neil had asked her to pass on a message if Cait turned up as he didn’t want a direct confrontation with her. She was told that he had nothing more to say to her and that he’d meant what he’d said in the church. His mother sounded sincere and there was a sympathetic look in her eyes when she told Cait to make it easy on herself and accept her son’s decision, as he had asked her to.
Cait was in total shock as she made her way home afterwards, dragging one foot after the other, unable to understand why he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life with her. Hadn’t she done enough to prove to him that she would look after him, run his house for him, take on all the stresses and strains of everyday life by dealing with them herself, just like her mother did for her father? She couldn’t leave the situation, walk away from Neil and get on with her life alone. She needed advice on how to put matters right between them. The two girls who were supposed to be her friends had turned their backs on her at this moment of crisis, showing that their friendship was merely superficial and they were only in it for what it brought them. This meant that there was only one other person she could turn to for advice on how to resolve her dire situation.
Waiting patiently for her mother to finish her chapter finally proved too much for Cait. ‘I really need to speak to you, Mother,’ she blurted out. Before Nerys had chance to refuse, Cait told her that Neil had called off their wedding and asked, ‘I treated him like you do Father, and you are both happy together, so where have I gone wrong, Mother?’
If she had been expecting Nerys to impart her worldly wisdom and inform her what she could do to make amends with Neil, then she was to be cruelly disappointed. Nerys’s matter-of-fact response was, ‘Samuel and I were destined to be together, you and Neil obviously were not. You’ve got plenty to do before next weekend, to keep you occupied and help you over it. You’ve still got all your packing to do and things to arrange in the new house, to make it ready to move into.’
Cait stared at her in astonishment. ‘Live in the house that Neil and I were going to share! Oh, I couldn’t. It would be too much of a reminder for me . . .’
Nerys cut in, ‘It’s a house, isn’t it? And you need somewhere to live. If you don’t want to live there on your own, find someone to share with you. Be a pity to waste the month’s rent that’s paid on it, as I doubt it would be refunded.’ She then picked up her book and began to read again, her way of informing her daughter that as far as she was concerned there was nothing more to discuss.
Cait lay in bed, staring up at the shadows cast on the ceiling, fighting to concentrate her thoughts on the shifting shapes instead of dwelling on what had transpired tonight and its very serious repercussions for her. She was failing miserably. All the shadows seemed to have Neil’s face in them. She heaved a sorrowful sigh, doing nothing to wipe away the flood of tears spilling down the sides of her face. It was ironic that last night she couldn’t sleep through excitement and nerves about her forthcoming wedding, and tonight she couldn’t because she was feeling utterly desolate that there wasn’t going to be one. Neil had made it very clear that there would be no reconciliation.
She wasn’t just having to deal with the heartbreak of a failed romance either. In seven days’ time she would be thrust into the world to fend for herself. Believing she had saved herself from that fate by finding Neil, she had no idea how she would cope with living alone and doing all the