his eye with a shy smile. A tiny jolt of electricity sizzled for a bare second as he took my hand, nodding as if he knew exactly what I’d been about to say.
‘Oh shit!’ His grasp on my hand tightened involuntarily as his head whipped around.
Across the street, like some gothic heroine, in a flowing white lacy dress that emphasised her long, elegant limbs and golden tan, stood Victoria, her stance poignant with misery. Her head drooped to one side, her hands clasped together, and she looked as if a puff of wind might blow her away. I felt sick with apprehension and guilt.
Suddenly she darted across the road to the loud blare of a horn as a car narrowly missed her, and threw herself at Sam, wrenching him round. His hand popped out of mine like a cork pulled from a bottle.
‘Sam, Sam.’ She burst into tears and wilted into his arms. My stomach turned over, clenching as if someone had punched me.
‘Please don’t do this to me. Please, I can’t bear it. We need to talk.’ She wrapped herself around him, her beautiful face tilted up towards his, her eyes desperate and beseeching. All the pictures of them together that I’d seen on Instagram popped back into my head with Mary Poppins spell-like precision. Pop! Victoria’s selfies of her and Sam on the beach. Pop! Queuing for a Ferris wheel. Pop! A candlelit dinner in a restaurant. In all of these images she was strong and determined, a glossy girl full of self-confidence and sure of her place in the world. Now she’d been reduced, somehow, become smaller and lost. She looked utterly distraught, almost mad with despair. It was a brutal reminder of how my father’s departure had destroyed my mother.
‘Vic.’ Sam’s hoarse voice dragged my attention back to him, and the sight of his face made my stomach clench even harder. He looked so torn. Shit, this was a mess. Stormy, in-your-face, raw emotion. My fingernails pricked the palms of my hands. At work I could deal with the bruised, defeated women who cried and wept because they were lost and displaced from everything they knew; but there, I was removed from their pain and hurt, and when I met them, they’d already taken the first step towards making their lives better.
Other people were responsible for their pain but this, this was right in my face and there was no escaping it. I’d done this. I caused this.
‘I can’t bear it, Sam.’ Victoria buried her head in his chest and sobbed with gut-wrenching, shoulder-blade racking heaves. He closed his arms around her, his hand stroking the dark satin, shampoo-ad shiny, curtain of her loose hair, his eyes screwed tightly shut. I felt so desperately sorry for both of them. No one deserved to be hurt like this. I took a step backwards as Sam opened his eyes and looked at me, the expression in them so bleak I couldn’t begin to dredge up a smile of sympathy.
Instead I waved my phone at him weakly and mouthed, ‘I’ll get an Uber.’
He started, and then gave a frown and a shake of his head, and then with a resigned look down at Victoria mouthed, ‘I’m sorry. I’ll call.’
I nodded and ducked my head, walking quickly away and rounding the very first corner I came to in order to get out of sight as soon as possible, and then I bent double at the physical ache of pain and guilt. How could I do that to another person? Strong as the feelings were that I had for Sam, I couldn’t do this.
Chapter Ten
‘You can take the day off,’ I said to my mobile as I pushed it to the back of the messy make-up- and jewellery-strewn surface of the chest of drawers that served as my dressing table. Yes, I was being a coward but I didn’t want to see what my text messages had to say.
I’d switched my phone off last night after Sam’s apologetic text, which had coincided with the Uber dropping me off outside my flat. A brief one-line missive – so brief that I guessed it had been snatched in a moment of reprieve, perhaps at a urinal or at the bar buying a drink, and that he was still with Victoria. I predicted a long night there.
I hadn’t bothered replying. Not last night and not this morning. I didn’t want Sam’s explanations, excuses or apologies. My feelings were too muddled and mixed up to