searching her face before she turned and rushed towards the door. But Caroline Cartwright’s tinkly, amused comment reached Alex’s ears before she was barely through it, “Funny little mouse!”
With that Alex covered her mouth and ran towards the ladies bathroom. She thought she might be torn apart by the burgeoning ache in her chest as she finally burst into a cubicle, locked the door and lowered herself onto the closed toilet lid, fighting for breath.
Oh God, to have a woman like Caroline hand down such a contemptuous judgment of her, and in front of JP too. A funny little mouse: Alex had never been so humiliated in all her life.
And burying her face in her hands she promptly burst into tears, the unbearable pain lashing her like countless whip strokes that she couldn’t escape, no matter how much she twisted and turned.
All day her insides had been coiling up into a taut spool of unhappiness, self-blame and despair. And now her life was crashing down around her.
Simon was gone, devastated by her sudden demolition of their long relationship. Her parents too, deeply hurt by her professed unhappiness, had set her free and withdrawn. Next it would be JP who would vanish from her life—just as he’d promised the night before.
She’d finally found the freedom to be who she wanted to be, only to discover that she was about to end up lonelier and unhappier than she’d ever thought possible. She hardly knew herself, cut loose as JP had said from everything that had anchored and defined her until that point.
Fighting back deep, painful sobs Alex bit down on her knuckle to silence herself, swaying backwards and forwards in repetitive motion. Gradually, the searing agony of total emotional breakdown eased and an eerie quiet calm replaced the tumult. Little by little clear, rational convictions began to fill the vacuum that heartache had carved out within her.
For so long she’d been immersed in being someone’s daughter, fiancée or employee she’d hardly ever thought of herself as someone with an independent existence. And yet there she was, sitting in the ladies’ bathroom of all places, facing the life-changing revelation that the person she should have been looking to all along for the strength she needed to be herself, was herself.
Caroline’s stinging belittlement had simply been the straw that had broken the camel’s back. But Alex vowed she would never again rely on anyone else to distinguish her. She would rise or fall on her own merits and on her own terms. In every part of her life she would be true to herself.
She sighed resignedly then. But for JP her old life would not have splintered around her. He’d pushed and pushed until finally she was forced to see that everything she’d built around herself was a house of cards. She wished she could feel angry with him but she couldn’t. She could only ever love him for seeing her for what she was and not accepting anything less from her. He believed in her, more profoundly than she’d ever believed in herself—until that moment.
And with that belief came the realisation that she had fallen in love with JP McKenzie.
She loved the way he could read her like a book. She loved that he laughed at her when she was getting far too serious. She loved the way he made her feel when he held her, when he looked at her with those incredible eyes. But most of all, she loved that she finally knew what it felt like to want to spend the rest of your life with one person.
But with a start Alex sensed that she was no longer alone in the bathroom. Someone had entered and was calling her name quietly.
It was Sophie.
Alex stood and opened the cubicle door before emerging to see her friend’s anxious look.
“Alex, are you all right? Jonathan McKenzie came to me saying he thought you may be unwell and could I check if you were in the bathroom. Are you sick?”
“No, just exhausted.”
“You look dreadful! Come on, it’s right on five o’clock. Let’s get out of here and we can go somewhere and talk.”
Alex bit down on her lip and looked wildly at the ceiling to try and fight off the tears that threatened again. “I can’t. I have to meet Simon.”
“Can’t you put him off tonight? You clearly need some girl therapy.”
Alex shook her head in reply.
“Why not?” Sophie argued insistently. “What’s so important that you need to meet Simon tonight?”
“We broke off our