That First French Summer - Mandy Baggot Page 0,107
she asked the child. She put her hand to his small dark head of hair and closed her eyes.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Present Day
Ally had told her she was on the front page of two of the tabloid newspapers. She’d also told her Mike had phoned earlier to ask if she had a spare Wii controller. She hadn’t cared about either. She had let Ally talk and said ‘yes’ in all the right places and finally got rid of her to a Bollywood banquet night with Jonty. She’d wanted to say something, confide a little of what she was feeling to her best friend but… well, she just couldn’t. It was all too ugly, too raw, too painful to recount yet, if ever.
She parted the curtains in the luxury caravan home to look out over the lake. It was the only accommodation La Baume had left. It might even be the same caravan she had found Guy in all those years ago. She’d been grateful to get anything, given how she looked. Eyes red-rimmed and swollen, hair rough and out of place. Her heart was barely functioning, her stomach felt tender and achy, her head was stuffed full of thoughts she couldn’t process. How did you process something like this? Could you?
She sat down on the sofa and wrapped her legs under herself. Should she have picked up on this situation when they were together? He’d told her he worked at a hotel but she’d never asked too many questions. She’d been too caught up in the romance. She shook her head. She had been so naïve. She should have asked him for more details. She should have taken more of an interest in what he did when he wasn’t with her. If she had then… then what? All this time she’d believed he’d cheated on her with Tasha and in reality… the reality was far worse.
*
The car had brought him home an hour ago and he hadn’t moved from the kitchen floor. The cold slabs had numbed his skin and the feeling was working its way up and down his entire body. He didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything anymore. He had come back into her life only to break her heart again. He should have left her alone. At the opening of the fitness centre he should have just made his peace. He could have politely wished her well, been glad she was happy with another man, a good man, a man so much better than him. Instead he had opened up old wounds, pounded at her heart and relentlessly pursued her. Why? Because he was weak and selfish, like he had always been.
There was no going back now. He knew what he had to do. He reached into the pocket of his trousers for his phone. His fingers touched the small black box. He pulled out the ring and the tears began again. So many hopes for the future, broken and burned. There was nothing left to wreck. He’d singlehandedly destroyed everything.
*
The complimentary coffee was bitter and there weren’t enough sachets of milk to make a real difference to the colour. She put the cup to her mouth and blanched her tongue. She set it back down and put her finger to the sore spot. What was she going to do? Go home the first chance she got was the obvious answer. She longed to see Dominic right now. She needed clarification of the choices she had made. Had she been right? What would have happened if Guy had confessed to her eight years ago? How would she have reacted then? What he’d done was wrong on so many levels but he had been struggling. His mother had forced him to work there, no doubt wrapped him up in guilt about him being the man of the house, the provider. She probably knew exactly what was going on, perhaps hoped he would participate for her own gain. What choice had Guy really had?
No, she mustn’t make excuses for him. It was morally wrong. He knew what had been happening. He could have made an anonymous call to the police to have it stopped. Instead he went on working there, taking money from them and lying to her, hiding what he was doing behind whispered words of love and romantic rendezvous.
But what about her? What she’d done was wrong too, by most people’s standards. The only difference was, nobody knew. She tried the coffee again. What if Guy hadn’t been