this was … bad. ‘I need to eat every three hours.’ She spoke very quickly. ‘Only a snack, it won’t take me away from the desk for more than a minute or two. I’ll see a therapist once a week. On a Friday. If I work through my lunch, can I leave an hour early?’
Henry looked at Raoul. ‘Can she?’
‘Should be possible.’
‘And that’s all you need from us by way of support?’
‘No more disappearing to the bathroom downstairs?’ Patience spoke for the first time.
Feeling as if she might die of shame, Cara whispered, ‘No.’
‘You were our best receptionist,’ Patience said. ‘We would be sorry to lose you.’
There was no doubt about it: that was a warning.
No, it was a threat.
‘If anything changes,’ Henry said meaningfully, ‘you will let us know immediately.’
It wasn’t a question and it wasn’t concern.
‘We won’t throw you straight into the deep end on your first day back.’
‘Oh! But I’m keen to work. To work hard. You can depen–’
‘For the next few days, you’ll shadow Vihaan,’ Raoul said.
Vihaan. Only five months ago, he’d been shadowing her. But she had to swallow the humiliation. Bit by bit, the new reality was dropping and clicking into place: she would never again be trusted the way she’d once been.
She’d been so, so good at her job. It had given her a huge amount of pride – and it was gone.
If she had come to work as normal on that Monday after her seizure, no one at work would ever have known anything.
Now she was damaged goods and she would be that way for ever.
‘Today was probably the worst day,’ Ed said when, white-faced and stunned, she got home that evening.
She nodded, too shell-shocked to speak.
‘How can I help?’ he asked. ‘Whatever you need from me, I’ll do it. Anything.’ He was all fervour.
But he could never understand the immensity of her loss.
‘You’ve got to let me help you,’ he said.
‘I need to go to bed.’ That was all she knew.
‘Go up, put on a hotel show and I’ll bring you some dinner.’
EIGHTY-ONE
Bing-bong noises alerted Liam to a FaceTime call from Violet and Lenore.
I won’t answer.
But it was a couple of weeks since they’d spoken.
Christ, though, these stilted chats were the worst …
To his shock, the person on the screen was Paige. Despite everything, he was panicked: were his daughters okay? ‘What’s up?’ he asked quickly.
‘So the girls were invited to Tuscany?’ Paige said. ‘And you didn’t tell me.’
Fuuuuuuuuck.
‘Who were you talking to?’ Liam asked. ‘Jessie, right?’
‘You lied to Jessie about me. Said I couldn’t change their camp dates. I knew nothing.’
‘Not what I said.’
‘It totally was.’
‘Listen up, Paige. Jessie’s trouble. Her fetish for having everyone together, she doesn’t mind exaggerating to get what she wants.’
Paige sighed. ‘I am so glad I’m no longer married to you.’
‘Back atcha.’
‘Why didn’t you tell the girls?’
‘Because it was a bad idea. You wouldn’t have come, right? Without you, those two kids are, well, they’re basically pathetic. Hey!’ He spoke over her protests. ‘No judgement –’
‘No judgement?!’
‘They’d have been scared and shy. Am I right? By the end of day one, they’d have been begging to go home to you.’
‘They would have been with their cousins. They love them. And you know what breaks my heart? They love you too. Spending a week with all of you guys in that villa, they’d have been over the moon. But you’re too selfish to let that happen.’
‘I wanted them here, hundred per cent. I miss them like crazy. But I knew they couldn’t hack it. Better to shut the whole thing down before you paid for plane tickets.’
‘So nice to hear that you miss them. Because they’re coming to you for Christmas.’
‘… For how long?’
‘Four days. Maybe a week. I’ll talk with Jessie.’
‘Paige, no.’ He couldn’t have that. ‘You need to discuss this with me. I’m their dad.’
‘So act like it.’ She hung up.
He was furious with embarrassment, snared in a lie and affronted that Paige and Jessie had talked behind his back about his kids.
Keeping his separate worlds entirely compartmentalized mattered. A medium-sized collision had just happened and he didn’t like it.
Nell really did not need to find out about this.
This fucking family! Why did they have to be so enmeshed?
The situation with Jessie needed to be made right. An abject apology often went down well … but attack was usually the best form of defence.
He rang Jessie. ‘I hear you were talking to Paige.’
‘Oh!’ She sounded shocked. ‘Um. Yes. In Italy. The bunnies missed their