me much more than it usually does. I was out of control. I hardly even knew where I was, much less what I was doing.’
‘And that’s where you met him?’
‘I know you’re thinking it could be someone you know, but I don’t think it was. He never mentioned you and nor did I.’
His expression remained grim as he regarded her. ‘So what happened exactly?’ he asked.
Her eyes closed as she flashed on the where and how, the crazed groping on a sofa in the club, the taxi to a hotel, the room, the bed, clothes all over the floor, her lost handbag and phone … ‘Please don’t make me go into the details,’ she groaned. ‘It’s hard enough telling you this much, and it didn’t mean anything. Nothing at all.’
He didn’t press her, and she realized he was probably no keener to know the intimate minutiae than she was to describe it. ‘Does anyone else know about it?’ he asked.
‘I don’t think so. My agent might have seen me flirting with him, but the others all left before I did. I swear to God I don’t know what came over me. It was like all my boundaries just disappeared … I wasn’t thinking about anything or anyone. I … I …’ She halted not knowing what else to say that she wanted to put into words, or that he’d want to hear.
‘So where did it happen?’ he asked. ‘You say it wasn’t here, so where was it?’
Another flash to the hauntingly decadent image of it. ‘Does it matter?’ she countered.
‘I don’t know, you tell me.’
She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t,’ she replied with feeling. ‘I swear it doesn’t.’
He picked up his glass and took a large mouthful of the pale gold-coloured wine. Seconds ticked by, drifting like a chill wind over the potential of how destructive this could be; fracturing the trust they’d always taken for granted. She was capable of being someone he didn’t know, someone who’d cheapen herself after too much to drink and how could he be sure she wouldn’t do it again? For all he knew she could have been fulfilling some long-held fantasy and now she’d had a taste of it … Of course she could remind him of what he’d done with Martha, that he’d broken the sanctity of their marriage too, but she knew in her heart that it wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t pushed him away the way she had.
In the end he said, ‘So let me get this straight, you stopped sleeping with me because you’d had sex with a stranger?’
She nodded. ‘But it wasn’t only the sex—’
His hand went up. ‘If that’s all that happened you could, you should have told me. Is it all that happened?’
‘Yes, apart from being afraid of a disease, a pregnancy …’
‘You didn’t see him again, or try to find out who he was?’
‘No! All I wanted was to forget him, and try to carry on as though it hadn’t happened, but I couldn’t. My conscience wouldn’t let me. I hated myself for what I’d done, I felt so sick of myself, every time I looked in the mirror, or saw you looking at me … It was there. It wouldn’t let me go.’
‘You should have told me,’ he said darkly. ‘You know me, I’d have understood and tried to help you. I was aware of how much you were struggling with your father’s death …’
‘I can’t use that as an excuse,’ she cried. ‘I know you’re going to say that my emotions were all over the place and they were, and drinking so much obviously didn’t help … It was like I was trying to blot it all out, but I can’t, I won’t blame it on my father.’
‘Not on him,’ Callum corrected, ‘on the way you were reacting to losing him. Like you said, your emotions were running high, your boundaries—’
‘I don’t want to tie the two together,’ she protested. ‘It’s like I’m dishonouring his memory …’
‘Joely, stop. You of all people know how grief can affect a person, how different, even crazy it can make someone. For heaven’s sake, isn’t that what these last weeks with Freda have all been about? She doesn’t have an exclusive on it, you know?’
Joely inhaled a sob and reached for her glass. She didn’t drink, she said, ‘According to Edward, Freda’s always been odd. I don’t think we can say that about me.’
‘But like anyone else when they’re under stress you’re capable of acting out