Trust Me - Sheryl Browne Page 0,42

of jealousy. Might she have got this all wrong? Could it be Nicky that Jake was involved with?

No. She laughed at her own absurdity. He wouldn’t, not right under her nose. Her suspicion was running riot, imagining that every attractive female in the vicinity was behind that email. Nicky would never do that to her. She was woolly-headed sometimes, and Emily despaired of her continually flouting data protection rules, but she was hard-working and conscientious otherwise. A nice, genuine sort of—

As her eye snagged on the ‘Meet Our Staff’ board behind the reception desk, her step faltered. Oh dear God. Reading her full name, Nicky Jade Horton, Emily realised that Nicky could easily be the owner of the email address beginning ‘nja’, and her heart almost stopped beating.

Fifteen

Dean

Letting himself back into the flat, Dean counselled himself to keep calm. There would be an explanation. There had to be, he tried to reassure himself. No, there wouldn’t. He’d been through every possible justification she could have for telling him cruel, bare-faced lies. She’d let him think it was a miscarriage, left him feeling so bloody guilty for not being here for her. Why had she done it? Why did she want to hurt him so badly? He needed to know what he’d done to deserve it, though he didn’t want to actually hear it: that he was such a useless prick she’d decided she didn’t want to be saddled with his kid, meaning she would be stuck with him too.

Going quietly into the bedroom, his gaze was drawn immediately to the holdall on the bed. Zoe was hurriedly stuffing clothes into it. Sensing him standing there too stupefied to speak, she paused, her gaze shooting to his. Her eyes were wide, filled with fearful apprehension. She knew, then, that he knew. Jake Merriden had obviously felt obliged to alert her to the fact that he’d been close to losing it at the surgery, and why. Pity he hadn’t felt a similar obligation to keep him, the child’s father, in the fucking loop.

Attempting to keep a lid on his emotions, he took a deep breath, pulled the folded card from his jacket pocket and tossed it on the bed. The cracked heart on the front of it would make the point succinctly, he thought: that she was breaking his heart into a million pieces, each piece piercing his chest like a knife.

Emitting a small gasp, Zoe glanced down at the card. She didn’t look back at him.

‘You need to explain,’ he said over the loaded silence between them.

She didn’t say anything for a second, and then, slowly, she brought her gaze back to his. ‘Dean, I …’ She faltered, wrapping her arms around herself. She was shaking. Was she cold? It was always cold in here. Was that why she’d done it, aborted their baby … without even telling him? Because she didn’t want to bring a child up in a poxy two-bedroom flat with under-floor heating that was too expensive to run and black mould decorating the walls?

‘I meant to tell you. I wanted to. I …’ she stammered, as if reading his mind. She’d always had an uncanny knack of doing that. She’d always guessed when he was feeling down – about his job mostly, the fact that he couldn’t provide for her as well as he wanted to. She’d told him not to worry, that things would get better in time. Yeah, right. He should have tried pissing off down the pub every night, spending what little money they had getting off his face with his mates, instead of putting away whatever he could for the baby. He would be a far happier bloke than he was now. Had she wanted to go back to work? it occurred to him to wonder. Was that why she’d done it? A part of him hoped it was, that in some misguided, back-to-front way, she’d been thinking of them, their future. Even then, though, to have done what she’d done … He wasn’t sure he could ever forgive her.

‘I should have spoken to you, I know I should have,’ Zoe stumbled on, ‘but—’

‘Why?’ Dean yelled over her, causing her to flinch. Anger and confusion twisting his gut, he took a step towards her.

She stepped back, her face paling, her huge blue eyes darting past him to the door. She looked like a tiny porcelain doll, so fragile. He’d always thought of her that way, as someone who needed to be looked after.