One Night with Her Ex

FOURTEEN


On a professional level the last fortnight had been great for Kit. Plans for the new hotel in Rome were coming along apace and business was booming. To his delight—and no small amount of relief—Paula Burrows had been headhunted by another PR firm and just yesterday he’d heard that one of his hotels was up for an award.

On a personal level, however, the last couple of weeks had been diabolical. However busy he kept himself, however hard he worked, he couldn’t stop thinking about Lily. He couldn’t stop wondering how she was and what she was doing, and he’d been going mad wondering if there was anything during their relationship that he could have done differently.

He couldn’t seem to get rid of the dull ache that lived deep inside him, the pain that filled every cell of his body or the sorrow and regret that washed over him practically every other minute.

The need to find out how she was drummed through him constantly and the temptation to call her had been so hard to resist that he’d had to delete her details from his phone.

If only it had been as easy to delete her from his memory. But that was nigh on impossible because she was in there all the time. Teasing him. Tormenting him. Driving him pretty much insane.

And making him do all kinds of things he’d really rather not do. Such as getting up in the early hours and searching the web for news, photos or anything really that might give him a hit of her. Such as composing emails he’d never ever send. Such as on one particularly bad night driving round to her house, parking up outside and waiting for the merest glimpse of her.

It had to stop, thought Kit, rubbing his hand along his stubbly jaw and then across the back of his neck as he sat in his kitchen and brooded. It really did. Quite apart from the fact that some of the things he’d done lately bordered on stalkerish, as painful as it was, as much as his heart was aching, Lily had made it very clear that they were over, and he knew perfectly well that there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

Hadn’t he tried during the entire time they’d been together? And then the night in her garden, hadn’t he abandoned his pride? Hadn’t he begged? Hadn’t he very nearly wept, for goodness’ sake?

Well, he wouldn’t be doing any of that again, he thought with a shudder at the memory of how desperate to hold on to her he’d been and the lengths he’d gone to to achieve it. And he wouldn’t be doing any of the other things he resorted to in his wretchedness any more. He’d had enough of the heartache and he was pretty sure that his staff had had enough of his filthy mood. So there’d be no more web searching. No more seeking her out. No more thinking about her. And after this lunchtime, no more playing squash with Dan just so he could pump him for information.

He had to excise her from his memory and his heart because he didn’t deserve her and he couldn’t have her and he might as well get used to the idea.

* * *

Lily stood on the dais in the fitting room of the bridal shop, risked a quick glance in the mirror directly in front of her and practically recoiled in horror at her reflection.She looked absolutely hideous.

When she’d dragged herself out of bed this morning after yet another night of too many tears and too little sleep she’d slapped on some make-up and hauled a brush through her hair and thought she wasn’t doing too badly considering how wretched she felt.

But under the harsh bright fluorescent light of the fitting room she saw that she’d been deluding herself. Great grey bags sagged beneath her eyes. There were hollows beneath her cheekbones. Her hair hung limply and dully around her ears, and despite the tinted moisturiser she’d applied—very patchily it seemed—her skin was the colour of wallpaper paste.

Whichever way she looked at it, and given the many mirrors surrounding her that was a lot, she wasn’t doing the gorgeous floaty silk dress she was wearing any kind of justice.

But was it any wonder?

The last time that she and Kit had broken up everyone had said that she’d get over it. That all she needed was time. And while she’d been miserable they’d been proved right. But that strategy wasn’t working so well for her now and, as she’d feared, it didn’t look as if there was any hope that it would.

It had been a fortnight since he’d prised her off him and walked out of her garden, her house and her life, and she was no better now than she had been then. If anything she was worse because she was finding it pretty impossible to see how she was ever going to get over him.

She thought about him constantly. Dreamed about him regularly. Every morning when she woke up she remembered that they were over, and her heart shattered all over again.

Most of Kit’s stuff had been gone for days now—he’d been round when she’d been at work, packed up and dropped the key through the letter box—but every now and then she found something he’d forgotten. A random sock that had made it into her drawer. His toothbrush lying beside the basin. A copy of the Financial Times folded in the way that only he folded it. And every single time she’d come across something of his—or even something that merely reminded her of him—she crumpled into a heap on the floor in a flood of tears.

This wasn’t like the last time when every time he’d crossed her mind she’d mainly thought ‘good riddance’ and ‘what a relief’. This was hell on earth. Absolute agony. Because, as a result of all their baggage and the way they’d managed to deal with most of it, their relationship this time round had been deeper than before. Closer. And thus the break-up was all the more devastating.

Ending things might have been the only thing she could have done after discovering that she might love him to bits but she just couldn’t trust him, but that didn’t make it easier to bear. It didn’t lessen the pain and didn’t make her miss him any less.

This time she knew there’d be no third chance. No trying again. This time, this really was it.

As the reality of what she’d done slammed into her head yet again, Lily could feel the tears welling up again and she sniffed them back because she really couldn’t damage this dress. She’d never forgive herself. Neither would Zoe, who’d been sitting on the sofa while the seamstress had rotated round Lily sticking pins into the fabric. Zoe, who was also proving surprisingly unsympathetic about her sister’s miserable, agonising plight.

Now the seamstress, having finished her alterations, helped Lily out of the dress and carried it off, leaving Lily to step down off the dais and pull on her clothes aware that her sister was watching her every move.

‘What?’ she muttered, unable to bear the scrutiny a second longer as she did up her jeans and made a mental note to buy a belt.

‘When did you last eat?’

Eat? Had she had a piece of toast last night perhaps? She couldn’t remember. ‘A while ago,’ she said.

‘Fancy some lunch?’ said Zoe.

Nearly throwing up at the idea of lunch, Lily swallowed back the wave of nausea and shrugged her jacket on. ‘Thanks, but I don’t think I could stomach lunch right now.’


‘Then you can watch me eat.’

‘Not sure I want to do that either.’

‘Too bad,’ said Zoe, taking her arm in a surprisingly firm grip and marching her out of the shop, ‘because I’m hungry and we need to have a little chat.’

* * *

Five minutes later, Zoe, with a determination Lily would never have expected from her previously non-confrontational sister, had found a pub, ordered two plates of fish and chips and two glasses of white wine and had plonked her down at a table in the corner.

‘Right,’ said Zoe, effectively blocking her escape by sitting down opposite her and then giving her an oddly fierce glare. ‘This has gone on long enough.’

‘What has?’

‘You. The long face. The wallowing.’

Lily stared at her sister. What the hell? ‘I’m allowed to wallow,’ she said as her heart gave a great squeeze. ‘Kit and I broke up. I’m devastated.’

‘Well, get over it, because I’m not having you lose any more weight. This is the second time your dress has had to be taken in in a week. Carry on at this rate and there’ll be nothing left of you.’

‘Thanks for the sympathy, bridezilla. And come to think of it, where is that anyway?’

‘Where’s what?’

‘The sympathy. You’re supposed to be mopping me up the way I mopped you up when Dan ended things with you.’

‘This situation is entirely different.’

‘Different how?’

‘You’re being an idiot.’

Lily gaped, the tears receding as indignation took over. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Well, you are.’

‘I can’t trust the man I love. I’m heartbroken.’

‘That’s just it.’

‘That’s just what?’

‘All this nonsense about you not being able to trust Kit is rubbish.’

Rubbish? Rubbish? ‘It isn’t rubbish,’ said Lily mutinously. ‘It’s the crux of the matter. The defining feature of our relationship. Ex-relationship.’

Zoe eyed her shrewdly. ‘So go on, then, tell me, what has he done to make you not trust him?’

‘You know what he did.’

‘I mean recently. Since you got back together again.’

Lily thought about it for a moment, racked her brains and riffled through her memory. And then frowned. ‘Well, nothing, I guess.’ The opposite, in fact. He’d gone so far out of his way to show her that she could trust him that he was practically in another country.

‘Right. I see. So basically Kit made one lousy, brief mistake five years ago and you’re still punishing him for it?’

‘I’m not.’

‘Then what are you doing?’

‘The only thing I can,’ said Lily, reiterating the mantra that had kept her more or less upright this last fortnight. ‘Being sensible. Protecting myself. Surviving.’

‘And how’s that working out?’

‘Not brilliantly,’ she had to admit. ‘But what else do you suggest?’

‘A good long look in the mirror.’

Lily shuddered. ‘I did that earlier. Got quite a fright.’

‘Look deeper.’

Lily took a sip of wine and sighed. ‘What are you getting at, Zoe? And no more cryptic stuff because my brain really can’t take it at the moment.’

‘What I mean is that you weren’t exactly fault free in what happened all those years ago, were you?’

‘I know that.’

‘Yet when he suggested trying again Kit trusted that you’d have changed, didn’t he? So why can’t you trust that he has? Seems to me that’s not very fair.’

Lily opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again because for one thing here was the waiter with their fish and chips and for another she didn’t know what to say to that. Still hadn’t figured out an answer by the time the waiter had brought cutlery and condiments and had then retreated.

‘And actually,’ continued Zoe, picking up the ketchup and squeezing a dollop on the side of her plate, ‘if anyone’s had their trust broken it seems to me that it’s Kit, because from your description of the way things were going before you broke up it sounds like, unlike him, you haven’t changed at all.’

Zoe dipped a chip in the ketchup and popped it in her mouth while all Lily could do was stare at her. ‘What?’

‘You’ve been doing that tortoise thing again, haven’t you?’

‘What tortoise thing?’

‘The pulling yourself into your shell and hiding while life and its problems go on around you.’

At her sister’s bluntness Lily bristled. ‘If that was what I was doing, and I’m not saying it was, don’t you think it would be understandable? Don’t you think some kind of self-defence would be normal?’

‘There’s no “if” about it,’ said Zoe. ‘You have been doing that, and, self-defence or not, it’s a mistake. One you’re consciously making.’

Lily looked at her sister in frustration, because Zoe might be all loved-up at the moment, but did she really think it was that simple? Could she really not see how hard it had been for her to end their relationship? How heartbroken she was by what she’d had to do? Did Zoe really think she’d made a mistake by wanting to protect herself from the kind of pain that had torn her apart once before?

Had she really not changed at all?

‘I can’t just tell myself to trust him and, hey, that’s that,’ she said, beginning to feel a bit confused because she’d been so convinced she had changed.

‘Why not?’

‘Because it doesn’t work like that.’

‘Yes, it does.’

‘How?’ Because she’d dearly love to know.

‘Some things, like love, can’t be switched on and off,’ said Zoe, picking up her knife and fork and levelling her a look, ‘but trust isn’t one of them. Trust is a choice you can make, Lily, and I think you should think very carefully about the one you’ve made because Kit’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you and if you don’t sort out what you want and fix things you could blow it for good.’

As Zoe turned her attention to her fish Lily took a sip of wine and tried to unravel all the thoughts that were now churning round in her head.

Was her sister right? Was she still punishing Kit for what he’d done all those years ago? Had she been hiding from everything again? Was she making a mistake? Could she trust him?

As the answers she’d never have expected filtered into her head the foundations of everything she’d been convinced of recently began to crack.

Maybe she was still punishing him, she thought, her throat tightening as her heart thumped. Apart from that one brief moment, that complete aberration, Kit was the most reliable man she’d ever known. The most sincere. The most loyal. Yes, he’d had a one-night stand but he’d come clean immediately afterwards. Regretted it ever since, he’d said. He might have cheated but he hadn’t lied. He’d always been totally honest with her. Been so open he was practically transparent.

But she hadn’t been, had she? She’d asked for openness from him but she hadn’t reciprocated. Instead she’d gone into denial. Unable to cope with what she was feeling, she’d shied away from it instead of confronting it. And then she’d run away like a coward in case she got hurt again.

Right now, though, the only person hurting her was herself and that was something she could fix because Zoe was right. Trust was a choice she could make and there was no one more deserving of it than Kit.

She’d been such a fool. She’d had no reason not to trust him, a billion reasons why she should and why she could, and instead she’d allowed herself to take the easy way out and run away, while he’d abandoned his pride and almost begged her to reconsider.

‘What if I already have blown it, Zoe?’ she said, shame and regret making her voice hoarse.

In the process of stabbing a piece of her fish with her fork Zoe stilled, glanced up and said, ‘Then I suggest you make your way PDQ to the Fitness Rules gym next to Kit’s hotel, where I happen to know he and Dan are playing squash, and unblow it.’