‘Cass, we really had something. You’ll always be the one that got away.’
‘Funny, that’s not quite how I remember it. You can sleep on the sofa tonight, but you’ll have to go tomorrow. I can’t have you staying here.’
He seemed to accept this. ‘You’ve really come on, Cassie, I’m really proud of you.’
‘I’ll get you a duvet. And a pillow.’
Lying in bed later, she half-expected the door to creak open – would she have secretly welcomed that? Everything she’d dreamed of in the months after he left. It was all coming to pass. Gav begging for forgiveness, her beingthe oneafter all. But the baby. He was going to be a father with some young one, and all he wanted to do was run. If it had been herself in that position, he’d have done exactly the same thing. Gav was an emotional magpie. He simply couldn’t resist the next shiny thing. Even if she took him back, she would inevitably become part of his past again.
It occurred to her that she’d tried to be the solution to enough people’s problems and, always, it seemed at her own expense. She was just drifting off to sleep when a text flashed up on her phone. Finn.
Feel awful ’bout this evening. Need to talk tomorrow
Oh God, she thought, why couldn’t everyone just leave her alone to sew her cow costume in peace?
* * *
The next morning was a Saturday. Cassie woke early to a halo of sun pouring in around the curtains. She came to and lay there for a couple of minutes, reconstructing the events of the previous night. Oh no. Gav. Here.
It was 8.50 a.m. She knew Josie and Pal were early risers, so she shot off a text:
You round for quick vid call? Won’t believe it .?.?.
The reply came back instantly.
Hell, yes.
Josie looked puffy and tired, and Cassie felt guilty for hassling her.
‘Well, guess who turned up last night? Gav.’
‘Shit, no way. Can you believe his pure cheek? We got a garbled email from him. To be honest it looked like a circular to say the wedding was off.’
‘And you won’t believe what else. She’s pregnant.’
‘Pregnant? No. You’re shitting me. Are you OK?’
Josie took a moment to relay the information to Pal, who she could hear whisking eggs off-camera.
‘Pal says he half-expected him to turn up at ours. Look, Cassie, she was going to get pregnant at one stage or another. She’s twenty-six. That’s what twenty-six-year-olds do. Pal says you dodged a bullet.’
‘Tell him thanks.’
Cassie felt a surge of love towards her friends, who were always there when she needed them most.
‘I’ve told him to get his arse back to that poor girl. I know I should be raging but, honestly, with every hour that passes I’m counting my blessings that things worked out the way they did between us.’
Josie laughed. Just then Cassie heard the buzzer. There was only one person it could be. Oh, God, this couldn’t be happening .?.?.
‘Jos, I’m so sorry, I’ve got to go .?.?. I’ll explain later.’
Even as she was ending the call, she could hear Gav’s voice answering the intercom. She scrambled into a pair of zebra-print leggings under her T-shirt and made for the bedroom door just in time to see Gav cordially welcoming Finn as a guest at the door, as though he owned the place. She could see the confusion on Finn’s face and could only imagine the horror on her own. Gav, however, seemed perfectly relaxed, as though he’d lived there all his life and was entirely expecting Finn. He volunteered to make a pot of coffee that would be very pleasant to drink out on the balcony, given the rare blast of Mediterranean weather. And the weird thing was, unless she kept reminding herself that Gav was wildly spinning his own version of things, she found herself almost being sucked in. Time to take charge.
‘Finn, this is Gavin. He turned up unexpectedly late last night.’
‘And I was very kindly taken care of, I might add. Nice leggings, by the way.’
Bastard. He was deliberately trying to muddy the waters.
