He snorts with laughter, and I feel the tears rush into my eyes. I don’t always cry when someone’s cruel to me, but just a few words of kindness and I’m suddenly a leaky tap.
“Ye’re lying, Lexie,” McTavish tells me, as he takes the turning that will lead us back to Heather Bay. “Yer arse is oot the windae.”
“Hey!” I cut in indignantly. “I’ve told you the absolute truth, McTavish, I swear. I don’t have any reason to lie to you now the truth’s all over the Internet. And I don’t know what that last bit means, but that’s not true either. I expect.”
“It means ye’re lying,” he repeats firmly. “No tae me, ya great galoot: tae yerself. Ye’re lying when ye keep tellin’ yerself ye were just trying to help him get his role. Ye did it because ye love the guy. It’s as plain as the nose on Old Jimmy’s face. And that’s quite a hooter oor man has there.”
He’s right.
He’s absolutely right.
Not about Old Jimmy and his nose — well, actually, he’s right about that too. Jimmy does have quite the nose on him, really.
But he’s even more right about me, and how I feel about Jett. Because I love him. I can see that now. I don’t just fancy him, or want to help him get the role, and I’d have signed the contract even if I hadn’t needed a way out of my visa situation.
I actually love him.
And I’m realizing it at the exact moment he’s leaving me.
Chapter 37
Mum’s sitting at the kitchen table when I let myself back into the cottage, feeling like I’ve been gone for weeks, rather than just the few hours it’s taken for Jett to comprehensively ruin my life.
Her hair’s pulled back into a ponytail, and, without her usual layer of makeup, she looks her age for the first time I can remember.
“Lexie? What are you doing here? I thought you were going back to America with Jett?”
“I was,” I say shortly, dropping my keys onto the table and collapsing into the chair opposite her. “But then Jett saw the article in theGazetteabout us, and, funnily enough, he decided he didn’t want me around anymore.”
I don’t mention the small issue of me being banned from entering the United States for the foreseeable. That’s the very least of my worries right now.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” I ask, when Mum makes no comment to this. “I thought you’d be out spending the money you made from selling the story to Scarlett. How much did you get, by the way?”
Mum stares up at me, the shadows under her eyes highlighted by the electric light.
“Money?” she says, sounding confused. “What money? Why would Scarlett give me money?”
“Oh, come on, Mum, don’t give me that.”
I want to yell at her; to stamp my feet and scream and make the kind of scene I know she’d probably enjoy — she’s always been all about the drama — but I’m suddenly exhausted. All I’ve been doing is sitting in a car, but I’m so wrung-out with all the emotion I’ve been going through that I could quite happily lay my head on the table and sleep.
“The story, Mum,” I say irritably. “The one in the Gazette? About me and Jett and our fake relationship? The one you gave Scarlett this morning? Is this ringing any bells with you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Lexie,” she says, sounding more like her old self. “The Heather Bay Gazette doesn’t have the money to pay people for stories. It’s a weekly free-sheet, not The Daily Mail.”
She reaches into her handbag and pulls out a pack of cigarettes, and I look on in astonishment as she lights one. She hasn’t smoked for years. I wonder what role she’s trying to playnow?
“I did speak to Scarlett this morning, as it happens,” she says, taking a deep drag and then blowing out a perfect smoke ring. “But not to tell her anything about you, Lexie. Quite the opposite, in fact.”
“What do you mean?”
I know I shouldn’t engage with her right now. I know better than to trust a single word that comes out of her mouth, but still. I have to know. I have to know why she did it. I have to know how she knew. And, most of all, I have to know whether it was true what she said about Jett and Violet still being in touch.
I lean back in my seat, watching warily as she takes another puff of her cigarette.
“Scarlett already knew about you and Jett when she came round this morning,” Mum says at last. “I don’t know how, but she did. She’d already written the article, but she needed to speak to you or Jett to get you to confirm it. I’m not sure she even really believed it herself, if I’m honest. She was… strange.”
“Scarlett’s always strange,” I interrupt. “So, what did you tell her?”
