‘Haven’t you checked your account?’
‘No, I’ve been on a social media hiatus.’
‘Well, check it now.’
Bemused, Lewis pulls out his phone out of the back pocket of his jeans. I hold my breath. Surely, he’s not going to pretend he hasn’t seen it?
He taps on one of the apps and waits for it to load. He blinks and looks closer. ‘Jesus!’ He grins, showing a mouthful of white teeth, then waves his phone at his girlfriend. ‘Mo, one of my vids is going off!’
‘Mmhmm.’ Moira taps a manicured fingernail and seems more interested in when the tea is coming. I drop a few teabags randomly into cups, keeping one ear on the conversation.
Lewis is beaming. ‘This is brilliant! Wow, twenty million views! I’m TikTok famous. I knew it would happen eventually.’
I let out a gurgle of distress, which is disguised by the whistle of the kettle reaching peak boil.
‘It’s not you, you plonker,’ says Bailey through gritted teeth. ‘It’s Holly. Watch it!’
Obediently, Lewis taps on the video, and I cringe as my tinny voice besmirching Christmas floats out of his phone. How many more times do I have to hear it? He watches around five seconds before thankfully shutting it off.
‘I didn’t post this.’
‘But you did record it?’ Bailey says.
‘Well, yes, as a joke. We’d had a few.’ His eyes shift to me, then quickly away again, almost guiltily. ‘But I wouldn’t post something like that. It’s got nothing to do with food, and that’s my theme.’
‘Even if you were wasted?’
‘I wasn’t wasted,’ scoffs Lewis, taking a seat next to Moira. She’s been strangely quiet throughout Lewis’s grilling, calmly waiting for her tea.
‘Nice to know you were still in control of your faculties,’ I say. ‘I can’t remember a thing since we drank practically a whole bottle of tequila.’
Moira takes a scone, splits it in half, and starts buttering it, as if she wants to move the conversation on. Lewis watches her. ‘I’ve obviously got a stronger stomach,’ he says dismissively.
‘So if you didn’t post it, who did?’ queries Bailey, frowning.
There’s a profound silence. The only sound is the ticking clock on the mantelpiece above the Aga.
Moira clears her throat, knife poised. ‘Ahem. That would be me. I saw it on Lew’s phone in draft and thought it was amusing. So I posted it. No harm meant.’ She throws me a pleasant smile, but her eyes are steely, and I take it as a thinly veiled warning: ‘Stay away from my boyfriend.’
Everything becomes much clearer, and I instantly see what’s happened. Moira doesn’t trust Lewis one jot. She’s checked his phone at some stage after he left me, found the ‘joke’ TikTok, and got jealous. So she’s posted it to make me look like a deranged harpy or to prove a point to him that she’s got him on a short leash. I’ve walked into some weird power play.
Steam is starting to pour from my ears the more I stare at Moira’s unrepentant face. ‘Oh, lighten up, Holly. It’s just a bit of fun,’ she says. ‘Look on the bright side—you’ve had your fifteen minutes of fame. Not everyone can claim that.’
Fun? Fame? My reputation is in tatters. I could lose my job. I made kids cry, and she’s passing off what she did as a lark. She knew damn well what she was doing.
Moira spreads strawberry jam on the scone and adds a dollop of cream. She takes a large bite and chews contentedly. ‘Mmm, delicious, Bails.’ She looks at me. ‘When’s the tea coming?’
It’s too much.
‘Makeyour own fucking tea!’ I snarl.
‘Holly ...’ Bailey puts a restraining hand on my arm, and I shake it off.
‘Leave me alone.’ I’m angry at him again too for inviting LewisandAndrea and conveniently forgetting to tell me. Scones or no scones, does he even care about my feelings?
Chapter 20
If I stay in the kitchen a minute longer, I’m going to throw the kettle at Moira, and she’ll end up in the serious burns unit. I need some distance. I make a lunge for the borrowed coat, shrug it on, and thrust my feet into the spare pair of wellingtons. It’s time to do what I do best—make a hasty exit out the back door.
