Watching Karla walk past the lounge door to the stairs a minute later, Jason made his drink a large one. Massaging his neck, he sipped slowly, wondering what she might be about to do. He could hear her moving around in the bedroom overhead, but he really had no clue. She was so unpredictable. He hoped she didn’t climb back into bed, crawling under the duvet and staying there, as if she’d given up. He couldn’t stand to see her like that. Couldn’t stand any of it. He had to try to talk to her. If he couldn’t tell her the whole truth about what her father had told him, he had to try to reach out to her. She was hurting and he couldn’t fix it. Though he might not ever have been able to fix things, even if Robert Fenton hadn’t delivered the news he had. Mark hadn’t used his PC while his was running a health check. He was trying to help him out of a hole, he’d told him. Which could only mean that Fenton had. In creating that false browsing history, the bastard had already as good as succeeded in breaking up their marriage anyway, fulfilling his long-held aim to do just that.
Anger boiling up inside him. Jason knocked his drink back. He needed not to be doing this – drinking too much with the kids to look after. He shouldn’t have got paralytic that night, when he’d figured that if he was being accused of looking for other women, he might as well be. He’d regretted it, wondered what the hell had possessed him. Now though, he was beginning to feel differently. Without Jessie to talk to, he was sure he would have gone half out of his mind.
Seeing Karla come down again, carrying her holdall, Jason’s gut clenched.Christ.She wasn’t, was she? Going off on one of her jaunts to God only knew where? Some bloody nightclub. Not with girlfriends, he now knew.
‘Karla, where are you going?’ he asked her, walking into the hall.
‘I told Holly the meal would be all right for tomorrow,’ Karla answered. Unhooking her jacket, she looked back at him, smiling sadly. ‘She’s not speaking to me apparently. Again.’
Jason’s heart ached for her. ‘Don’t go out, Karla,’ he asked her, growing scared now – for her.
‘I have to. I can’t stay here, not tonight. I’ll be back…’ Karla laughed. ‘I was going to say tomorrow, but I suppose you don’t really care one way or the other.’
‘Karla, don’t. Please.’ Jason caught her arm as she reached for the door.
Karla hesitated, and then she turned slowly back to face him. ‘Stop me,’ she said quietly, her eyes glassy with tears. ‘Tell me you love me.’
Thirty-Eight
JASON
With time on his hands now that Mark and Rachel were getting into the swing of running the company, Jason took the opportunity to use the office facilities over the next few days to job hunt. For Karla’s sake, he knew he needed to move on – he would never forget the haunted look in her eyes when she’d asked him to tell her he loved her. Her heart had been breaking. It had cracked his wide open. There was no way he could stay. What was happening between them now was sheer torture.
He couldn’t envisage actually leaving though. Up until now, he’d had no clue where he would go, what he would do with his life. He’d found himself leaning towards working in Ireland after Jessie’s invitation to spend some time with her in County Carlow, and he’d made a few enquiries. Nothing much had grabbed his attention – his heart really hadn’t been in it. On a whim, he’d called an extreme sports company based in Ireland. Mark and he had holidayed there a few times way back when they were both single with a view to taking microlighting lessons in Kildare. He’d been surprised when they’d rated his knowledge in the extreme sports field and told him they were looking for people on the team-building and corporate events side. It seemed like fate, almost. Yeah, and the way his luck had been lately, Jason couldn’t help wondering what the sting in the tail would be.
Still, though, it was tempting. If he was going to have any kind of a life, he needed to get away from the lie he’d been living. He had no roots here, none that he wanted to acknowledge, apart from his sister, who he could probably visit as regularly as he did now. The issue, of course, was his kids. There was no way he intended them not to be part of his future. As things stood, however, he had nothing to offer them. He needed to sort out the practicalities: a decent income and somewhere to live.
Grabbing his mug of coffee, caffeine being the only thing keeping him awake now he was back to not sleeping – Karla hadn’t come home again last night – he stopped as his phone alerted him to an incoming message. Realising it was Jessie, he checked his watch, surprised. They did most of their talking at night, while Jessie was on her breaks at the hospital, just before she went on shift or just after. Shouldn’t she be tucked up in bed about now?
Taking a gulp of his coffee as he turned his attention to the photo she’d attached, Jason almost spat it out.Bloody hell.Feeling extremely hot under the collar, he perused the selfie slowly – a body shot, giving him a tantalising glimpse of stocking tops. He swallowed hard at the sight of white lace knickers stretched over her hips, above which was the new teasing belly piercing.Jesus. Taking another glug of his coffee, he was about to message her back to tell her that whatever she was trying to do to him, it was working, when his phone rang, almost giving him heart failure.
‘Caught you looking,’ Jessie laughed, when he picked up.
‘You wear stockings?’ was all Jason could manage.
‘Hold-ups,’ Jessie corrected him. ‘For your delectation only. I don’t send explicit pics to everyone, you’ll be pleased to know.’
‘Very,’ Jason concurred, smiling. He had no reason to believe her, but somehow he did. There was something about her that was genuine, a lightness that was enticing. To say little of the ‘explicit pic’ she’d just sent him. Jason indulged in erotic thoughts of what he would like to do to her in those hold-ups, preferably with her white nurse’s uniform on. Assailed, then, by the memory of a time he and Karla had indulged in acting out their fantasies, he found himself struggling with a sudden sense of gut-wrenching loss.
‘So, did it cheer you up?’ Jessie asked.
‘Your timing couldn’t have been better,’ Jason assured her, his voice tight with a combination of deep guilt and grief.
‘That bad, hey?’ Jessie’s tone grew sympathetic.
‘That bad,’ Jason confirmed, hating himself for it. But the fact was, it couldn’t get any worse.
Jessie paused. And then, ‘Do you love her?’ She’d asked him once before. Her tone was still sympathetic, as if she got that he was struggling to know how he felt.
‘I… don’t know,’ Jason answered honestly. ‘I thought I did. I loved who I thought she was.’
‘But not who she is now?’ Jessie finished.
Jason sighed. ‘Look, Jessie, I know this sounds like the biggest crap cliché ever, but it really is complicated. I don’t even know where to begin to explain.’
‘Ah,’ said Jessie, with more than a hint of scepticism.
Jason sighed again, heavily. ‘Is this where you tell me to piss off and stop wasting your time?’
