But for some reason Patrick’s face was twisting into a grimace. ‘Right. Yeah, my bad. You don’t want to tie yourself down.’
‘No, I –’ My brain was whirring too slowly to keep up with the twists and turns of this conversation. ‘Ross just turned up here, I didn’t ask him to – I would never invite him round, Patrick,’ I told him, like it was obvious. It should have been. He knew how much Ross had hurt me. How that relationship had left me unmoored. How could he think I would willingly let Ross back into my life?
‘So, what? He just turned up?’ Patrick’s tone was unbelieving.
‘Yes!’ I exclaimed. ‘He’s been trying to get through to me these last few weeks, but I have him blocked. I wasn’t expecting him to turn up like this.’
I could see Patrick weighing my words, his expression softening – but only for a moment.
When his gaze met mine again, his eyes were flint. ‘Couldn’t fit him into your packed timetable? Too busy seeing other people?’
Too busy– ‘Other people?’
‘Yeah, other people,’ Patrick shot back at me, pacing across the room to the window as though he couldn’t even bring himself to look at me any more. ‘You thought I wouldn’t find out?’
‘I have no idea what you’re –’
‘Don’t lie. It’s all over the internet, Jessy! I thought you ofall people would be the last person to lie to me.’ Patrick was leaning against the windowsill with a strange look in his eye. ‘I shouldn’t have expected anything less from someone who was pretty much paid to date me.’
Heat burned across my cheeks. It must have looked like an admission of guilt, because horror broke out on Patrick’s face.
‘Fuck, that was a shot in the dark – you were paid to date me? What, by Derek?’
‘No!’ I should have told him this at the very beginning. ‘No, I mean – Derek offered me money, but –’
Patrick swore under his breath.
‘– I told him no!’ Why was he so quick to believe the worst of me? ‘He put it into Laura’s app, I never saw a penny –’
‘Right, and I’m just supposed to believe that, am I? Just like I’m supposed to believe you haven’t been secretly dating other people when I’ve seen the photos?’
All I could do was stare. ‘Photos?’ The only pictures I’d taken recently had been with the random celebrities we met at the industry events we’d attended. And Patrick had been in all of those with me.
‘Yeah, the photos of all those guys you’ve been meeting– and the one you took with Cassie,’ Patrick snarled.
I blinked. ‘Cassie? What, your mum?’
The glare in his eyes sparked and did not fade. ‘Don’t even bother lying – you’ve been feeding her stories, taking photos with her.’
What the hell was he talking about? ‘Patrick, I haven’t –’ I had never even seen a picture of Cassie.
‘It’s all over the internet!’ His voice was sharp, pained, angry, and I couldn’t understand why. Patrick – he was looking at me like I’d stabbed him in the back. ‘You know, Iactually fell for you.’ His voice was low, level, but there was a sort of dull finality in it I didn’t like. ‘I can’t believe that I made myself vulnerable with you. That I shared – It’s all online, Jessy. You and my mum, cosy little chats about me – you know how I feel about her!’
‘Patrick, you know ninety per cent of what you read online is absolute crap –’ He had told me that himself.
‘Chatting with my mother? I can’t deal with this. I just can’t, Jessy. Just because your mum is dead, that doesn’t mean you can fix mine. Consider our contract terminated.’
There was no time to say anything, no opportunity to grab him as he passed me. Patrick stormed by at a pace that I couldn’t have matched, even if I had wanted to – and I wasn’t sure I did. He slammed the door behind him, and within a few seconds, I heard the front door slam too.
He’d gone.
Slowly, very slowly, I lowered myself on to the sagging sofa.
‘Just because your mum is dead, that doesn’t mean you can fix mine.’
The words cut me deeper than anything else Patrick had thrown at me.
I dropped my head into my hands.
