‘I’ve moved on, Lewis.’
‘So youareseeing someone else?’
‘I’m not, but it would be none of your business if I were. I have been on a date, yes.’
‘What, when? The other night when I saw you?’ Lewis’s voice shook.
Gracie grimaced. ‘I don’t want to discuss it with you. It’s not your business anymore.’
‘So you are, then?’ He slammed his hand down on the table causing other diners to stare.
‘Oh, Lewis. Shut up, you’re causing a scene now.’
‘Are you still working for Rob? You can answer that surely?’
‘What you mean is, is your precious “perfect one” still there?’ Gracie reeled once again at the injustice. How could she ever bear living with the thought of them sleeping together? She had made the right decision in moving on from Lewis, and from that memory.
‘Gracie, that wasn’t what I meant. I would just hate for you to feel hurt every day.’
‘Don’t flatter yourself, Lewis, because I don’t even care about that anymore.’
What had happened to her ‘letting go with love’ mantra that she had so wanted to guide her tonight? Her emotion was completely taking over her head.
Lewis leant forward taking Gracie’s hands in his, and looked into her eyes. ‘How are you feeling about the babies now?’
Gracie pulled her hands away from his and bit down on her lip. She couldn’t stop the tears. ‘You didn’t care about that when I was with you. Why bring it up now?’
‘You are so wrong. You went into yourself. I couldn’t get close. I cried myself to sleep, too, you know. I think everyone forgets that they were mine as well. I lost them, too.’
Gracie’s face crumpled. She clumsily got up out of her chair and started to run. She couldn’t face confronting this, couldn’t share her hurt with the one person who had always understood her the most. It was like sticking a knife into an open wound and twisting it.
Lewis threw some cash down on the table and ran after her. The other diners in the restaurant, now totally invested in the drama, couldn’t help but stare after them as they sped up the street. Catching up with a now red-faced Gracie, he swung her round.
‘Just go, Lewis. Go home,’ Gracie screamed into his face.
He didn’t even flinch. ‘I’m not leaving you like this.’
‘You left me like this before and didn’t care.’ Pulling away from him, Gracie began to cry.
‘Of course I cared, it was just – it was a bloody awful time, Gracie. I made a huge mistake but it wasn’t because I didn’t love you. I guess I felt I had lost you already.’
Part of her wanted to grab him, hug him to her, to go back. But something held her back. She couldn’t, not now. And then the words popped out: ‘I don’t love you anymore, Lewis.’
‘I don’t believe that, not for one minute,’ Lewis replied, calmly now. ‘I can tell by the way you just screamed at me.’
And then, as if she was on the set of some kind of Hollywood romcom movie, Lewis was down on one knee in front of her.
Gracie whined. ‘What are you doing? Please just let me go home.’
A taxi tooted encouragement. A couple across the road stopped to see what was going on.
Lewis pulled a red box from out of his back pocket. Gracie could barely take it in. This was the moment she had been waiting for her whole life: and here she was in the middle of a busy street in Wimbledon on a Monday night being proposed to by a man she clearly did still love – but who she could no longer trust.
‘Gracie Mae Davies, I love you. I’ve always loved you. From your beautiful wavy hair to your funny bent little toe. And most of all I adore the scar that runs across your sexy soft belly. You are the most amazing woman I have ever met and I want, more than anything in the whole world, for you to be my wife.’
THIRTY-SIX
The professor passed the doctor on the stairs, comforted by the fact that the routine was as normal, and it would be red underwear tonight. The flat door was open. He didn’t dare go in, in case any of Maya’s flatmates were there. Then he saw a note on the door greeting him:
