There was a very good reason why I preferred supermarket shopping late in the evening, and I was reminded of it the moment I saw the crowded car park. The aisles were busy and seemed to be teeming with children, either running amok among the displays or screaming for release from the front of a trolley. It took me a while to work out that the schools must be closed for a staff training day.
Keeping a close eye on the time, I began speed-shopping, throwing items into my trolley like a game-show contestant. It was probably way too much food, and yet I still kept loading up the trolley. I’d managed to locate everything on my list and had even found a picnic hamper on the shelf beside the plaid blankets.Almost done, I thought, as I plucked up two bottles of Prosecco and slotted them in among the rest of my shopping.
I ducked down a relatively empty aisle to check my list one last time. With a satisfied smile I straightened up, and then felt my lips part in surprise when I saw I’d come to a stop directly in front of the marshmallow biscuits Nick had said were his favourite. I pulled a couple of packets off the shelf… and then added two more, just for the hell of it.
In my head, I was already whistling through the checkout and was back outside, loading the bags into the boot of my car. So, when a voice I didn’t recognise called out my name, I didn’t initially react.
‘Lexi! Lexi!’
I didn’t turn around. It was surely a different Lexi they were hailing, although admittedly it isn’t a particularly common name. The third call of my name caused my steps to falter, but it was the fourth that made me stop and turn around.
For a moment I stared at the face of a stranger standing a short distance away, wondering why she looked so familiar. Was she a celebrity? Or maybe an author I’d met once? Even while my brain was throwing up possible suggestions, I already knew they were wrong.
‘Iknewit was you,’ a young voice cried out as a small shape emerged from behind a supermarket trolley. The figure left the blonde woman with the hauntingly familiar face and ran towards me. They cannoned into me with enough force to almost knock me off my feet. And then a pair of spindly young arms wrapped themselves around me in an unexpected bear hug of a greeting.
‘Holly,’ admonished the attractive blonde. I’d recognised Nick’s daughter at the exact same moment that I finally placed her mother. The last time I’d seen her face, she’d been in a picture frame beside the man I was planning to spend the afternoon with. The knowledge wrong-footed me and I felt immediately guilty, as though I’d been caught in a crime.
‘Holly, come away,’ Natalie Forrester admonished. ‘You know better than to bother people we don’t know.’
‘But Idoknow Lexi. Don’t I?’ she asked, looking up at me with Nick’s eyes.
‘You do,’ I confirmed with a smile, my hand ruffling Holly’s dark curls. I looked up, intending to introduce myself, but the cool reception in Natalie’s eyes froze the words in my throat. Perhaps Holly sensed there was something less than welcoming in her mother’s attitude, and she attempted to fix things by introducing me herself.
‘This is Lexi, Mummy,’ Holly said guilelessly. ‘She’s Daddy’s new best friend.’
She meant well, of course she did, but it was hard to imagine a single worse description she could have given to her mother.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that, exactly,’ I interjected hurriedly. ‘We really don’t know each other that well. Hardly at all, in fact.’ I was flustered and could feel my face flushing in exactly the same way it did so often in Nick’s company. For an entirely different reason, of course.
I could feel the sweep of Natalie Forrester’s eyes and knew I was on the receiving end of a comparison with what she’d seen in the mirror that morning. In a strange way, I was kind of glad that my hair was awry and my face freshly scrubbed. Surely she could see I was no contest for hernot-a-hair-out-of-placeblow-dry and immaculate make-up? Perhaps she did, because she seemed to relax a little, which would have been fine if only her gaze hadn’t dropped to my shopping trolley. Her lips tightened and I knew why. Those bloody marshmallow biscuits. They told their own story.
‘It was Lexi who bought me my new book when we had ice creams at the mall, after they lost me.’
Natalie’s head jerked up and you didn’t need to be a genius to realise Nick had been sparing in the details about what had happened on that Saturday morning.
‘I’m sorry. Youlostmy daughter?’ I’d never fully appreciated the phrase of being ‘between a rock and a hard place’ the way I did at that moment. Natalie automatically assumed I was responsible; shewantedme to be responsible. I realised I had no choice now but to admit to something I didn’t do, because I certainly wasn’t about to drop Nick in it. Besides, his former wife already looked like she hated me.
‘I took my eyes off her for just a moment. I found her very quickly.’ The last at least was true.
Natalie was shaking her head in disbelief. ‘Nick and I agreed we wouldn’t introduce our…friends… to Holly without clearing it with each other first. So you can understand why I’m less than happy to be having this conversation.’
You and me both, I thought with feeling.
‘It appears that you know my husband quite well, and yet he’s never mentioned you to me. Not once.’ It was a neat and very effective put-down. And the fact that she’d dropped the ‘ex’ and had referred to Nick as her husband was not lost on me.
‘There was no reason for him to mention me. We reallyaremore acquaintances than friends, and we did just bump into each other that day at the mall. It wasn’t planned.’
It was impossible to tell if she believed me and I sent up a silent apology to Nick in case I’d just made the situation even worse.
‘Lexi Edwards,’ I said, holding out my hand to her over the width of the supermarket trolley. For a long moment, I thought she was going to ignore it.
‘Natalie Forrester,’ she eventually replied in kind. She placed extra emphasis on her surname, which she had clearly retained, although I noticed there were no rings on her left hand.
‘Do you live around here?’ she asked. I sensed this wasn’t just polite curiosity.
‘No, I don’t. I have family in the area, but I live in New York. I’ll be returning there very soon.’Finallya glimmer of a smile emerged. She clearly liked that much more than anything else I’d said so far.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, making a big show of looking at my watch, ‘but I really do have to go. I have a… an appointment… and I’m running late.’ The guilt came again like a tidal wave, as I realised I’d very nearly called it ‘a date’. I felt like there should be a huge scarlet letter ‘A’ emblazoned on my forehead, which was ridiculous because Nick and Natalie had been divorced for some time.
