Miles keeps up his tempo, rolling as he speaks. ‘When I first moved here I was keeping a low profile, and everything fell so far short of what I’d had in Manchester I stayed home and worked. Then a couple of months before you arrived someone minor from Bake Off did an over-sixties fund-raiser at Plum’s gallery and I got dragged along. I saw them make laminated pastry, had my lightbulb moment, and the rest is history.’
‘So had you cooked before?’
He shrugs. ‘I knew enough to throw a tasty meal together, but this was different. I was very focused, I had a vision of what I needed, and I went for it.’
I’m puffing as I roll. ‘It’s harder work than you’d think. I can see why you’re ripped.’ I’m moving on quickly from that slip. ‘When did you come down here?’
He laughs. ‘Shortly after Tate and Scarlett’s wedding. I haven’t had a Saturday night out since.’
‘Me neither.’ I’m not joking, but I take it he is.
He narrows his eyes. ‘So you lost your “plus one” pretty quickly after the reception then?’ He doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘Smart move, you definitely deserve better than him.’
It comes out of nowhere and hits me so hard I feel winded.
This is the worst thing about hanging around with someone who was there that night. There was always a possibility the conversation would swing round to Mason, but now it has I hit out with the first thing that comes into my head.
‘Tate had no right to judge!’
Mason was the lowest of the low, but I’d hate other people to know anything about what happened. Especially Scarlett.
She always rolled her eyes about the guys I dated because we had such different tastes in men. Her guys were so permanent, she had to take the whole thing more seriously. With my throwaway attitude, I missed the long service medals, but the guys I saw were more exciting. Before Mason, I used to see the best in people because I had no reason not to. My instinct told me that anyone who could make me laugh was probably a decent human being, and as that had always proved to be true, I’d never doubted my judgement. The world is a much sadder place now that belief has been shattered. I’ve changed my life to keep myself safe for the future, but no one can ever know how wrong I got it. Scarlett revelled in being my protector, and she’d be devastated if she knew she’d failed with that.
Miles pulls a face. ‘It wasn’t Tate.Icame across your date drinking neat vodka at ten in the morning and drew my own conclusions.’
Even thinking of Mason now makes me feel sick inside.
But I have to acknowledge the bad bits that everyone else saw. ‘Passing out during the speeches was not a good look.’ I attempt an excuse to save face myself. ‘It’s always awkward for partners whose other halves are stuck with the wedding party, and drinking all day, it’s hard to keep track.’
It wasn’t as if I were teetotal myself.
Before Mason got out his hip flask and announced his mission statement on the M5, I had no idea his intention for the day was to get as drunk as possible as fast as possible. Don’t get me wrong, we all liked to party. Just not that ferociously. And he wasn’t even hiding it. If we’d had the conversation in advance I’d have known, which is why I’m so much at fault. And alcohol makes every tendency worse. I’m not even sure he knew he was going to flip as he did. But if I’d only looked more closely at the start, I might have spotted the undercurrents.
I need to move this on, so I go in with a teaser. ‘None of those other dating disasters I mentioned included unconscious people.’
Miles gives me a hard stare. ‘I’m pleased to hear it.’
Here come my secrets, I just hope they distract Miles from the wedding. ‘There was one guy who dated me because he fancied my housemate, another, who wasreallyscary, who bought me flowers and proposed the second time I saw him, the one running three girlfriends at the same time, someone who couldn’t make a second date because he moved to Australia…’
Miles is staring at me like I’m some kind of rare species. ‘How did you not learn from your mistakes?’
I’m puzzled that he’s implying it’s down to me. ‘None of it was planned; they all resulted from random collisions, mostly on dance floors.’
If he knew this is only the tip of the iceberg, he’d have a fit. Worse still, if this is his reaction to a few innocuous dating stuff-ups, I can only imagine how badly he’d think of me if he knew how the night ended for me at the wedding.
He’s shaking his head. ‘This is why it pays to check out a person’s palmarèsbeforeyou commit to a date.’
At least this turns the tables on him. As I get a mental picture of Miles measuring his potential girlfriends’ suitability against his required tick list months in advance, I let out a howl of laughter. Then it hits me that it’s probably true. ‘So how does anyone get to have a date with Miles Appleton? It’s probably easier getting into MI5.’
His eyes narrow. ‘Why? Are you asking?’ The prodding challenge in that glint flips my tummy over.
I could never argue about his looks or how chemically charged he is, but I’ve never actually considered how he’d be to have on my arm, and I’m both appalled and filled with horror that I’d go there, even for a nano-second. As for that secret adrenalin rush that’s pulsing through the pit of my stomach and flushing my skin all the way to my ears, that’s the kind of excitement I equate with the kind of terrifying things that I know I’d never do personally, because when I think of them, they scare the crap out of me and they’re out of my league/price bracket anyway. Like roller coasters or going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Or being a paying passenger on Elon Musk’s next space trip.
As for the awful time I had with Mason– that was the kind of degrading, depressing and desperate incident that left me with the kind of self-disgust and inner fear that I’ve tried to bury ever since but that are still perilously close to the surface.
The sooner I shut this down entirely the better, because quite apart from everything else, as we already know, men like Miles don’t look at women like me. If it wasn’t for me being in his face every day by Scarlett’s toaster, he wouldn’t even know I existed.
He waits for an answer to his question, his head cocked and his eyes full of curiosity.
