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Maybe she should have tried to change the subject, but the urge to talk to someone was too powerful. It was true that they were essentially strangers, but that somehow made it easier. She never would have confided in Chloe, but who was Brooke going to tell? Once Christmas was over, they’d go their separate ways.

She glanced at the door to check it was closed and lowered her voice. “For a start, because we work together. It would make it awkward when it ends.”

“You’re assuming it would end.”

“It would end,” Izzy said. “I’m much better at making paper stars and decorating Christmas trees than I am at sustaining relationships. Either I’d hurt him, or he’d hurt me, and neither of those outcomes is good.”

“So you’re scared to get involved,” Brooke said, “because you really like him and you’re terrified of it ending.”

“No! That’s not really— I mean, I wouldn’t say—” Izzy swallowed. “Yes, I guess that sums it up.”

Brooke’s gaze softened. “Someone broke your heart?”

“I suppose they did. But not in the way you’re probably thinking. Not in the romantic sense.”

“Ah.” There was both sympathy and understanding in Brooke’s eyes and she reached out and touched Izzy’s arm. “What we experience in childhood can really scar, can’t it? Sometimes I think it can have more impact than what we experience as adults, because as children we’re too young to deal with it. We absorb whatever happens as truth. It goes from being an experience to a belief. So in order to protect yourself you usually only date people you don’t like?”

Put like that it did sound ridiculous.

“I wouldn’t go that far, but most of my relationships—and I haven’t had that many—have been pretty unexciting. I was never that sad when they ended, which probably says a lot. They weren’t what I would call intense.”

“Intense relationships aren’t always good for the long term, that’s true. In my experience they’re rarely sustainable.” Brooke nodded. “One of my friends had the most intense relationship any of us had witnessed. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other. It was uncomfortable to be in a room with them. Anyway, she was madly in love and then she woke up one morning and found him gone, with no explanation. Ghosted.”

“That’s terrible.” Izzy decided that story alone was sufficient to justify all her life choices up until this point.

“Yes. She had no idea what she’d done, or what he was thinking. They got on well. Everything was perfect. For a while she told herself he must have had a head injury and lost his memory or something because she couldn’t think of a single other logical reason why he would have cut all contact like that, but then she saw him shopping on the King’s Road with a woman who was young enough to be his daughter. At that point she almost gave him the head injury she’d been imagining he’d already suffered, but she controlled herself and from that moment on she locked herself away. Emotionally, I mean. Because she realised that she’d fallen in love with who she wanted him to be, rather than who he was. The chemistry had been so strong she’d overlooked the small things that made her uneasy, like the fact he always expected her to make a meal for him even when they’d both been working all day. The fact that he didn’t check on her when she was in bed ill. Whenever they disagreed they solved it by having sex, never conversation. And she was scared that powerful chemistry would tempt her into making the same mistake again, so from then on, she only dated men who scored below a five on the man-quake scale.”

“Man quake?”

“Yes, you know—the earth moves, your heart races, you can’t breathe—that kind of thing. A five is someone you barely notice. Not even a tremor. But a ten?” Brooke gave a slow smile. “A ten rocks your whole world. A ten makes you vulnerable for all kinds of reasons.”

“What was Matt?” She couldn’t resist asking and Brooke sighed.

“Oh, Matt was a ten. But he was also a ten on the decentguy scale. It wasn’t just chemistry, it was friendship. And that’s rare. We met when my credit card wouldn’t work in a coffee shop and he stepped in and paid for my breakfast. He was that rare combination of hot and kind. It was a killer,” she said. “I was a student. I was only supposed to be in London for a year, but the first moment I met him I knew there was no way I was going back to live in America, but—” She stopped talking and Izzy waited.

“But what?”

“Oh, nothing—just remembering back to that time. Something I haven’t done in a while. Anyway, I wanted to be wherever he was, and I was willing to pay whatever price I had to pay.” She pulled a face. “In the end, the price was pretty high, and I’m still paying it.”

“Your parents?”

“Yes, they weren’t thrilled that their only daughter moved across the ocean.”

“But you and Matt have a great relationship, so it was worth it.”

“Yes, but there are still times when he drives me crazy, and I drive him crazy. It’s a real relationship. By which I mean we have ups and downs and challenges. It’s not all candlelight dinners. The passion that brings you together in the heat of the moment isn’t what keeps you together through tough times. And there will be tough times, because this is life and they happen for everyone. And when the tough times come, what you need isn’t a partner who’ll sweep you off your feet and make love to you on any available flat surface, but someone who is going to be calm, and kind, and bring you a cup of tea when you’re crying in the bath and not bail out when times are hard.” She paused. “The kind of man who would open his home and his heart to his sister and her baby even though it must have caused a major disruption to his life.”

Izzy wished Brooke hadn’t said that. She didn’t need to feel any more confused than she already was. “Jason is great. I’m not debating that. But it doesn’t change anything.”

“Why not? Whatever happened, or didn’t happen, in the summer, it was obviously special. So what are you waiting for? Because it seems to me that this is one of those opportunities you grab.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“Not easy. But worth going for.”

Izzy wished she had Brooke’s confidence.

“Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t know how to go about it.”