‘Yes, yes, totally,’ she lied.
When her parents split up, her mother had been pregnant by the headteacher at Georgie’s school (to be fair, they were still happily married now) and her father immediately moved in with his much younger boyfriend (being fair again, they were also still happily together and recently married, and now the proud fathers to two very gorgeous little boys). It was too humiliating to tell anyone who didn’t already know about how there’d been the exact opposite of normal custody battles; they’d basically foughtnotto have Georgie living with them, and still did not really want her company or, worse, Max’s.
Whydid she have such an urge to tell Raf about it now? She never talked about it. Amongst her friends, only Poppy, Beth andAnkita knew all the details. And that’s because they were the people she considered her real family.
‘We have a bed on the ward for you now,’ a very jolly nurse interrupted them. ‘Visiting hours are over, I’m afraid, so I’ll give you two love birds five minutes to say goodnight and then I’m going to walk you up there, Raf.’
‘Oh, no, we?—’
‘Thank you so much.’ Raf spoke at the same time as Georgie. As the nurse walked away, he said, ‘Ha, ha, ha, your face. I think maybe I should be offended that it’s clearly such a great hardship someone assuming we’relove birds.’
‘It’s a huge hardship.’ Georgie smiled at him.
‘How are you getting back to Melting?’
‘I’ll get a cab.’
‘Okay. I think I have your number from the “Resolutions” chat but just in case let’s swap numbers properly and you can text me to let me know when you’re back safely. And tell the taxi driver you’re giving me his registration number. Just in case.’
‘That’s very sweet, but?—’
‘You can’t argue with me. I’m feeling tetchy, remember, because I have to have an operation soon,’ he said, very un-tetchily.
‘Okay. Thank you.’ Georgie took her phone out. She should notbe feeling so borderline teenage-giggly-happy about this, like the hottest boy in the school had just asked for her number. The real reason she should be happy was that having his number would help her in getting her secret back.
‘Night, then,’ she said, when they’d done their number exchange. ‘Good luck with the op. I’ll… visit you.’
Because of the secret letter, obviously, and because she felt guilty about the cat thing. And because, while he’d been in the loo, she’d placed an order for replacement trainers and she’d need to hand them over when they arrived.
No other reason, obviously.
6
POPPY
Poppy nudged Declan’s fried eggs into place on his plate and then adjusted the bacon rashers, tomatoes and mushrooms next to them before balancing toast in the rack his mother had given her for Christmas (she’d given her other daughter-in-law a nice bracelet, which had annoyed Poppy quite a lot before she’d managed to laugh about it).
She took a photo of the plate. She could post that to the chat later. There were so many photos being pinged there every day that no one would ask her why she’d put a picture of a fried breakfast on there on top of the one she’d posted of her own breakfast.
The truth was that she’d had a better night’s sleep and woken up more refreshed than usual, and she’d decided while showering that she wasn’t going to take whatever Declan was doing lying down. If he was going to leave her – or she was going to ask him to leave – she was first going to make him realise what he was missing (maybe that was petty, but it wasn’t as bad as having an affair). And Declan was a man who loved his food.
So this morning she’d made him his favourite breakfast, a full English.
As he crashed through the door into the kitchen, she gave him a big, wide smile. He’d always said he loved the way she smiled. For her own self-respect, she wanted him to remember that.
‘Morning, morning.’ He crouched and dropped a kiss on Daniel’s head where he was snoozing on his playmat and then stepped over to Poppy and dropped a kiss on her forehead. Without looking at the table at all, said, ‘Thatnoiselast night. Outside on the green. Something to do with a cat. Woke me up about twenty minutes after I’d nodded off and then I couldn’t get back to sleep forhours—’ actually not true; Poppyhadbeen awake a lot and he’d been sound asleep next to her most of the night ‘—so I missed my alarm so now I’m running late. I’ll have to grab breakfast later in the morning. Have a good day. I love you.’
And off he dashed, still without looking at the table.
The second Declan closed the front door, Daniel’s eyes popped wide open and he started a big yell. Bloody hell.
Poppy picked Daniel up and stuck him on her boob, and then sat staring at the redundant fried breakfast. It was a challenge not to lean forward over Daniel and pick it up and chuck the whole lot at the wall.
She was better than that, though. She was.
Plus the day ahead was looking boringly chore-filled enough as it was. She didn’t need to be scrubbing walls and the floor. There was no point cutting off her nose to spite her face.
So when she’d finished feeding Daniel she just tipped all the food from the plate into the kitchen bin and sniffed hard and wondered whether it was some kind of metaphor for her marriage.
