‘Why not?’
‘Because he acted like an arse.’
‘OK. Fair enough. What happened exactly?’
I gave Jess a potted version.
‘Oh.’
‘Yeah. Oh.’
‘Have you got work to do for him?’
‘Yes. I already had some stuff and he sent over an email this afternoon with a few more points on.’
‘And?’
‘And what did he say about yesterday?’
‘Nothing. It was just a generic email, with a couple of other charity bods copied in.’
‘Is that normal?’
‘Sort of.’
‘What does “sort of” mean?’
‘It means yes, he usually sends those… but most of the time he’ll add in another just to me or will ring me to chat over it too.’
‘But he hasn’t this time?’
‘No.’ I shrugged. ‘No big deal.’
Jess tilted her head. ‘It kind of is though, isn’t it? I mean. For you two.’
I gave another shrug. ‘Maybe not. Maybe this is just how it is. How it should be. And that’s fine. I don’t really need someone in my life like that who doesn’t think he can trust me so…’ I let the sentence drift off and pulled a ‘whatever’ face to punctuate it and hoped it went some way to covering the sadness I truly felt.
‘But… Oh bugger. I’ve got a call coming in I need to take.’
I waved her off. ‘Take it. I need to get on anyway. Also. Love the first dress, not so much the second one.’
‘Great minds. OK, talk to you soon. Love you!’
‘Love you too,’ I said and hung up.
The rest of the week passed in a blur as I helped my start-up company keep on top of everything, as well as making sure all my other clients were happy and content. The only contact I had with Seb was the odd work email, but, other than that, all remained quiet. Thankfully, now Jess was in overdrive with the whole bridal thing, my mind was kept thoroughly occupied.
30
By late Friday afternoon, I was absolutely shattered and ready to call it a day. Checking my to-do-list was up to date, and my inbox was empty, my finger was just hovering over the shutdown key when an email pinged into to my folder, replacing the nice tidy zero counter with a one. I could just leave it until Monday. Oh, who was I kidding? Of course, I couldn’t. I opened the application back up.
The email was from Seb. Again, it was copied to several others.
Dear Lottie,
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you, on behalf of the charity, for all the hard work you’ve put in in order to make the upcoming gala a success.
We’ve now had confirmation from the last two celebrities you managed to get interested in the cause, and it appears they have been spreading the word about it on their social media.
