Page 40 of The Work Husband

I didn’t blame her. Sam meeting up – entirely chastely, as far as I was aware – with an ex-girlfriend had been enough to send me into a tailspin.

I craned my neck to read over Jamie’s shoulder.

‘I should have seen the red flags months ago, but I didn’t,’ heartbroken Rosie-Mae told Gossip Guru. ‘I was blinded by love. When I saw the photos of Trent in the hot tub with those girls, I just felt sick. Totally devastated. I knew that I couldn’t marry a man who was a sleaze and a cheater. I’m worth more than that. I want all other women to know that they are too.’

You go girl, I thought. Take a stand for the sisterhood.

Unfortunately, things weren’t looking so good for the Jamie-hood.

‘Well, she isn’t standing by her man,’ Jasper said. ‘And you know what that means?’

‘No wedding,’ Jamie muttered sulkily.

‘No. Wedding. No honeymoon in the Maldives, booked by us. And the chances of Trent paying us for arranging that stag do, never mind all the hours we’ve put into this? As good as zero.’

‘But the contract—’ Jamie began.

‘Won’t be worth the paper it’s written on, once Trent’s lawyers get hold of it. We’ll be blamed for this train wreck. Or rather’ – Jasper’s voice took on a menacing tone – ‘you’ll be blamed.’

Jamie’s face had gone white above his beard. I knew that this was at least partly his fault: maybe he could have persuaded Trent and his stags that going to a strip club was a bad look and that letting things go further with the women who worked there was worse.

Maybe.

But his role had been to facilitate the stag weekend, and that meant doing what our client wanted. Everything is possible, after all. But not this, he couldn’t really have said.

He’d literally had one job – and he’d done it. As for whether he’d had anything to do with the story emerging on Gossip Guru’s TikTok feed, I didn’t want to go there.

Still, I felt sorry for him. He was my friend. He was doing his best to help me out with the Sam situation, even if he was going about it in a way that pushed some boundaries. I owed it to him to help him too.

‘We could try and salvage this,’ I said. ‘Remember when Cormac and Taisha went through a rocky patch a while back? We sorted a relationship counsellor for them and they patched things up.’

Except now, thanks to Cormac’s stay at the Ritz with the mystery blonde, things had apparently become un-patched. But I wasn’t going to remind Jasper of that.

‘I can ring her now?’ I offered. ‘See if she’s got availability. She told me she loves a challenge.’

Jasper glared at me like he’d just remembered I existed. ‘You’ll do no such thing. You need to get out of here right now and change into something smart. You’re taking Zahra Kadar to a matinee at the Royal Opera House. The Rite of Spring, I believe.’

My heart sank. There was no getting out of that – certainly, now was not the moment to tell Jasper that sitting through a ballet was my worst nightmare. Although, I had to admit, at this point, my life felt like an ongoing greatest hits of worst nightmares, so what was one more to add to my growing collection?

I was almost late arriving at the theatre to meet Zahra.

By the time I’d briefly vented to Jamie about how I really, really didn’t want to do this and listened to him tell me – quite rightly – that my problems paled into insignificance alongside his own, dashed home to change out of my creased linen trousers and into a dress and returned to Central London, it was twenty past two.

I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to find Zahra in the crowded lobby of the Royal Opera House, but in the event it was easy. The foyer was full of groups of tourists, elderly couples sipping champagne or studying their programmes, their grey heads almost touching (giving me a pang of sadness because until so recently, I’d thought that could be me and Sam in forty years’ time), but she was the only woman there wearing a full abaya and niqab.

She must be roasting, I thought, aware of the sweat patches that were threatening to soak through the back of my cotton midi dress. Grabbing a programme, thinking it could do duty as an emergency fan, I gave her a cheerful wave and hurried over.

‘Hello! It’s so amazing to see you.’ I always made an effort to greet clients as enthusiastically as if they were my oldest friends, but I was genuinely glad to see Zahra. ‘I’ve got our tickets. We’re in a private box – fancy!’

I couldn’t see her smile, but her eyes crinkled at the corners. ‘It’s for privacy.’

‘Oh. Of course.’ As I had been the first time I met her, I was conscious of the ever-present risk of saying something tactless or offensive.

But I needn’t have worried.

‘It’s still cool, though,’ she said, and this time I could see her grin under the face covering.

‘Come on then – let’s find our seats.’