Page 52 of The Jealous Girl

Denise looked surprised. ‘Oh. So you’re not staying with them?’

I shook my head. ‘No. We’re not really that close.’

‘Well, I guess we’ll have to figure out where to put you then.’

I blinked.

‘We weren’t expecting visitors,’ she added.

‘She can sleep with me,’ Ryan said quickly.

‘In your single bed?’ Charlotte tutted, as she set the kettle to boil. ‘She’ll be better off in the guest room.’

I stared at her. Who was this woman? The question circled my brain again. And how did she know what his bed was like?

‘I’ll find you some sheets,’ his mum said wearily.

‘Leave it,’ Charlotte said gently, placing her hand on Denise’s arm and guiding her to a chair. ‘You sit down and rest. I’ll sort her out once I’ve made you a nice cup of tea.’

Her. That’s who I was to them. Not Kirsty, not even Ryan’s girlfriend. Just ‘her’.

‘This is you,’ Ryan said, opening the door to the guest room and setting my suitcase just inside.

‘Thank you,’ I said, stepping past him as I looked around the room. Faded wallpaper, bleached unevenly by the sun. A floral duvet. Heavy wooden furniture, slightly chipped but carefully polished. It all fitted perfectly in the old farmhouse. It belonged.

Unlike me.

‘Why didn’t you tell your mum I was coming?’ I asked quietly, as I turned back to Ryan.

‘I did.’

‘Then why was she so surprised?’

‘She’s got a lot on her mind right now.’

‘But she didn’t even seem to know you had a girlfriend.’

He hesitated. ‘It’s hardly the time to tell them we’re planning to get married,’ he said, lowering his voice to a whisper.

‘You could have invited them.’

‘You didn’t invite your family.’

‘That’s different,’ I said quickly. ‘They wouldn’t have come. Even if they had…’ My thoughts trailed away. It was too complicated to explain what their presence would have been like.

Dad’s ambivalence. Janine’s cautionary reminders. It would have crushed me. I might have lost my nerve to even go through with the wedding at all.

‘It wouldn’t have been fair to have my family there and not yours,’ he protested.

I frowned. ‘So, you had wanted them there?’ The question tore at me to even ask. The possibility that I’d misread what he’d wanted, what he’d needed, made my chest tighten.

Had I been selfish? Had I only thought about my own needs?

He shrugged. ‘Might have been nice to share it with them.’

I swallowed. ‘But I thought we wanted it to be just us,’ I said, clinging to the hope that I couldn’t have been completely oblivious. Completely wrong. ‘I thought you wanted that.’

‘I did.’