Page 67 of The Cotswolds Christmas Fair

Jen swallowed. She felt sick and her heart was racing.

No measurable response to flirting with waitress, maybe just not the jealous type? Others might react?

Anthony sat now with his head in his hands, staring down at the table.

Try turning up spontaneously? Tell her you just need to see her, etc.

‘What the hell is this?’ she asked, her voice barely a whisper.

He looked up, his beautiful eyes full of anguish. ‘It’s not what it looks like.’

Jen glanced down at the book, flipping back a page or two.

No response to ghosting with texts. No begging or initiating contact, no discernible increase in enthusiasm at next meeting. Disappointing results.

The words began to swim before her, and she realised to her horror that her eyes had filled with tears. Had it all been a lie? Surely not.

‘Well, it looks like you’re studying me,’ she said. She was going for icy, but the wobble in her voice betrayed her. ‘So if it’s not what it looks like, then what is it?’

She waited, her heart hammering and her hands shaking. This couldn’t be real. How could it be real? She willed him to speak, to say something that would make it OK, that would make everything slip back to how it was just moments before, when she thought he really meant all the things he said.

‘I’m a writer.’

‘I know.’

‘No, I mean – I’m a journalist.’

His words were like a bucket of iced water, crashing over her. He held his hands together as though he was praying, pressed them to his mouth, his eyes full of fear as he looked at her.

‘I’m – it’s research. For an article on how to date women, it’s – it’s for True Gent magazine.’

Jen lurched back in her seat. She felt as though the room shifted around her.

‘So it was all a lie?’ she whispered. ‘None of it was real?’

He was shaking his head vigorously. ‘No, no, it – I mean, yes, it started as that, but then I got to know you, and you’re so . . . you’re amazing, I really think that, please can we just—’

She stared at him. This was just another ploy, another tactic that he could analyse and record her response to.

‘It was all a lie,’ she said. She was on her feet, walking away. Grabbing her bag, almost knocking her chair over as she untangled the strap from where it had caught. ‘None of it was real.’

She stormed out onto the snowy street, her eyes blurred with tears, her chest heaving in the freezing air as she tried to catch her breath. Aimlessly she walked on, ignoring the cheerful shoppers and twinkling decorations that hung above and the jolly man dressed as Santa, ringing a bell and asking for charity donations. At last she found a bar and stumbled in, relieved that the quiet murmur of the clientele and the shadowy lighting hid her. The barman eyed her warily as he poured the double gin she ordered, and it was only as she took her first gulp that she shivered, realising the snow had soaked her through to the skin; she’d left her coat at the restaurant. Glancing at her reflection in the mirror behind the bottles of liquor, she realised that her hair was plastered to her head and hung in rats’ tails, and her mascara had smudged into dark patches under her eyes.

She looked as desperate as she felt. And she didn’t care.

She drank until closing time, the steady infusion of gin after gin trickling through her veins. She hadn’t eaten dinner, and she soon felt the effects, warming her from the inside out and causing the world around her to blur into a discordant haze of jagged laughter and canned Christmas music. The alcohol smoothed out the rough edges, but it did nothing to ease her raw feelings.

She was reeling. Everything Anthony had said had been a lie, everything he had done had been meaningless, nothing more than an experiment. How utterly cruel, to play with her feelings like that. To let her think he was falling for her. To let her think she was special.

She should have known it was too good to be true. This just confirmed what she’d always thought – love was a lie.

She blinked, trying to focus on the table as she pushed against it, easing herself up so she could get to the bar and order another drink. The ground swelled beneath her feet, as though she was walking on water, and the room felt eerily quiet; had the music stopped?

When she reached the bar she pushed her hair out of her eyes and tried to smile at the barman.

‘Again,’ she said, pushing her empty glass towards him. She’d intended to say, ‘Same again, please,’ and give a winning smile, but this was all she could manage.

He gave her a look that appeared suspiciously like pity.