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She laughs, slightly hysterically. “You can’t mean it.”

“I’ve thought about it,” he says quickly. “It’s only a week. She’s factored you into the whole thing, and I know she’ll think something is up if you’re not there. You know what she’s like about Christmas, and this year she keeps saying it’s going to be even better than usual and I just…” He swallows. “I don’t know how to tell her, Mel, and now it feels too late.”

Mel shakes her head incredulously. “Too late to tell her you lied—but right on time to ask me to, what, get back together with you? For a week?” She honestly can’t believe she’s hearing this.

“Not actually get back together.” No. Of course not. He made it perfectly clear how little he wanted her, after all. “I thought we could, you know, pretend.”

“You are,” she says slowly, enunciating each syllable, “totally insane.”

He meets her gaze and she holds it, refusing to be the one to back down, even if it hurts to look at him like this. She’d forgotten—she’d told herself she’d forgotten—just how attractive he is. He has that kind of face that opens doors, the kind of face that screams a warning—one which she’d ignored, to her detriment. Well, she won’t make the same mistake again, will she?

“I can’t believe you’d ask this,” she spits. “After what you did. You, you…” You broke my heart. “You humiliated me, Finn. In front of everyone.”

“I know.”

“And now you want me to go back and face them all and…” She heaves a breath. She can still see the last time she saw his family, the way they’d all looked at her as she’d stood there, stunned.

“I could pay you.”

She glares at him. “Are you kidding me right now?”

“Right,” he says quickly. “Sorry. But, I mean, there must be something I can do, to return the favor?”

She lets out a bitter laugh. “This is more than a fucking favor, Finn.”

He winces at the harshness of her tone. They’d never really fought. Bickered, sure, but never exchanged ugly words, never full-blown shouting matches like some couples. “I know. Look, I know it’s ridiculous. I know I shouldn’t be asking you. Believe me, I’ve thought of other options. But I promise it’s not for me, it’s for—”

“Your mum. I know.”

She turns from him, taking a sip of her wine. Her hand is shaking, ever so slightly. She can feel a headache skirting at the edge of her temples. And something deeper than that, something that, if she let it, could give way to a full-on crying jag.

“I have to work,” she says, still not looking at him. “I’m taking Christmas Day off, and that’s it.”

“I know,” he says to her back. “Or, I mean, I guessed. But you can still work—we can make excuses. You can work from the cottage while we’re out.”

“Got it all figured out, huh?” She’s pretty proud at how scathing her voice is. She closes her eyes for a beat. He is serious. He actually wants her to do this. “You didn’t think it might be better to text me to ask me about all this? Instead of showing up unannounced?”

There’s a pause, then, “I did. I sent you a few messages. You didn’t reply.”

She doesn’t answer even as her stomach drops a couple of inches. Of course she didn’t reply—she hadn’t seen the messages. She’d spent weeks and weeks waiting for him to call, to message, to apologize to her, to explain why he’d done it, to talk it through, or to just check in and see how she was. But Priya had convinced her to block his number, so that she could stop jumping every time her phone beeped, grabbing it in the middle of the night in case it was him, only to spiral all over again. Priya had been right. It had enabled her to lock him away in a corner of her mind, concentrate on her job.

And now…Why isn’t she just throwing him out? Refusing point-blank to consider this? Because she absolutely shouldn’t say yes. She does not want to spend a week with Finn, doesn’t want to put herself through that.

But the thing is that she loves his family. She misses Susan. It’s so weird when someone breaks up with you—it’s not only them you lose, but a whole group of people who you love, and who loved you. Half your life is taken away, without you having any say in the matter, and you’re supposed to just let go of that, get on with things. She never got the chance to say goodbye to Susan—or to his siblings. Hattie. She misses Hattie too. She hates the fact that their last memory of her will be of her standing in the hotel at Hattie’s engagement party, clutching a glass of prosecco, staring at Finn as she realized what she was hearing. As Mark ushered them all away, so Finn and Mel could “talk.” His family must have thought that she’d done something wrong for him to do that to her—she certainly had, at first. Until she realized, with some help from Priya, that he was just a dick.

“Please?” Finn’s voice is soft, the tone he’d used when whispering into her ear, in a way that rose goosebumps. She hates that, too, makes herself harden her heart to it—to the memories it brings up. Priya was right. He is a dick. He’s just currently a dick who is at her doorstep. “Please, Mel. I know it’s a lot. If you have other plans, for Christmas…”

He leaves that hanging—like he knows she doesn’t. He knows Priya is gone, that her parents are away, doesn’t he? And that’s the other thing. She’s staring down the barrel of the loneliest Christmas of her life—while everyone around her plays Christmas music and drinks Buck’s Fizz and opens presents. She’ll be sitting here with her M&S meal for one. And now she’ll be thinking of this, won’t she? She’ll be thinking of Finn with his family, in the Highlands, without her. Thinking of the excuses he’ll make—of the judgments his family will form about her. If they really do believe they’ve gotten back together, then she’ll be the villain of the piece, won’t she? The one who bailed on Susan’s perfect Christmas. Because Finn will make it sound like that when he tells them, won’t he?

For a moment, she feels trapped. It’s a lose-lose situation, isn’t it? But then again…Does it have to be? Because maybe, she’s starting to get an idea here. Maybe there’s a way to make this work for her too.

She turns back to him. “Okay.”

His eyes spark, the green in them lighting up. She tries not to notice. “Okay? Seriously?”

She nods curtly. “I’ll do it—but on one condition.”

“Anything,” he says immediately.