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Fiancée? Anna resisted the urge to take just that one word from everything else that Jamie had said, and nodded him on.
‘It was good to see him again. We’d grown apart since I’d gone to medical school and he’d gone on the road...’ Jamie shrugged. ‘Gill hadn’t met him before, but of course she knew him by reputation. She was really thrilled to meet him.’
‘Gill, your...erm...’ Anna waved her hand, not wanting to say the word.
‘Fiancée, yes. She and Jon got on really well, and I was tired, I’d been working pretty hard in the run-up to Christmas. I went to bed and left them talking. I woke up the next morning and she wasn’t there.’
‘Wasn’t...where?’ Anna felt her throat dry suddenly.
‘Wasn’t next to me in bed. She’d been in Jon’s room all night.’
‘Talking?’ Anna decided not to jump to the obvious and most devastating conclusion.
‘No. My twin brother slept with my fiancée, after only knowing her for a matter of about six hours. On the night before Christmas Eve. While I was sleeping a couple of rooms along the corridor.’
‘He... She...’ Anna clapped her hand over her mouth before she said something stupid, feeling her eyes fill with tears. ‘Oh, Jamie...’
‘Yeah.’ He was clearly fighting for control over his emotions. ‘Don’t say it. Whatever it is, it’s not going to help.’
‘No. I don’t imagine it will.’
‘I looked for her, and then knocked on Jon’s door to see if he knew where she’d got to. I was worried about her...’ Jamie shook his head. ‘She was there, with him. Both dressed in those towelling robes that the hotel provides for guests.’
‘And...they’d definitely...’ This line of questioning wasn’t working very well. She couldn’t imagine any sane woman choosing Jon over Jamie, and she couldn’t put it into words.
‘Like a fool, I just took it for granted that it was all innocent and for some reason Gill had decided to use Jon’s shower instead of ours. She followed me back to my room and told me. She was sorry, but Jon had swept her off her feet. She’d found something special and she had to follow her heart.’
‘I can’t...’ She had to pull herself together. ‘I mean, I believe what you’re saying to me. I just can’t believe it happened.’
‘Neither could I. I didn’t trust myself to say anything, I just walked away. I must have walked for miles, and then I decided that I had to talk to them both and went back to the hotel. They’d both packed their things. Jon had the decency to look pretty shamefaced about it all, and I was pretty angry.’
‘I think you had a right to be.’
‘It didn’t help much, though. I tried to keep my cool, but I couldn’t. I ended up shouting, asking Gill why she couldn’t have just stopped and thought about it before she decided that sleeping with my brother was a good idea, and she burst into tears and turned to him. I decided there was nothing more that I could say, and I wasn’t going to trade insults, so I turned and walked out. I went to my room and stayed there until after they’d left.’
‘Where is she now?’ Anna wondered whether Gill was still with Jon but had stayed away from the clinic because of Jamie.
‘I don’t know. She and Jon broke up after a couple of months, and I heard she was back in England, but she never contacted me. I didn’t want to contact her, to be honest. The thing that hurt the most...’ Suddenly Jamie’s composure cracked and he shook his head.
Anna reached forward, taking his hands in hers. He’d already shown a lot of restraint in telling his story, and maybe that was the real problem. Now that he’d finally accessed his emotions, he needed to own them.
‘What was the worst thing, Jamie?’
He looked up at her, his eyes brimming with tears. Anna held onto his hands tightly.
‘Stick with me. The worst thing, what was it?’
He pulled one of his hands away from hers, brushing it across his face. But the other hand was still hanging tightly onto hers.
‘The worst thing, was the fact that it didn’t last. If it had really been something special, and they’d found true love, then maybe I could have come to terms with it. But they’d broken my heart and thrown me away for...a couple of months.’
‘And now you’re trying to forgive him.’
‘He’s my brother. I have to forgive him before the rest of the family will. I want to forgive him...’
‘Do you know why he did it?’
‘We never spoke about it.’ Jamie shrugged. ‘He did it because he could, I guess.’
