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I looked across at her. She gave no response. Maybe it had something to do with the fact she’d put her head on the table. I kept talking anyway.
“I love my husband, I do. Much like you once loved yours, babes.” She sort of grunted, so maybe she was partially listening. “But do I love him enough?Do I?If I did, would I have got into bed with Eric.”
“Maybe it was just sex,” she mumbled. “Sex is just sex.”
“Did you sleep with someone else?”
“God, no. I have three kids. I was amazedhe’dfound the time.”
She couldn’t call him by his name anymore. Fred had really hurt her, in fucking the local barmaid at the French equivalent of their local. It’d only been the once and he’d told her right after, as if admitting it immediately might absolve him. I could see how for Sophie who’d only ever believed him to be faithful up until that point, she’d had her whole world shaken. Perhaps his admission of guilt was due to knowing that in small places, people talk.
God only knew what he’d been getting away with when they’d been living in London, a ginormous city full of empty faces and strangers.
“I know you want to run away, Flo… but Caelan is a good guy. I know it.”
I knew it, too. Deep down, he was.
“He left me alone and afraid.”
“Maybe he didn’t,” she mumbled. “Maybe Eric made you think there was something to be afraid of.”
I’d never thought of it like that.
“I should’ve known the moment Caelan told us that Fred had been accused of rape once.”
“Eh, people are accused falsely all the time.”
She grunted. “Then why’d he always wanna pretend rape me?”
I gulped. Okay. Maybe for some that worked, but for Soph, knowing her as I did—nope. She wasn’t kinky or adventurous or any of that. She’d just wanted to be loved and taken care of.
“Everyone keeps saying it’s a chance for me to find my power again, but it sucks like ass!” she moaned, sobbing into her forearm. I leaned across and rubbed her rat’s nest of a hairstyle, her long blonde locks in dire need of some salon time. “Three kids, mate! Three! No bloke to help with the heavy lifting. And he’s not even moving back here to be close to them. Every time they see their father, which even though it’ll be once in a blue moon, I’ll be left home alone, wondering what the fuck I did wrong and why I have a broken family!”
She broke down crying for the umpteenth time. Whatever got it out, I supposed.
Once she’d got herself together a bit, she lifted her glassy, drunken eyes to mine and said, “Sometimes I’ve sat and wondered if it’s not men you love, Flora. But the attention.”
“Now, hang on a mo—”
“No,” she said, holding up a finger. “You listen. You’ve got at least one good man who worships the fucking ground you walk on. If you throw that away, then you’re a stupid bitch and I never knew you at all.”
She got up and wobbled on her feet, then stormed off like only a drunken woman could—bashing and crashing into things on the way to bed, but with her face defiant.
After she’d puked up for five minutes straight, I heard her mattress in the room above my head squeak—and then the sound of her snoring.
The trouble was, I hadn’t told her about Jimmy. It was too difficult.
The only person I’d ever felt comfortable enough around to really speak about it was Eric—and he was gone.
The next day after lunch, Caelan showed up. I had fed and clothed all the children. Meanwhile Lady Muck remained sleeping off her hangover.
He found me with Logan on my knee and the two littlest of Sophie’s kids doing drawing on the dining table before the French doors. The eldest lad was more withdrawn and had taken to pushing a train around, marvelling at the tracks in left in the thick navy carpet. This was just a rented house while she got on her feet again.
He looked at me like he saw a vision of how it could be between us—with lots of kids at my feet, my hair all askew as it was that morning, not a scrap of make-up on my face, nor a smidgen of sanity as I operated on virtually no sleep. He seemed gutted it might not be our reality.
“I didn’t think you’d be back for me so soon.”
“Neither did I.” Something dark lurked behind those big hazel eyes of his.
