“This morning,” Mairi said. “To pay for his help.”
“He wanted sex for his help?” It was Agnes’s turn to screech.
“I did not sleep with him to pay for his help!” Isobel practically shouted.
“Then why did you sleep with him?” Donna demanded.
“Because he’s hot!”
There was silence. Isobel realised what she’d said, and her face burned.
“You really did have sex with Callum?” Mairi said. “I thought Jack had misunderstood and I was winding you up.”
Isobel groaned, put her elbows on the table and dropped her face into her hands. “Kill me now.”
“Somebody should,” Agnes snapped. “What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t thinking,” Isobel snapped back. “That’s the whole point. I wasn’t thinking at all. It was a rerun of Jack’s father. Only worse. Much worse. Callum kissed me, and I didn’t have another thought until it was over.” She threw up her hands. “But what difference does it
make? I thought long and hard before I married and slept with Robert, and look how that turned out.”
“You didn’t think long and hard,” Mairi said. “You married him three weeks after you met him, and he charmed himself into your pants a whole lot earlier than that.”
“We’re not talking about Robert,” Agnes said. “We’re talking about Callum McKay. A man you barely know, who you somehow still managed to have sex with.”
“You only went over there to feel him out about helping us,” Donna said incredulously.
“She felt him out, all right.” Mairi grinned.
Isobel scowled at her. “Not helping.”
“Please tell me you used protection,” Agnes said.
There was silence. It was pointless lying. She’d stutter and they’d know the truth anyway.
“You didn’t,” Donna whispered. “Are you insane?”
“How could you?” Agnes demanded. “You of all people? The poster child for teenage pregnancy? Didn’t you learn from that mistake?”
“Apparently not!” Isobel pushed back her chair and stomped to the sink. She needed a glass of water. No, she needed alcohol. But seeing as she didn’t drink, she’d have to make do with water. She really needed to start drinking.
“Wait a minute,” Donna said. “Callum could have thought about protection too. Didn’t he say something? Suggest you use something?”
“We were too busy for the topic to come up.” And didn’t that make Isobel sound like the world’s biggest tart?
“Are you pregnant?” Mairi asked.
“You can’t tell in a matter of hours,” Agnes said. “Don’t you know anything?”
“I know enough to use a condom,” Mairi said.
“Could you be pregnant?” Donna asked. “Is it possible?”
Isobel gripped the glass of water tight enough to make her knuckles turn white. “It’s possible, but not probable. The timing is off.”
“I can’t believe you did this,” Agnes said. “I really can’t.”
“You can’t believe it?” Isobel felt her temper flare. “I was there and I can’t believe it! I’m a cliché. An uneducated woman with no morals, who jumps into bed with any man who comes her way.”