I laughed. “That kinda shit? You’re a regular philosopher. You should write a book, offer counseling.”
“I might say it badly, but it doesn’t make it any less true.”
“Well make sure you don’t say it badly with Henry today. Are you going to talk to him about the Mayfair property?”
“I’ve got to. I can’t chance it and wait until the ceremony when there might be a chance I miss him. I’ve got to find my opportunity today. I got the papers he requested ready to send through. I just hope he looks at them fast. We don’t have a lot of time.”
“Florence emailed me the table plan—we’re at the opposite end of the room from Henry,” I said. “So I think you should try to speak to him before everyone sits down. I’ll just be a distraction, but you can get down to business if it’s just the two of you. I’ll find Florence and Gordy or head to the bar or something.”
It might not be up to me to close the deal on the Dawnay building, but this was maybe even more my future than it was Beck’s. After weeks of licking my wounds, the trip here had woken something in me, or perhaps it had closed the door on something. Now I was impatient to get started on my future—whether or not that future included Beck.
After searching high and low for Florence, I’d spotted her and Gordy in the car park, having a heated conversation, and I’d decided it wasn’t my place to interrupt just because I didn’t want to be wandering around the restaurant trying to avoid Matt and Karen and their families. Just a few weeks ago, I considered many people in this room my family, yet here we were avoiding each other’s eyelines and pretending each other didn’t exist.
I might not know exactly where my future lay, but I knew it wasn’t among the people here.
“A gin and tonic, please,” I asked the barman as I faced toward the bar, so as not to catch anyone’s eye.
“You okay?” the barman asked, and I realized I was staring at him.
“Yes, completely fine. How are you?” I was being an idiot. I was a confident, capable woman in her prime, and I wasn’t the one who should be avoiding anyone. I’d done nothing wrong. I took my drink and turned slightly to admire the view, grinning as I saw Beck talking to Henry. He was totally going to get the Dawnay building. I was sure of it. He could convince anyone of anything.
“Stella,” a familiar voice came from behind me and I froze.
This couldn’t be happening.
This was why I’d been hiding.
As much as I hadn’t wanted to spend time with Karen, the very last thing I wanted to do was to speak to my ex-boyfriend.
“Matt?” I turned and looked at him, trying to fix my face with some kind of neutral expression.
His eyes were wide and red and the tendons in his neck bulging as if he were ready to hit someone. “What are you doing here?” he hissed, glancing around to check that no one was watching.
“At Fort William?” I asked, not quite understanding the question. “It was part of the itinerary, I—”
“This entire week? Why did you come?” He reached to grab my wrist, but I moved my arm and stepped out of his way just in time.
“What do you mean? You invited me,” I said.
How was he angry with me?
“You weren’t supposed to say yes, Stella. You’re making a complete fool of yourself. Can’t you see?”
As though a tide was turning in my stomach, nausea mixed with confusion and the sense of being cornered by an enemy.
There was so much anger and blame in his expression.
Anger at me. Yet it was me who was supposed to be angry. He was to blame. He’d run off with my best friend.
What had I done?
“If you hadn’t wanted me here, you shouldn’t have invited me,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady despite feeling like I was trying to keep afloat on choppy waters.
The injustice of the situation was tempered by the shame that Matt always managed to sprinkle over me. Like when he told me I was being pretentious whenever I showed him a piece of furniture I’d found that would look good in our flat. Like the look he gave me when I won the pitch to redesign the interior of a local hotel up in Manchester. I’d never noticed before, but now that I thought about it, Matt made me feel ashamed of many things I was excited about.
“This is so typical of you, Stella. Needy. Desperate.”
Matt and I had gone to India the summer of our graduation. On our first night in Delhi, on the way back from dinner, we came across an elephant and its owner in the middle of the city. The owner was charging tourists to take pictures with the elephant. I didn’t understand how such a powerful animal was so easily led with a simple chain around its thick ankle. It could run his owner down and escape back to family and friends. How had the owner trained it to follow him?