Off Limits

His voice is coldly authoritative. ‘Don’t feel you need to rush off. You can let yourself out when you’re ready. Hughes will...’

‘Fuck Hughes!’ I shout, moving behind him. ‘You aren’t getting rid of me like that. God, Jack! I have put up with this for long enough. You blowing hot and cold. You want me one second—then we fuck and you’re nowhere to be seen.’

That same muscle twists in his face, and it might as well be a bullseye for how badly I want to slap it.

‘So we were photographed leaving a party? So people think we’re an item? Well, guess what? We are.’

He steps back as though I’ve given in to temptation and cracked my palm across his cheek.

‘We’re sleeping together. Working together. We know each other inside out. What’s the big fucking deal?’

‘I can’t do this right now.’

The louder and more screechy I become, the calmer he seems. And that just makes me even angrier! It’s like a horrible hamster wheel and I don’t know how to get off.

‘We have to talk,’ I snap, my voice quivering like an arrow striking a tree.

‘Yes, we do.’

It’s a softly spoken confession that fills me with more fear than it does relief.

‘But not now. I really do have a thing this morning, Gemma.’

But I know his diary, his movements, and I can’t for the life of me remember a single entry for today.

‘What? What thing?’

He looks away from me, guilty, and, God, I am fuming. Is he lying to me? To get rid of me? Is he so desperate to avoid having an adult conversation about what our relationship’s become that he’s inventing reasons to get rid of me?

Fine. I’d rather go than beg him to love me—which is what I feel like doing.

But just when I’m about to flounce off like a teenager in a strop, at the very last minute, he says, ‘It’s Lucy’s birthday.’

Boom! The bombs explode and, predictably, I reel.

‘I always have breakfast with Amber on Lucy’s birthday. Given this—’ he gestures with outrage towards the papers ‘—I think it would be in poor taste to be late.’

‘It’s Lucy’s birthday...’ I say with a nod, but inside my stomach is turning and my heart is shrivelling.

Had I noticed the glass before? My eyes find it easily now. A single Scotch glass on the edge of the table.

My eyes sweep shut.

He sleeps with women to forget Lucy. And that’s what last night was.

Oh, God. Oh, God. Panic is like bile in my mouth.

‘That’s why you needed to see me last night,’ I say thickly. ‘It wasn’t about me at all, was it?’

And I was so sure we were moving to another level—that he sought me out because he needed me. Because he missed me.

But it hadn’t been that at all, had it? It was about Lucy. Always Lucy.

His eyes are swirling with anguish and emotion. But I don’t care. I grab the belt of the robe and loosen it, pushing it off as I walk back into his bedroom. My clothes are strewn all over the place, where we flung them the night before, and they’ve landed haphazardly—the roadkill of our passion; the pathway to his penance.

I pull my dress on without bothering with underpants; my fingers tremble. He’s standing in the doorway. I hear him before I see him, but I don’t pause. I slide my shoes on.

‘God! I’m such an idiot! You needed to forget. You needed to obliterate all your grief and whatever and that’s why it had to be last night. Right?’