‘The hell it wasn’t.’
‘I thought—’
‘I know what you thought, Marigold. You were sure I was fooling around with Celine last night so you called Bertha to check up on me. Damn it, I’ve been such a fool. I thought I could make you love me the way I love you, but you never gave me a chance, not really, did you? Apart from the physical attraction between us I don’t think you even like me.’
‘Flynn, that’s not true.’
Her genuine distress didn’t impress him at all. ‘You believed I would ask you to marry me and then go out and spend the night with another woman.’
The contempt in his voice cut Marigold to the quick, the more so because it was the truth. What could she say, what could she do to make this right? Whatever had occurred during the day she believed Flynn had been at the hospital last night. He hadn’t been with Celine.
And then he proved her wrong when he said bitterly, ‘I was with Celine last night, Marigold. I left her at four this morning. She’s in Intensive Care after having a tumour the size of a golf ball removed from her head. When she comes round—if she comes round—she’ll probably have to learn to walk and talk again; she might be blind or worse. She should have been operated on weeks ago but some charlatan of a doctor she visited missed all the signs of a tumour and told her she was having migraines due to stress.’
Marigold was frozen with horror.
‘She came to see me yesterday for a second opinion; she was never intending to go to any function. I knew I had to operate immediately from the tests I did in the afternoon but until we opened up the skull no one realised how bad it was.’
‘Flynn, I’m so sorry.’ Remorse and shame were strangling her voice. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘There’s nothing left to say.’ It was terribly final. ‘I was fooling myself all along there was anything real between us.’
‘No, please! Listen to me. I didn’t understand—’
‘No, you didn’t, but then I wasn’t important enough to you for you to make the effort, was I?’ he said bitterly. ‘If you thought I was capable of behaving like that then there is no hope. I’ve tried to show you myself over the last months, Marigold. The inner man if you like.’ It was said with cutting self-derision. ‘I’ve never pretended to be perfect, but neither am I the slimeball you’ve got me down for.’
‘I haven’t. Flynn, I haven’t.’ She was crying now but it seemed to have no effect on him at all.
‘You are going to have to trust someone some time, Marigold,’ he said flatly, ‘but it won’t be me.’
He meant it, she thought sickly. She’d lost him.
‘Goodbye, Marigold.’ And the phone was put down very quietly.
The next few days were the worst of Marigold’s life. She got through the working hours by functioning on automatic pilot, but once she was home, in the endless loneliness of her little flat, there was no opiate to the pain of bitter self-reproach and guilt.
She picked up the telephone to call Flynn a hundred times a night, but always put it down again without making the call. What could she say after all? She’d let him down in the worst manner possible and there was no way back. She hadn’t even given him the opportunity to defend himself before she had sailed in, all guns firing. He must have got home from the hospital, exhausted and mentally and emotionally drained, and then had the welcome of her telephone message.
If she said she loved him now he would never believe her—she certainly hadn’t acted like a woman in love, she flailed herself wretchedly. Love believed the best of the beloved; it was generous and understanding and tender.
She deserved his hatred and contempt. She deserved all the pain and regret.
This orgy of self-recrimination continued until the weekend, and then two things happened which jolted Marigold out of her hopelessness, the first event instigating the second.
At half-past nine in the morning on a cold but bright Saturday Marigold answered a knock at the door to find Dean on her doorstep, an enormous bunch of flowers in his hand. He spoke quickly before she could say a word. ‘I’ve come to ask if we can still be friends, just friends,’ he said quietly, not sounding like himself at all. ‘It was the truth when I said I missed you, Dee, and I don’t want it to end like this. I know you’re involved with someone else and I don’t blame you, but I’d like to think we can still ring each other now and again, meet for coffee, things like that. What do you think?’
She stared at him in astonishment, seeing the genuine desire for reconciliation, and then surprised them both by bursting into tears.
Two cups of coffee and a couple of rounds of toast later Marigold found herself in the extraordinary position of—having cried on Dean’s shoulder—being encouraged by her ex-fiancé to chase after another man. ‘If I thought there was the inkling of a chance of us getting back together I wouldn’t be saying this,’ Dean admitted wryly, ‘but there isn’t, is there?’
Marigold shook her head, her mouth being full of toast and Marmite.
‘And I feel a bit responsible you didn’t trust Flynn as you would have done if I hadn’t played fast and loose,’ Dean said in such a way Marigold suspected he expected her to deny he was to blame.
‘Good, you should,’ she responded firmly after swallowing the toast.
‘Yeah, right.’ He drained his coffee-cup, aware the time of Marigold seeing him through rose-coloured spectacles was well and truly over. ‘So, go and see him. Talk to him face to face. Tell it how it is. Grovel if you have to. If you don’t you’ll spend the rest of your life wondering if things might have been OK if you’d just tried.’
Marigold stared at him. Comfort came in the oddest ways and from sources you least expected.