Hugh’s eyes flashed with hurt, or maybe fury, but he screwed them shut before she could feel their full force. He closed the ring box with a snap, pulled himself up to his full height and huffed out an angry sigh.
Amy slumped down and sat on the floor of the basket with her head between her knees.Keep breathing,she told herself.In and out. Maybe this isn’t as bad as it seems.
For a moment, Hugh looked at her with some mixture of longing and disdain, then turned his back on her to address Steve.
‘How soon can you land this thing?’
Chapter 3
Several hours later, Amy was perched on a stool next to the breakfast bar in Kit’s kitchen with her head in her hands. Her overnight bag, stuffed with ‘essentials’ rapidly grabbed from Hugh’s flat, sat forlornly on the floor. Its seams were straining.
She clearly hadn’t packed light, but at this point she had no idea what was in there. The past few hours had been a horrible blur, and it was entirely possible she’d discover she had three different eye creams and no clean underwear when she came to investigate later.
Right now, she had to explain to Kit why– instead of enjoying what remained of the weekend with Richie from HIIT class– he was sloshing emergency measures of gin into two chunky tumblers and cancelling his plans.
Amy looked up to see him riffling through his stainless steel fridge for a lemon, then pouring an alarmingly small measure of cold tonic water into the top of each glass. He sat down opposite her, pushed a drink in her direction and raised his eyebrows expectantly.
‘It was awful,’ Amy said. ‘Beyondawful. I have done an awful thing.’
Kit frowned and took a sip of his G&T.
‘Ames,’ he said, his tone bracing but kind. ‘From what you told me on the phone, it seems pretty clear you did therightthing. An awful thing would have been to say yes when you didn’t mean it.’
She flopped a little on her seat, sinking her elbows onto the countertop and resting her forehead on her fingertips again. ‘I just don’t understand how this has happened,’ she said. ‘How could he have thought we were ready for marriage after just a few months together? Especially when he knows I’m not eveninterestedin weddings … I don’t understand how we got here.’
She groaned and poked at a cube of ice that was protruding above the rim of her glass. For some reason it made her think of the iceberg that sank theTitanic.
‘I should never have moved into his flat,’ Amy sighed. ‘You were right … Even though I said it was temporary, he didn’t seem to hear me. He didn’twantto hear me. I shouldn’t have let Hugh– or his walk-in wardrobes and underfloor heating– persuade me to stay there, not even for a few weeks.Garrrgghh… I should have just taken that overpriced fleapit in Kentish Town, or the houseshare with the guy who’d dyed his beard bright green. Maybe I shouldn’t even have gone out with Hugh in the first place.’
Kit patted her shoulder and shook his head.
‘Drink up,’ he said, gesturing at her untouched glass. ‘And don’t be too hard on yourself. I’m hardly Hugh’s biggest fan and even I didn’t seethiscoming. You felt like you had a handle on things, and some of the time I thought you did too– but looking back, hasn’t he been pushing you for more time, more attention, more commitment from the very beginning? Think about how many months he spent showering you with compliments– not to mentiongifts– before you finally agreed to let him take you out for dinner. He just wouldn’t give up.’
‘I guess that’s true,’ Amy said miserably. ‘But what kind of shallow idiot does that make me?’
‘You know you’re not an idiot,’ Kit said, ‘and you’re not shallow. Not compared to me, anyway.’ He struck a pose, showing off his undersized Comme des Garçons T-shirt and the rippling muscles beneath it.
This earned a watery-sounding laugh. ‘Really?’ Amy asked.
‘Really,’ Kit told her. ‘You and I both know you do a flawless impersonation of someone whose prime concerns are her career, her credit card balance and her designer handbag collection … But I’ve always believed there’s more to you than a sharp eye for good writing and killer accessories. There’s a soft, squidgy centre lurking beneath that impeccably groomed exterior, even if you wouldn’t admit it for a Chanel 2.55.’
Amy took a fortifying gulp of gin, first to numb her cold wash of panic at the words ‘credit card balance’, and secondly because she didn’t know what to say. Kit was her best friend and she was closer to him than almost anyone else in the world, but if she conceded he was right he’d never let her forget it. If she told him about her soppy moment yesterday– that second where, so briefly, she’d wondered how she might feel if someone else had proposed to her– she wouldn’t be able to take it back.
Sensing that Amy didn’t want to plumb her own hidden depths right now, Kit went on: ‘If you want total honesty, I have no doubt Hugh genuinely wanted to be with you– but I also think he saw you as a challenge. He wanted to be the one to melt the ice queen– he’s one of those guys who loves the chase, and you gave him the best game of his life.’
‘Ice queen?’ Amy demanded. ‘God. Is that how people see me?’
‘I mean … pretty much,’ Kit said, sounding rather as if he regretted his choice of words. ‘People who don’t really know you, I mean. I– er– thought that was the look you were going for …?’
‘Hmm,’ Amy said, finishing her G&T to cover the muddle of feelings this revelation had set loose. ‘Maybe. Yeah. I suppose it was.’
Amy and Kit spent the evening binge-watching crime documentaries on Netflix and eating the sort of carb-rich, nutrient-free foods they usually denied themselves. One two-hour film– in which a suave con man diddled a succession of bright, attractive women out of tens of thousands of pounds– only underlined the problem with society’s romance obsession, in Amy’s view.
‘They were all too suggestible,’ she ranted at Kit. ‘Even though they all had qualifications, careers and healthy social lives, they still wanted the perfect man and the happy ever after.That’swhat made them vulnerable.’
‘Maybe,’ Kit mused. ‘Or perhaps he’s just a super-convincing liar who’s really great at sex.’ Amy threw a cushion at him then, but didn’t bother trying to press her point home.
That night, after Kit had gone to bed, she examined her tired face in his bathroom mirror. Her cornflower-blue eyes– which people usually said were her best feature– were ringed with purplish shadows that looked strikingly awful against her pale skin. She’d barely slept since Friday night; Saturday’s ‘rest’ had been a fretful, booze-soaked stretch of only around five hours. Her dark hair, cut in a blunt bob that fell to just above her shoulders, was haphazard and wavy. Dimly, she wondered how much effort it was going to take to wrestle it into its usual sleek silhouette tomorrow morning.