Cents and Sensibility

We had ordered what he always had – veal parmigiana – and his usual bottle of Amarone. The only thing missing was Peter. Because by the time I had got into the office, the morning after leaving Sveti Stefan, he’d been sacked.

It turned out that just half an hour or so after I had spoken to him on the Monday afternoon, Martin had called him up to the editor-in-chief’s office, where he was now ensconced, like a poisonous spider at the centre of his web, and told him he was being ‘made redundant’.

What made it really sickening was that after forty-plus years on the paper, Martin had told him to leave immediately and not come back. He hadn’t even given him a traditional newsroom farewell.

‘It’s unbelievable, Stella,’ Ned was saying. ‘Martin told him that he had to leave immediately because he represented a competitive threat to the paper – because with his reputation he was bound to be snapped up by one of the Journal’s competitors. He didn’t even let him pack up his own desk, I did it for him last night. Jesus, Stella, the man’s barely a year from his sixty-fifth birthday, and he’s only ever worked here. He’s not getting a job anywhere.’

I pushed my veal around the plate. I had never felt less hungry. I’d just walked out on the love of my life, and I’d come back to this. Peter wasn’t the only one who had been sacked. Far from it.

Doughnut’s lovely PA, Sheila, had gone, and several of the long-standing reporters and section editors, who Martin clearly felt were Doughnut’s men and women, had been summarily ousted. Some had resigned after being offered alternative jobs on the paper insultingly below their levels of experience and expertise.

The entire paper was in shock and when we got back from lunch the atmosphere in the office was positively toxic. Suspicion and paranoia filled the air and little clumps of people would gather to whisper and then disperse, before re-forming into new combinations. I couldn’t help smiling sadly to myself as I looked at them. ‘Clumping’, Peter used to call it.

‘Look, Stella,’ he’d say, half standing at his desk, so he could see the rest of the office, peering over the partition. ‘They’re clumping. Something’s going on. Go forth and seek intelligence, would you, my dear? Come back and tell me what’s afoot.’

Misery is what I would have told him, if he’d been there to hear. But some people were happy. Jeanette had been promoted – she was now Deputy Editor, Features – and Rita was Chief Sub, Features. The two of them were positively strutting around the place.

Jeanette didn’t even acknowledge me when she passed where I was sitting, back at my old desk. I know she’d seen me, though, because a small triumphant smile flickered at the edge of her mouth.

I rang Peter at home that night but his wife, Renee, said he had gone out and wouldn’t be back until late. I could tell by her voice that she was lying – and hating having to do it – and after several more attempts to make contact over the ensuing days were met with the same response, I could only conclude that he was so wounded, he couldn’t bear to speak to anyone from the paper.

In the end, I sent him a note, saying how much I missed him and how grateful I was for everything he had done for me in our time working together and how much I would like to see him. He didn’t reply.

Jay was equally incommunicado. Finally shocked out of my state of numbness about him, I’d rung him the second night I was back, to see if there was any way we could salvage the situation, but his mobile number just rang out.

It didn’t even go to message and I realized, with a sickening lurch, that he had probably already changed his number, just like Amy had told me he would when he didn’t want to be found.

I took that as a clear statement that he had meant it when he said he would never see me again and, in that moment, I knew my entire world had collapsed in on me.

I cried until I fell into an exhausted sleep.

My little house was also uncomfortably close to Ham Central and, while I could hardly bear to admit it to myself, I knew if I saw him, I would not be able to keep up my wall of silence. I’d cave in the moment I saw his funny old face, so I just couldn’t allow myself to make contact. My pride wouldn’t let me.

Because what was I going to tell him? That Jay and I had split up because of the great overbearing colossus of his inherited wealth and his playboy attitude to life? I couldn’t bear Ham to be right about that.

But while I couldn’t bring myself to go up to the big house, I rang Chloe to tell her I was back, and she and Daisy would sneak down to see me quite often in the mornings. I think, in no small way, those visits got me through those dark days. Every time Daisy’s little blonde head bounced into my room, it was like the sun coming out.

‘Look, Stella,’ she said, one morning. ‘I can do a curtsy and I can walk like a princess.’

She demonstrated.

‘Oh, very good, Daisy,’ I said. ‘That will be useful.’

‘Yes,’ said Daisy, nodding. ‘I’m going to do it at your wedding. When I’m your bridesmaid. Can I have a white dress and flowers in my hair? Can I have sparkly shoes?’

Chloe pulled an embarrassed ‘sorry’ kind of face at me, but I didn’t mind, it gave me something to laugh about.

Chloe was great. She didn’t pry about what had happened with Jay, although it was pretty obvious she knew we’d been together and had guessed that we now weren’t, and neither did she press me to make up with Ham. She was just there, and always willing to listen sympathetically while I told her what was going on at work. She really was a very good friend.

Most evenings I went straight from the office to several work-related events. My usual response to a crisis was to work harder and I didn’t see how this one was any different – it just happened to involve all three major foundations of my life at once: family, love and career.

And if my position was as insecure at the Journal as I felt it was, I needed to get my face out and about as much as possible. I might need to find a new job, at any moment.

The way I felt, it was very hard being upbeat and employable, but I did my best and it really helped having Ned around. Even though the section had now been formally cancelled, we continued to go to events together and although he was as unhappy as me about what was going on at the office, he could always find a joke to lighten a situation and somehow we had fun together, despite it all.

He didn’t know I had a broken heart and a major family crisis going on as well as all the work drama, and it was a relief, as I could stop thinking about the other stuff when I was with him. I just blanked it out. It was only when I was alone that it all got to me, so I tried not to be on my own.

If there were no decent work parties to go to, Ned and I would see a film, and if we were feeling really restless, we’d go to two in one night, with a bowl of Vietnamese noodle soup in between.

Those were strange days.

I was rewriting – for the fourth time, at Jeanette’s insistence – a feature about the future of the Scottish cashmere industry, when I became aware of serious clumping going on around the office.

The desk next to me was still empty, but I did what Peter would have wanted and ventured out to find out what was going on.

I was on a spurious mission to the library, walking slowly, for maximum eavesdropping, when I ran into Ned.

‘Stella,’ he said, urgently. ‘I was looking for you. You’re not going to believe the latest. Meet me in the conference room in five.’

He meant the emergency stairwell, of course, a secret Tim and I had long ago let him in on. I walked once around the office, with my ears flapping, and then met him there.

‘What’s going on now?’ I asked him, closing the fire door and leaning against it.

‘You know how that shit Martin Ryan dressed Peter’s sacking up as some kind of bogus redundancy?’ said Ned, pacing restlessly on the concrete half landing.

I nodded. ‘Yes, that’s why the desk next to me is still very ostentatiously empty.’

‘Well, through some kind of hideous small print in Peter’s contract Martin has found a way of voiding most of his pension rights.’

I just stared at Ned.

‘You’re kidding,’ I said.

Ned shook his head. He was holding a copy of the pensions memo in his hand, I realized. He held it up and shook it.

‘That’s what this piece of shit is all about, they’re covering themselves so they can do it to anyone here.’

‘Are you telling me that they have cancelled Peter’s pension when he is nearly sixty-five and has worked here for over forty years?’

‘That’s right.’

‘That’s despicable,’ I said. ‘Can they really do it?’

‘It looks like they can, that’s the terrible thing. We’re on to the union, but most people here aren’t members any more anyway. It will just be up to Peter, whether he takes them on or not. He’d have to pay his own legal fees out of the three months’ redundancy money they gave him.’

Suddenly, my head felt clearer than it had for weeks.

‘That’s it,’ I said, setting off down the thirty-one flights of concrete stairs to the ground floor. ‘I’m done with this place. I’m going to resign. Right now.’

And I did.

I didn’t even wait for a response from Martin, after I’d dropped my letter with his new secretary, I just started packing up my things, ready to be sent on to me at home. Then I did a mass email to all the PRs I dealt with regularly, and got ready to leave. As I was writing that, an internal message flashed up announcing that Ned had resigned too. I smiled.

I was sitting at my desk, wondering if I should just get up and go, when Ned appeared to tell me that everyone who had resigned was going to walk out together, to make more of a point of it, and that we were to meet in the sports department as soon as possible.

The brains behind this protest, was the Journal’s greyhound racing correspondent, Jim Flynn. I’d never really talked to him, but I knew who he was and that he’d worked at the paper for years.

Like Peter, he was one of the old guard of characters who’d come over to the new building from Fleet Street, and his racing tips – on the doggies and the ponies, as he called them – were legendary.

He was about five foot two, and sported a classic wide-boy trilby, and you’d see him outside the main doors, smoking like a squaddie, with the glowing ember turned into his palm.

By the time I got round to the sports department, Jim had several bottles of whisky, a bottle of gin and a bottle of Tia Maria on the go. It was strictly against Journal rules for any journalist to have alcohol on their desk, you could get sacked for it, but Jim had the bottles all lined up on his like a bar, and was serving the drinks in mugs.

‘They can’t sack me now for boozing,’ he was saying. ‘Because I’m already walking… Walking, after midnight,’ he sang cheerily. ‘Allo, darling,’ he said when he saw me. ‘You coming out for Peter, are ya? Good girl, that’s what I like to see – solidarity. Now what can I get you, young lady? A nice Tia?’

I had whisky – he filled the mug halfway to the top – and we had quite a little party. There were about ten of us, all up, which was pretty impressive, and would leave a satisfying hole in the Journal’s staff, especially as we came from such diverse parts of the paper.

One of the major leader writers was leaving, which was a big deal; as was the deputy-chief news sub; one of the main crime reporters; and the environmental correspondent. We were a rum crew, but we were united by our affection and respect for Peter, and a sense of disgust about the direction the paper’s management was taking.

While our odd little wake was in full swing I heard my mobile phone beep; it was a text from Tim. He had just arrived back at Heathrow from somewhere and after hearing what was happening at the paper from the news subs, he had resigned too – and he wanted me to tell everyone. I stood on a chair to make the announcement and a huge cheer went up.

After about three-quarters of an hour things were getting a bit rowdy, and work had effectively stopped on the entire paper, with quite a lot of people who weren’t leaving – mainly ones with large mortgages and small children – joining in to show their support.

I was having a great chat with Jim about the old days in Fleet Street and what a top geezer Peter had always been to him, when I realized the party had gone quiet. I looked round to see Jeanette standing in front of us, looking decidedly nervous – flanked by two security guards.

‘The editor-in-chief has sent me to insist that you leave the building immediately,’ she said, in a shaky voice. ‘He accepts all your resignations with immediate effect. Your personal belongings will be sent on to you and you must leave now.’

‘Getting you to do his dirty work already, is he, darling?’ said Jim, chesting up to her, like a bantam cock.

She stepped back, looking terrified, and the security guards moved forwards towards Jim. Just for a moment, it looked like it could have turned really ugly, but then Jim swung round towards all of us and raised his arms in the air.

‘Come on, comrades,’ he said. ‘We’re off.’

And so we left – with Jim leading us in a rather shaky rendition of the Internationale, and the entire staff standing up to applaud us as we did one victory circuit of the news floor and then went out to the lifts.

Following Jim’s lead again, as we walked out through reception we all threw our security passes on to the floor.

It was stirring stuff, but I did feel a little wobbly as I stepped out of the huge glass doors of the Journal building for the last time. We stood there, in a clump, for a while and then people started to peel off, until there was just me and Ned left.

He wanted us to go straight to The Groucho to drown our sorrows – or to celebrate our bold move, whichever it was – but although I was already a bit light-headed from Jim’s whisky, I just couldn’t raise any enthusiasm for it.

We craned our necks and looked up at the building together.

‘There’s the thirty-first floor,’ he said. ‘Will you miss it? It was over five years for you, Stella.’

I shook my head.

‘No, I won’t miss it. The Journal I loved doesn’t exist any more. You?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ll miss you.’

‘Oh, Ned,’ I said, giving him a quick hug. ‘I’ll miss you too, but we’ll still be friends. We’ll still be film buddies.’

‘No, Stella,’ he said, holding on to my arms, when I started to pull away. ‘You don’t understand – I’ll really miss you.’

I looked up at him. He was gazing at me very intently and before I knew what was happening, he had bent down and kissed me. Not a colleague’s kiss on the cheek, but a proper kiss, on the mouth, involving his tongue.

I was so surprised, I didn’t pull away immediately and as he put his arms around me and pressed that deep, broad chest against me, I felt a treacherous flicker in my groin. It was pure desire.

And without involving my conscious mind, my whisky-loosened tongue responded, sliding against his. Immediately, it was like we had both been set alight and we were kissing with an urgency I had almost forgotten in those numb weeks since I had left Jay. When we finally pulled back for air, we were panting like a pair of sprinters.

We just stood there, staring at each other, in a state of shock, but still I didn’t pull away. It was such a crazy day, in such a crazy time, it didn’t feel weird to be kissing Ned right outside the Journal building, with our former colleagues walking past us on both sides, to and from the main entrance. In fact, it felt absolutely right and I wasn’t even bothered when a couple of them cheered and wolf-whistled us.

Then we were kissing again, even more passionately. His hands were behind my head, his fingers in my hair, pulling me closer, and mine were tearing aside his jacket, to get at the chest that had haunted the primal recesses of my mind ever since I had seen it in Ham’s swimming pool.

As we pulled apart again, I could feel every nerve in my body snapping with lust for him. I felt as though the two of us would probably glow in the dark with it and we didn’t need to say anything, it was clear we felt the same way. A cab came along, Ned hailed it and we got in and carried on where we had left off on the pavement.

I couldn’t tell you how long we were in that cab, but when it stopped I could see we were somewhere grungy near Brick Lane. Ned took my hand and after paying the cabbie, opened the door of a house without ever letting go of me.

We pretty much ran up the stairs and into a bedroom I vaguely took in as painted white and fairly bare, with a simple bed on the floor. Then we tore each other’s clothes off.

Ned’s body was no disappointment – and neither was the part of him I had glimpsed inside his black undies that day at the pool. We rolled over each other, not even fully undressing, pressing our bodies against each other and just kissing and kissing, and it flashed through my mind that it was as though all the hours we had spent talking, sharing words, were now being replayed in a kind of heightened physical conversation.

There was no doubt about his skills as a lover, which I had heard whispered around the office. In what seemed like no time, he had me tuned up like a violin string.

Then, finally he moved, with his swimmer’s elegance, to lie on top of me. Immediately my hips lifted to receive him, but then just as I could feel him at the very point of entering me, something clicked in my head.

‘Stop!’ I said.

Ned froze.

‘Stop,’ I said again, more quietly. ‘I can’t do this.’

He looked down at me, frozen, blinking with surprise.

‘I’m really sorry, Ned,’ I almost whispered. ‘But I just can’t do this. We’re friends – and I really really value you as a friend – and if we do this, our friendship will never be the same again.’

Ned looked at me a moment longer and then rolled off. We just lay there, side by side, still panting a bit, staring at the ceiling, lost in our own thoughts.

I was thinking about Jay. I had spent the last few weeks exerting a Herculean effort not to think about him, to try and wean myself off the idea of him even, but just at the moment Ned was about to enter me, I had realized I couldn’t bear anyone else but Jay to go there. In that moment I’d had such a potent physical memory of Jay, it was almost like he had been there with me.

I was as connected to him as I had ever been, I realized, even if he had pushed me away and I had tried to blank him out.

After a few moments, I reached out to find Ned’s hand. I squeezed it and he turned his head to look at me.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, again. ‘I should never have let it go this far.’

‘It’s OK,’ said Ned quietly. ‘But can’t we be more than friends, Stella? You weren’t acting just now, I know you feel it, just like I do.’

I sighed deeply.

‘You’re a very attractive man, Ned,’ I said eventually. ‘In fact, you’re one of the sexiest men I have ever met and well you know it, you’re a shocking flirt – and I also adore you as a person, as a friend. But while the physical thing ran away with me just then, I can’t combine the two with you, because I’m in love with someone else. Stupidly in love.’

‘Is it Alex?’ said Ned.

‘No, it’s not Alex,’ I said, not knowing whether to laugh, or cry, at the suggestion. ‘It’s Jay Fisher.’

‘Oh, shit,’ said Ned, suddenly laughing. ‘I give in, then. Reckon I could take Alex on, but I can’t beat a bloody billionaire. Especially not a handsome bastard, like him.’

He turned to look at me.

‘So that was you in the Daily Mail with him then,’ he said, his eyes starting up that familiar twinkle. ‘You looked so shit in the picture, I thought it was someone else.’

I punched him on the shoulder and with the tension released, we got up, got dressed and sat drinking endless cups of tea – with whisky on the side – in Ned’s messy kitchen.

He shared the house with three other people and it had very much the atmosphere of a student pad. And while it was warm and relaxed, with beaten-up old furniture, silly photos of them on the walls, great boxes of empty bottles and all the other detritus of the communal single life, I felt a very long way away from Jay’s immaculate loft.

We laughed a lot and talked about Peter and the Journal, and all the funny things we had got up to there, but while we had a relentlessly jolly time, I knew we were both covering up a slight awkwardness over what had happened.

We’d been chatting and drinking for a couple of hours – and Ned had been hitting the whisky bottle more frequently than me – when he suddenly got a more serious look on his face.

‘Stella,’ he said quietly. ‘Can you take another shock today?’

I just laughed.

‘Bring it on,’ I said, raising my glass to him. ‘I can’t imagine what else you can throw at me, but go ahead.’

‘OK,’ said Ned. ‘Here goes – you know I said ages ago I’d try and find out why Jeanette hates you so much?’

I nodded.

‘Well, I have.’

‘Go on, then,’ I said. ‘Hit me.’

Ned looked uncomfortable, but clearly felt I needed to know.

‘It was your dad,’ he said.

‘My dad?’ I said.

‘Well, it seems that a long time ago he – how can I put it – well, he rooted her. You know, shagged her? And he never called her after. She’s been getting her own back on him through you, all this time.’

I really couldn’t believe my ears – but then again, I totally could. I felt physically sick.

‘Any idea how long ago?’ I asked him, very quietly, trying to stop my voice catching.

‘Quite a long time, I think,’ said Ned. ‘Before she got married. They met at some piss-up at the Labour Party conference – you know how wild those things can get – and she’s never forgiven him. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and all that…’

‘God, he must have been drunk,’ was all I could say. It was just too much. It was so appalling, I almost found it funny. Almost.

‘But tell me, Ned,’ I asked him. ‘How on earth did you find that out?’

‘Rita told me.’

‘I didn’t know you were that close to Rita,’ I said.

He looked a tiny bit sheepish.

‘I was for one night,’ he said.

‘You know what, Ned,’ I said, suddenly feeling quite nauseated by the whole sordid business, by him and my dad and men in general, ‘I think you and my father really have a lot in common – and not in a good way.’

And shortly afterwards, I left.

I got the Tube back to Notting Hill from Liverpool Street, relieved to have some anonymous neutral space just to exist in. The latest revelation about my dreadful father was just too much on top of everything else.

Hearing what he’d done to Jeanette just convinced me what an irretrievable shit he was when it came to women. I almost wondered, as I had a few times since it happened, whether I was doing the right thing, not telling Chloe what he was really like. Maybe, it would be better if she knew – but I couldn’t take that on, I’d decided, not with everything else.

On top of all that, what had just happened between me and Ned had brought Jay to the front of my mind in a way I had been trying so hard to avoid. And just to finish it all off, while I sat there, staring into space in a whisky fug, it was just starting to sink in that I was unemployed.

I felt as though I was on some kind of nightmare fairground ride and as it turned around, the horrendous events of the past few weeks would present themselves to me over and over again, in turn.

I’d feel furious with my father – his behaviour was so bad I almost felt sympathetic with Jeanette. Then there’d be a moment of sick remorse about what I had just done – or nearly done – with Ned. That would lead me back to Jay and then I would remember all over again that I didn’t have a job and that would take me back to my dad and his part in both those disasters. Whichever of the horrors I looked at, it led inexorably to another.

What had I been thinking when I left Jay behind on that island? I kept asking myself. I loved him, he loved me – he’d wanted to marry me – but I’d left all that behind for my job. A job which now seemed meaningless and unimportant – and which I no longer even had.

It seemed unbelievable now that I’d made that choice, but at the time, it had seemed the only possible course of action. That afternoon at Sveti Stefan, Jay’s attitude had seemed unreasonable to me. Now I really didn’t know what I thought any more.

All I knew was that now I had neither of them. No job and no Jay.

I told him that I had, but refused to be drawn into discussions about why I’d done it, just saying I’d been at the Journal for five years and had felt for a while it was time for me to move on.

I was still enough of a reporter to be ready for that question in the hope of avoiding getting a reputation as a bolshie troublemaker, but then he sprang another question on me, which took me completely off my guard.

‘So,’ he said. ‘Have you got your next job lined up then? Presumably it will be something else in the luxury field…’

I recovered myself just enough to say that I was talking to various people and considering offers, but nothing was confirmed yet. All complete lies, but at least I wouldn’t sound quite so much like an unemployed loser – I knew it was much harder to find a new job when you didn’t have one.

But what really rattled me about his question was that I suddenly realized I didn’t have a clue where I wanted to go and work next. I’d never really looked beyond the Journal and suddenly I had to.

Was this, I wondered, my big chance to break out of writing about twenty-carat diamonds and bespoke picnic sets and get into the more serious side of journalism I had always hankered after? Possibly. So why did I feel so unexcited about the prospect? Clearly, I needed to do some serious thinking.

In the meantime, though, I just wanted to be distracted so I rang Chloe to see if the coast was clear for me to come up to the big house to see her and Daisy.

I hadn’t been up there for weeks, which was really odd, and after such a long break, I saw it again with fresh eyes. It was such a beautiful space, and the atmosphere really did have a special nurturing quality.

My father may have been a hypocritical, philandering bastard, but there was no doubt about his professional gifts.

Daisy was sitting in a big leather armchair watching television, and when I slid the glass door open, she ran down the room and threw herself at me, squealing with delight.

‘Mummy! Mummy! It’s Stella! Stella’s come to play at our house!’

I swept her up and buried my head in her neck.

‘Hello, crazy Daisy,’ I said. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m a big girl,’ said Daisy. ‘I’m going to be a full sister. You’re my half-sister. So is Tabitha, but Alex isn’t.’

I smiled down at her and ruffled her hair, then she put her head on one side and looked up at me, with her wide blue eyes.

‘Daddy said you don’t come here any more,’ she said.

‘Well, Daddy’s wrong, isn’t he?’ I said.

Chloe came in, looking very pregnant, and gave me nearly as big a hug as Daisy had, reaching around her bump. I bent down to kiss it.

‘Stella,’ she said, ‘it’s so good to see you up here again at last. Daisy has really missed your bedtime stories, haven’t you, sweetheart?’

Daisy nodded and put her little arms around my legs and hugged me. It was killing stuff.

We sat down on the stools at the kitchen counter and Chloe produced some of her famous brownies, along with a macchiato, just the way I liked it.

‘How are you doing, Chloe?’ I asked her, in full small-talk mode. ‘How’s your book coming along?’

‘Me and the book are both doing well, thank you, Stella. Everything is fine, but how are you? If you don’t mind me saying, you look a bit rough. Are you OK?’

I took a deep breath. I knew I couldn’t cope with telling her the whole story. Obviously I had to leave the Ham part out and I knew I’d be a basket case if I had to tell anyone what had happened with Jay, so I gave Chloe an abridged version, just the work stuff.

‘Well, you remember how my lovely editor was sacked a few weeks ago, along with a lot of other people?’ I started. ‘Well, it’s all just blown up again and I’ve resigned in protest. Quite a few people have.’

‘Gosh,’ said Chloe, her eyes wide. ‘That is dramatic. What are you going to do? Have you got another job?’

I just shook my head, and smiled ironically at her. It was the best reaction I could muster.

‘Daisy, darling,’ said Chloe, suddenly. ‘Mummy is so silly – I’ve left my handbag upstairs. Would you be a darling and run up and get it for me?’

Daisy beamed – she loved helping – and ran out of the room. I could hear her racing up the stairs singing: ‘Handbag, handbag, Mummy wants her handbag…’

Chloe looked at me with a serious expression on her face.

‘Can I tell Henry about you leaving your job?’ she said.

I shrugged.

‘You can tell him whatever you want – it’ll be all over the papers anyway.’

Chloe looked irritated, which was unusual for her.

‘You know, Stella,’ she said, ‘I have made a real effort not to bring this up with you, but I can’t keep quiet any more. Can you please just talk to your father about whatever it is you are so angry with him about? I presume it’s still that Jay Fisher business – he won’t talk to me about it, so I don’t really know – but it’s eating him alive. I’ve never seen him like this before and he’s so bloody irritable and unpleasant to everybody, it’s not that much fun for me actually. Or Daisy.’

She looked at me with real distress on her face.

‘He made her cry the other day, he was so snappy with her,’ she said quietly. ‘So, while I love you dearly, in all honesty, Stella, I’m getting a bit pissed off with it. It’s been weeks now, surely you’ve gone off the boil a bit? Couldn’t you just sit and talk to him and try and work it out? You’re both adults, Stella.’

I felt anger flash through me, like a lightning bolt. She was the bloody reason I’d fallen out with him – protecting her from his appalling behaviour. For a millisecond I felt like telling her what it was all about, and about Jeanette, for good measure, but sense stopped me.

‘Is it still over that Jay Fisher business?’ said Chloe, clearly determined to push me on it, but before I could speak, Daisy came running back into the kitchen with a sequinned evening bag.

‘Here it is, Mummy, I’ve got your bag,’ she was saying. ‘It had lipstick in it. Can I have some lipstick?’

She was so clearly already wearing it – all over her face – my eyes met Chloe’s and we dissolved into laughter. It was the perfect tension breaker.

‘It’s mainly that,’ I said, when we’d recovered. ‘But there’s other stuff as well. It’s really complicated. Oh, I don’t know, Chloe. I’m sorry if he’s been giving you a hard time, but I’m still finding it really hard to forgive him.’

‘But weren’t you staying with Jay Fisher in New York anyway?’ she persisted. ‘Henry showed me a picture of you with him, in the paper.’

‘Yes, I was staying with him.’

‘So, if you’re not keeping that ridiculous promise Henry asked you to make all that time ago, why are you so angry with him? You’ve got your man and I think Henry is more than ready to make it up with you, if you’d just let him.’

‘I haven’t got my man,’ I said, quickly. ‘We broke up.’

I had to struggle to keep my composure. I wanted to burst into tears all over her, but I didn’t dare start.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Stella,’ said Chloe, putting her hand on my arm. ‘I’m really sorry. Forget everything I said. With that and what’s happened with your job, I can see you’re having a hard enough time without me laying a big guilt trip on you. So just forget what I said and do what you need to do to get through. You can’t be having a very easy time.’

‘Thanks, Chloe,’ I said, holding it together by a thread. ‘It is a bit crap, actually, but I’ll survive.’

I bolted my coffee in one swig, told Chloe I had stuff to do and I’d see her later, but before I could get down from my stool, she put her hand on my arm again.

‘Why don’t you go down to Willow Barn for a while?’ she said. ‘Henry’s in Chicago, so we won’t be going down this weekend, or next. You can have some time to yourself down there.’

And as she spoke, I realized it was exactly what I needed to do.

21