‘How does Brett put up with you?’ Anouk tutted, trying to pull back the pintucked eiderdown from Kelly. ‘You are such a hogger.’
Kelly, who was sitting beside her on the other side of the bed, shrugged. ‘I know, but at least I’m not a kicker. Cassie’s the worst kicker, don’t you remember?’
‘I am not!’ Cassie protested from her position at the foot of the bed. They were sleeping like sardines tonight, but Cassie was sure she’d been put in the tails end so that Anouk and Kelly could both face her like an inquisition – or firing squad.
‘We’re going to wake up with concussions tomorrow,’ Kelly chuckled, prompting a kick from Cassie, whose earlier tears had left her veering wildly between outright defiance and forlorn exhaustion, and she was still fragile, even now after several hours of improvised spa treatments in her bedroom, which were supposed to try and relax her (although Kelly had had to go into the room and turn over all the pictures of Cassie and Henry first).
Scented candles flickered delicately from every surface, trying to overpower the synthetic scent of nail polish – Chanel’s Mirabella decorated their toes, still peeking out from the bedcovers – and they were lying on the bed with their hands held up, smothered in an expensive anti-ageing cream Anouk kept in her bag, while Kelly tried to rub open the latex gloves that Henry kept in the cupboard under the sink for plumbing emergencies; supposedly they were going to wake up tomorrow with the lily-soft hands of five-year-old princesses. Every so often, Cassie got another, slightly hysterical fit of the giggles as she took in the sight of Kelly and Anouk with Bircher muesli on their faces, which only a sharp reflexology dig in the solar plexus region of her right foot could stop.
‘So, you seem a little calmer,’ Anouk said, holding her hands still for Kelly to roll on the gloves. It reminded Cassie of surgeons being gloved in a medical drama.
Cassie just blinked. ‘I feel paralysed. I don’t know which way’s up anymore. I certainly don’t know which way’s forward.’
‘I just can’t imagine you without Henry,’ Kelly murmured quietly, ineffable sadness in her voice.
Cassie looked away, assailed by another violent rush of emotions. She couldn’t imagine it either.
It was odd. She could imagine being with Luke – all the feelings she’d once had for him were still there; she had simply boxed them away and now she’d let them out, acknowledged them, they were coexisting alongside her feelings for Henry. But the one thing she couldn’t do was imagine not being with Henry. Her mind wouldn’t go there; her heart wouldn’t let her. The very thought was impossible.
‘You still love him, right?’ Kelly asked.
‘Of course I do! I will always love him! He’s the love of my life,’ Cassie said with too-bright eyes. She slumped further into the pillows, her voice flattening. ‘But I just don’t think that’s going to be enough anymore. It’s clear we want very different things. He’s forcing this issue and I can’t pretend that I didn’t go through what I went through. You don’t just walk out of a ten-year marriage without there being some kind of payback, and he just doesn’t get that. I don’t know how I can explain myself any more clearly. Why would I go back to something that makes a prisoner of me, locks me in regardless of how other people behave? I don’t ever want to leave him, but I have to be free to leave; that possibility has to be there for me now. I’ve got to keep a door open.’
Kelly looked sad at her words. Anouk didn’t.
‘Well, I quite agree,’ Anouk sighed. ‘People place so much weight on ownership, like they’ve got to possess you. Why? Surely it is more comforting to know that the person you are with has chosen to stay. They could go, but they choose not to.’ She arched an eyebrow. ‘It is much more seductive, no?’
‘I couldn’t disagree more,’ Kelly said, rubbing even more furiously on the latex glove, which merely flapped in her hands like a dying fish. ‘When you make the choice to dedicate your life to that one person, and one person only, you build an intimacy that your so-called freedoms could never touch. It’s way sexier.’
‘In the beginning maybe,’ Anouk shrugged. ‘But twenty years from now you’ll be obsessing over that hair that’s sprouted at the end of his nose and wondering why the hell he can’t see it and get rid of it. Everything you love now will be driving you crazy by then.’
‘So what’s your answer? Keep turning them over? Be with younger guys as you get older? Where’s the peace in that? You’d be paranoid about your looks, your allure. How long will they stay? Are they seeing anyone else? Should you leave them before they can leave you?’
‘Actually—’
‘OK, girls. Time out?’ Cassie said tiredly, making a T-sign with her hands, the bangle sliding down her wrist. It was smeared with muesli, but she couldn’t get it off – Luke had the screwdriver and nothing in Henry’s toolbox was small enough to fit it. ‘I appreciate the debate, but there’s nothing hypothetical about my situation. If I don’t marry him, he says we’re f-finished,’ she stuttered. ‘I’ve got to give a “yes” or “no” answer. It’s that simple. And that impossible.’
‘Sorry,’ they both murmured.
Cassie’s face fell, twisting with pain as another surge of anxiety reared up inside her and she grabbed her hair by the temples, oblivious to the fact that she hadn’t yet got her gloves on. ‘Oh God, I am fucking up.’
‘No, you’re not. Not yet, anyway. Only if you make the wrong call,’ Kelly said quickly. ‘And nothing has been done yet that can’t be undone . . . Right?’
It was a moment before Cassie realized what she was getting at. ‘No. We just kissed.’ But even that was a betrayal, just on a sliding scale of degrees, something that would have been unfathomable – abhorrent – to the version of herself sitting here two weeks ago. She had kissed another man. She was planning on leaving Henry, leaving here, this life, this path, and stepping onto a new one. How had she got here? How?
‘How are you feeling now you’re away from them both?’ Anouk asked, twiddling a biro between her fingers and Cassie could tell she was gearing up for a cigarette.
She shrugged weakly. ‘It all seems so distant now. I mean, Henry’s somewhere in the middle of the Pacific; Luke’s in Cornwall. It’s hard to believe either one of them is waiting for me.’
‘And yet they both are,’ said Kelly. She gave a heavy sigh. ‘Tell me this. Would you still be walking away from Henry if you didn’t have Luke to go to?’
‘If I do go – if! – I’m not leaving Henry for Luke. But there’s unfinished business there. I can’t pretend there isn’t.’
‘This would all be a helluva lot more simple if he’d just stayed on his side of the Atlantic,’ Kelly said crossly. ‘I mean, I cannot believe he’s staying in the exact same place as you.’
‘I know. It is weird,’ Cassie sighed. ‘His girlfriend knows Gem.’
‘Or maybe it is fate, uh?’ Anouk asked.
Kelly shot her a look that suggested Anouk was being unhelpful. ‘I just don’t understand why you stayed on once you realized he was there too. Surely you knew what might happen if you and Luke were together again?’
‘Honestly? No! I hated him so much after Paris.’
‘Too much, in retrospect, uh?’ Anouk asked.
Cassie shrugged again. ‘Yes, maybe.’
There was a pause.
‘Look, it’s a sex thing with you and Luke,’ Kelly said, changing tack. ‘The chemistry was always incredible between you. God knows, it was in my face long enough. Man, I will never forget the time I found the two of you in the bath—’
‘Thanks!’ Cassie shrieked, preferring not to go into specifics, even though the exact same memory had played through her mind several times in the past twenty-four hours.
‘The point I’m trying to make is that you two didn’t get to let things take their natural course. You upped and left for Paris after New Year because that was the date we’d arbitrarily agreed on at the outset, but you and he weren’t done. You hadn’t played yourselves out. The relationship didn’t get a chance to die; it just ended, like that.’ She clicked her fingers. ‘So it’s maybe not that surprising that this has happened.’
Cassie sensed there was more to come. ‘But you think that we would have ended if we’d had more time?’ she prompted.
‘Oh yeah. Absolutely,’ Kelly said resolutely.
‘You have no way of knowing that,’ Anouk argued. ‘You’re making assumptions because you see her with Henry and want that to be the answer – but what if it isn’t? They’ve got problems. Cassie and Luke don’t.’
‘If Henry could hear you—’ Kelly started.
‘Hey! I love him as much as you, but this is about what’s right for Cassie. This is the rest of her life we’re talking about. There are no second chances with this. Whatever direction she chooses – whichever man – she can’t go back.’
Cassie slumped further down the pillow, feeling her anxiety and confusion begin to marble again. Both Kelly and Anouk fell silent, feeling guilty. As much as they shared a style DNA, they had always disagreed about what was best for Cassie. Kelly had rendered her a Park Avenue blonde during her New York stint, Anouk a bobbed brunette. Kelly had had her running Central Park and eating sushi; Anouk had introduced her to the joys of the hammam and a full-bodied Merlot. They weren’t likely to make it a first and agree, now, on this.
‘And Suzy has no idea?’ Kelly asked after a moment.
Oh God, Suzy. Cassie dropped her head into her mueslicoated hands again. ‘She had her suspicions. We had a big fight about it. She was right and I was . . . I was putting my head in the sand. I didn’t see it clearly like she did. I believed Luke when he told me he’d moved on. I mean, he’s dating Amber Taylor, for heaven’s sake! Hello! Why would I think he was pining over me? It’s laughable.’ She swallowed as they remained silent. There was nothing funny about it. ‘She doesn’t know about last night.’ Her face crumpled, the muscles falling slack with despair. ‘How can I tell her? If I go back to Luke, I’m betraying her as much as I am Henry. She’ll never forgive me. She won’t. I’ll lose her too.’
Kelly and Anouk glanced at each other. Confirmation. There were no platitudes to offer here.
‘Did you tell Luke you were leaving?’ Kelly asked quietly.
She nodded.
‘So then he’s waiting for you.’
‘Yes.’ Cassie met their eyes. ‘Oh Christ, what do you think I should do? Someone please just tell me what to do.’
It was a moment before either woman spoke.
‘Well, I know there’s one thing you can’t do,’ Anouk said slowly.
Cassie blinked. ‘What’s that?’
‘You can’t go back there alone.’
‘Jeez, it would’ve been quicker coming by mail,’ Kelly grumbled from the seat in the back, a hamper on her knee as they passed a sign for Bodmin.
‘This is nothing – you should see Henry’s car,’ Anouk drawled. ‘We almost had to cut the roof off to get Bas out.’
Cassie laughed, winking at Kelly in the rear-view mirror. OK, so it had taken seven hours instead of five, but she was really rather pleased (not to mention relieved) that her Morris Minor had made the motorway journey without incident – no black smoke belching from the exhaust (as it had done on the road to Bath once), no burst tyres (en route to Norfolk) or the clutch going (a wedding in Warwickshire). The poor little car was so full its back bumper was practically kissing the tarmac, as Cassie had expertly wedged baskets, rugs, glasses, cutlery, ice buckets, food trays and best friends inside.
‘Right. Bas says he can get the first train down in the morning,’ Kelly said, reading from her texts.
‘Did you tell him where the spare key is?’ Cassie called back. ‘It’s under the—’
‘Yeah, yeah. He says he’s in. Reckons he’ll be with us by eleven tomorrow.’
‘I can’t believe we missed him. It must have been by minutes,’ Cassie said sadly, shaking her head. ‘Such crummy luck.’
‘Well, maybe next time he will think to text beforehand to check you’re there,’ Anouk said. ‘It is rude to turn up unannounced, non?’
But Cassie already had a feeling as to why he may have turned up at her flat without notice. The couture shows were starting in Paris next week, but if he’d turned up a few days early to see Luis and things hadn’t quite panned out in the way he’d hoped . . .
She bit her lip, hoping it wasn’t that. Let one of them be lucky in love, at least.
She swung along the back roads via Delabole as the sky reddened into black, her grip tightening on the steering wheel as the miles to Rock were counted down on every road sign. They were too late for dinner now, in spite of their best plans, and she had texted Archie from the Tiverton services to appraise them of their new ETA. ‘If you’re tired, don’t wait up. Big day tomorrow!’ she’d signed off, in the vain hope – she now realized – that Archie would spread the word and scatter their guests back to their rooms. If she could just not see Luke for one more night . . . If she could just have another twelve hours to herself while she reached for clarity, achieved perspective, settled on the answer that her heart told her was right.
Her hands tightened at the wheel again.
‘You OK?’ Anouk asked, her eyes on Cassie’s blanched knuckles.
‘Me? Yeah. Just tired.’ She had barely slept again, her nervous system scarcely touched by the holistic, relaxing treatments her friends had prepared last night, and she had been working in the kitchen for several hours before Anouk and Kelly had woken up, their rubber gloves still on and bits of porridge oats stuck in their eyebrows.
‘I’m not surprised. You worked like a fever today.’
Cassie shrugged. ‘It was good to get ahead with the prepping. I reckon it’s going to be fairly stressy in the house tomorrow, no matter what Gem says about it being low-key. At least all I’ve got to do now is roast the lamb and stack the macaroons.’ A sixth sense told her that tomorrow was going to be difficult in lots of ways – not only with Luke wanting an answer, but also being faced with Suzy’s stonewalling again. Her eyes flickered towards Anouk in the passenger seat beside her. ‘I couldn’t have done it without your help, you know. You guys were amazing, pitching in like that.’
Kelly and Anouk had stood in the kitchen doorway, their eyes on the bowls already filled with washed, chopped and colour-coded ingredients, and had immediately put aprons on over their pyjamas, recognizing work as catharsis when they saw it. They had stayed like that all day – no one, not even Anouk, taking a shower or getting dressed till they’d been ready to start packing the car, Kelly and Anouk obediently following Cassie’s instructions with an understanding that sometimes, just sometimes, it was better to do than to talk. They had made great sous-chefs. (Notwithstanding the moment Anouk accidentally sliced off a nail and made such a fuss that for several moments Cassie had thought it had been a finger.)
‘I’ve got to say, I never realized how intense your job is,’ Kelly piped up from the back. ‘It seems to me you’ve got to have ten arms, plus eyes in the back of your head.’
Cassie chuckled. ‘It certainly feels like that sometimes.’ It had been revelatory for her to be the ‘expert’ among her friends for once. Her tutelage under her late friend and mentor Claude Sautans in Paris had been a first-class education and she rarely got a chance to indulge, to show what she was really capable of doing; her job usually meant working to very tight budgets and briefs, but Gem’s ideas had been so obscure and unrealistic – not to mention last-minute, having maintained all the way through that she didn’t want to be ‘hung up’ on the superfluous details of the day – that Cassie had felt vindicated to take carte blanche and produce a menu to her vision.
Hence she’d planned individual hampers, starting with terrines of jellied ham, parsley and quail’s eggs, then moving on to a salad of pea tops with edible pansies, and rare lamb and butternut squash roasted with hazelnuts. For pudding, she’d whipped up some deliciously tart gooseberry fool and elderflower jelly, and in lieu of a formal wedding cake – which would have needed to have been started six weeks ago – she had baked several trays of rose petal-infused macaroons, ready to stack into a croquembouche (her and Claude’s signature dish) in the morning.
‘I can’t believe the scale of things down here,’ Kelly murmured as ten-foot-high, pink-tufted hedgerows whistled past the car with only inches to spare either side, the scent of wild garlic a pinch of sweetness in the night air. ‘It’s like Lilliput, everything’s so tiny. They must operate a one-way system like New York, right?’
‘Nope.’
‘You’re kidding? They get two-way traffic down these roads?’
‘I know. It’s crazy. And most of it’s tractors too.’
The lanes were quiet as they slipped through the hilltop village, the snake of traffic down to the sailing club mercifully dispersed for the night and the drunken babble from the Mariner’s pub too distant to discern from here. A fox skipped across the lane a short distance in front of them, its casual cock of the head telling them it had no fear, took no heed of the rounded car from another era bumbling towards it.
‘Well, this is it,’ Cassie said a few minutes later, turning into the long drive and past the cream pebble-dashed pillars. ‘That’s Snapdragons on the right.’
‘Oh.’ Anouk’s voice betrayed disappointment as they passed the 1950s house, the Renault Clio and the Jeep parked outside at jaunty angles, a light shining through the downstairs window.
‘I know. It’s not a beautiful house, but wait till tomorrow when you see the setting and the views. It’s sensational.’
She slowed as they approached Butterbox. Every light was blazing so that from a distance the house appeared almost aflame and there were various cars in the drive – Suzy’s Volvo, of course, and an old orange Beetle that she recognized as Hattie’s, but there was another, glossier one too, with a rental sticker on the back bumper. Had Laird’s brother caught a standby flight after all, then? Archie’s bike was propped up against the hydrangea bush, the day’s issue of The Times still rolled up and now damp with dew in the basket.
They disembarked with care. Cassie was the only one who hadn’t had a hamper on her lap and they each had to stretch out, after hours of sitting hunched. They piled the hampers in a tower in the porch by the front door – some of them had been filled with the wine glasses and cutlery, others the jellies and pansies – ready to bring in shortly with a little help from the others.
‘Well, here goes,’ Cassie said quietly, her key in the lock and taking a deep breath as Anouk and Kelly both squeezed her shoulders. ‘Remember, say nothing yet to Suzy, OK? You’re just here to . . .’ She faltered, not having thought through an alibi.
‘Here to see her,’ Anouk said. ‘She’s been trying to get me down here for years.’
‘And I’m so desperate to get away from Bebe I’ll even spend seven hours in your tinpot car,’ Kelly quipped, taking the sleeve of Cassie’s light jumper and maternally tugging it down, over the bangle.
‘OK, yes. Good. Great,’ Cassie nodded uncertainly. She had a sense of standing on the precipice again, not sure if she was going to jump or be pushed.
They stepped into the hallway, dropping their bags onto the sagging blue damask wing chair opposite the stairs. The house’s distinctive musty, salty tang had sweet and fresh top notes, thanks to an armful of long-stemmed pale pink roses lying out on the hall console.
‘Beautiful,’ Anouk whispered, rushing over.
‘Well, Hats must have come round to the idea of the marriage, then,’ Kelly murmured, lifting one and smelling it with her eyes closed. ‘I carried these at my wedding, do you remember?’
As if she could ever forget. ‘Maiden’s Blush,’ Cassie nodded. It was the perfect wedding flower, albeit a rare, old-fashioned variety these days, which Hattie grew in her noteworthy dedicated rose garden at West Meadows. They had been the catalyst that had brought her and Henry together at last, and the sight and smell of them were almost painful to her now.
The sound of voices in the sitting room carried down the hall – earnest conversation, some talking over each other, the tone harried and humourless. The women all looked at each other. Perhaps Hattie hadn’t come round after all? Were she and Suzy launching a joint last-minute offensive on Gem?
‘Hey. I’m back,’ Cassie called through casually, her eyes on Archie standing by the fireplace, the safest person she could cling to as she walked into the room. His arm dropped from the mantelpiece as he saw her. ‘Guess who I found wandering the streets of Pimlico.’ She stepped to the side to let Kelly and Anouk into the room too.
Suzy clapped her hands over her mouth at the sight of them, tears springing to her eyes as she rushed over, clutching them both in a giant bear hug, her speciality. ‘I can’t tell you how good it is to see you,’ she sobbed.
Kelly and Anouk met Cassie’s eyes in silent concern. Cassie looked at the floor, uncomfortable at Suzy’s emotional reaction. Was she trying to garner sympathy, bring them on side? In a moment of clarity, Cassie knew her friend would never forgive her for the decision she was going to make; she would never support her as her friend; she would stand against her as Henry’s sister. Cassie was going to lose them both. Fact.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Laird and Gem on one sofa, but instead of Gem’s legs stretched over Laird’s lap, she was curled up beside him like a baby animal seeking warmth; Luke and Amber were on the other sofa, Luke’s arm slung lackadaisically across the back seat cushions, but she saw how he stiffened at the sight of her, and a frisson of electricity surged through her to be so close to him again. Even in her peripheral vision she could see how good he looked in his grey T-shirt and jeans; she could isolate his scent in a room full of others. Everything about him put her senses on high alert. Her heart was pounding, her nerves scorched and fried. She wanted to both run to and away from him at the same time; she wanted to kiss and slap him in the same moment; she wanted everything and nothing to do with him. She wished she had never met him; she couldn’t imagine not having met him. She didn’t regret a moment they’d shared of their past anymore, but was that the same as regretting not sharing a future? Cassie tugged on her sleeve, taking care to hide the dratted bangle from the others – it could give them away in a moment; hadn’t he thought of that? – as she stole a glance at him. She couldn’t help herself – and as his hazel eyes, apprehensive for once, locked with hers, she was taken aback by the force of the instincts that suffused every fibre of her mind, body and soul. Suddenly she knew. She knew exactly what she was going to do. She could feel it – the answer had come to her finally and it felt so right, so real, she thought she could bite down on it.
‘Where have you been?’
She turned back to find Archie staring at her, a look of ashen desperation on his usually florid face.
‘You know where. I went back to London to get the food sorted. I said I’d be back tonight.’
‘Yes, but your phone . . . it’s been switched off!’
She swallowed, not daring to look at Luke again. ‘That’s right. It, er . . . ran out of juice and I didn’t have a charger.’
Archie ran a hand through his hair. ‘Cass, we’ve been trying to get hold of you.’
She felt bad that she hadn’t told them in person. Maybe a note had been too abrupt? She could only imagine the grief Suzy had been giving him as Cassie disappeared forty-eight hours before the wedding. With the way things were between them at the moment, Suzy probably doubted Cassie’s promise that she’d be back in time, and the caterer going off radar with two days to go was every wedding planner’s nightmare, much less this wedding planner’s with this wedding.
‘Well, there’s really nothing to worry about. Everything’s sorted. I shopped yesterday and prepped today, thanks to my sous-chefs.’ She shot a relaxed smile across to the happy couple. ‘We’re good to go. I think you’re going to be very pleased.’
‘Great,’ Gem nodded, her smile weak.
Cassie looked back to the others, baffled by the strangely muted mood in the room. Was this wedding on or not? Gem and Laird must have reconciled after the fallout from her fight with Suzy the other day, else they wouldn’t be sitting together, on the sofa, but there appeared to have been a seismic shift in dynamics.
She became aware of glances sliding across the room like skaters on ice.
‘Look, there’s something—’ Arch began.
‘God, sorry! I’m being so rude not introducing you guys,’ Cassie said at the same time, remembering her manners. ‘Gem and Laird, Luke and Amber, meet Kelly and Anouk, our oldest friends.’
‘And dearest,’ Suzy said – proprietorially? – dabbing her eyes again.
Everyone obeyed protocol and robotically shook hands, Luke greeting both Kelly, whom he knew well, and Anouk, whom he’d met once, with cautious reserve.
‘Drinks?’ Suzy asked, seemingly highly strung and fidgety tonight. Cassie wondered whether she was even aware of the way she kept balling her hands into fists.
‘Please,’ Anouk replied gratefully. ‘Anything red.’
‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any coconut water?’ Kelly asked hopefully. Cassie glanced across at the super-healthy option and she felt a kernel of anxiety that they hadn’t had a moment alone yet. She had to get some time on her own with her. How was Kelly able to keep up this pretence that all was well? How was she able to keep something so devastating a secret when Cassie couldn’t keep it under wraps that she’d kissed her ex?
‘Coconut water?’ Suzy pulled a face, looking more like her normal self for a moment. ‘Listen, you’re not in Manhattan now, honey. If you want even sparkling water, I’ll have to give you a straw and you can blow the bubbles yourself.’
‘Fine,’ Kelly laughed. ‘Then I’ll keep Arch company and have whatever he’s having. I’m trying to get healthy too.’
‘Says the woman who planks before bed just for kicks,’ Suzy muttered, wandering over to the drinks table. ‘Honestly, there are Olympians who’d be intimidated by you.’
‘Look, Cass—’ Archie began again.
‘Lemon, Kell?’ Suzy asked.
‘Thanks. Or if you’ve got any lime. Apparently it’s really good for the liver because of the—’
‘Would you all please just shut up and listen to me?’ Archie suddenly yelled.
They all looked at him in amazement. Archie never raised his voice.
‘There’s something you need to know.’ His eyes were on Cassie and she felt herself go cold. ‘We’ve been frantically trying to get hold of you, but your phone was off.’
‘Oh, she’s here! She’s here! Thank God!’ Cassie turned to find Hattie calling back up the stairs, before advancing down the hall towards her with her arms outstretched. ‘Oh, my poor lamb.’ She hugged Cassie close.
Cassie – who was now rigid with anxiety – stood as stiff as a board, waiting to be let go, to be told what was going on. Hattie stared back at her, hollow-eyed and hollow- cheeked. ‘Now, darling, it’s all going to be OK. I can feel it. In my bones, I can. I’m his mother and I know it’s all going to be OK.’
Cassie’s mouth opened but no sound rose from her throat; her eyes blinked, but they couldn’t see – instead Suzy’s tears, Gem’s quiet, Archie’s agitation, Luke’s fear balled together in her mind. Her phone had been switched off. It had been switched off!
The sound of feet – small, light, hurried – coming down the hallway made her glance over. They sounded echoey and she thought she was hallucinating at the sight of the slight, tidy woman running towards her. How could she be here? Why was she here?
There could be only one reason.
Gravity loosened its grip on her and she felt herself begin to float. She thought this must be what shock was, a total suspension of conscious control: she couldn’t take a step if she wanted to, couldn’t swat a fly or duck a punch. All she could do was wait – wait for the words that would spin her out of this self-protective cocoon and into freefall, because she already knew what they were going to say.
But they were too slow – or rather she was too fast – and as she fell to the floor, the words remained unsaid. Unreal. Untrue.
They were untrue.