Claudia Carroll 3 Book Bundle. Claudia Carroll

is all he says back at me a bit worriedly. ‘Good.’

      Okay, the first ‘good’ reassured me, the second one didn’t.

      By that evening, the Chinese whispers have all floated back to me, same as they always do.

       Hot gossip. Either Eloise Elliot is having a nervous breakdown or else she’s in love. With that guy Ruth O’Connell saw her strolling down the street with a while back, eating crepes and drinking coffee, remember? Total hunk, Ruth says, real man’s man, not at all the type you’d expect Madame Elliot to be dating. And apparently she bunked off this afternoon, God knows where, and came back drunk and covered in grass, shaking like a leaf. Not a word of a lie, didn’t Gavin Hume himself meet her? Besides, there’s no other explanation for the way she’s been acting lately; did you hear what she said to Rachel before she sent her home? She said your family is far more important than any shagging job! I know, it sounds made-up, coming from her, but it’s the God’s honest truth.

       And she told Robbie that we weren’t an Asian sweatshop, then gave him the rest of the day off for no other reason than to go to a Confirmation … I know, she’d have snapped at him for even asking for time off only a few months ago. Mark my words, something’s come over her and if you ask me, it’s either a heavy-duty dose of Valium for her nerves that’s making her act so weird, or else it’s all down to this new guy she’s supposedly seeing.

       Just remember, you heard it here first!

      And this time, I couldn’t even brush it aside, as I normally would.

      Mainly because most of it was true.

       Chapter Ten

      I’m wide awake at five in the morning, my brain alert and whirring, ready to go. Barely slept a wink all night, in fact. All I can think over and over again like a loop playing in my head is … I’m doing it. I’m coming clean to Jake. Before this day is out. For better or for worse. What Helen said to me the other night in her calm wisdom, is the right thing to do. She’s absolutely on the money and what’s more I know it. Every spare hour that I spend time with him, every phone call, every long, meandering gossipy chat is time that I’m effectively leading the guy up the garden path. Should I choose to continue being as pally with him as I have been up till now, then I’m deceiving him, simple as. Something friends do not do.

      Not that I’d particularly know how friends behave or how they don’t, but as I pointed out to Helen, I’m on a learning curve.

      Anyway, ever since that toe-curlingly awkward meeting in the Green yesterday, I can’t handle keeping the truth from him anymore. I swear it’s physically giving me heartburn. And I know it’s going to be awkward, and Jake will have every right to be furious with me, but for better or for worse, I’m telling him out straight. As we say in the Post, welcome to the wonderful world of got-no-choice. Should he choose to meet Lily and be a part of her little life, then whoop-di-do, but if not, then at the very least, I hope we’ll part company as friends.

      I hope.

      Christ alive, to say I nearly had a heart attack yesterday afternoon is an understatement and I still shudder to think of what might have happened. All it would have taken was for Lily to waddle over to me demanding some chocolatey treat and calling me Mama, like she always does. That’s all, then the game would be up, it would be all over bar the shouting. And, I keep asking myself, would it have been in any way fair on poor Jake to find out like that?

      But, somehow, miraculously, the angels took pity on me and let me get away with it, albeit leaving me a nervous, trembling wreck for the rest of the entire day. So by far the best thing all round is just to get it over with and just pray he doesn’t want to do a runner or storm off in high dudgeon the minute he realises exactly how much I’ve been leading him on. As, I reluctantly have to admit, he’d be perfectly entitled to do.

      Because in a rare moment of introspection I realise that, well, I’d miss chatting to him, wouldn’t I? I’d miss being able to sound off against him, miss telling him all the thousand irritating little minutiae that make up my average day. I’m surprising myself at how much my heart physically twists at the very thought that after this day is out, there’s a chance I might never get to see him again. I’d miss hearing him chat all about his day too and about how he is getting on at the language school. And I’d especially miss sniggering at all the devious tortures that he’s always threatening to carry out on Seth Coleman as punishment for continuing to bark up my bum day and night. Miss it all far more than I’d ever have thought possible.

      With sudden realisation, I can clearly see now just how dependent I’ve become on him. The extent to which I lean on him. Me, of all people, whose proudest boast once was that no man was an island, but that I sure as hell was. Which is why today is D-Day. Endgame.

      As it’s Sunday, I’d planned to take Lily to a Disney movie she’s been pestering me to see, then I dithered a bit about whether or not to invite Jake along, so he and Lily could spend a bit of time together. But on Helen’s sage advice, I decided not to.

      ‘I’m worried it might all be too much too soon, for Jake, not to mention Lily,’ she wisely counselled. ‘Better to meet him alone, just the two of you, and break it to him then.’

      ‘Easier said than bleeding done. Then what?’

      ‘Then just see how he feels about the whole thing and take it from there. If he agrees to see Lily, then and only then, I think would be the right time to tell her. At the very least, you’re protecting her from being let down. Remember, we don’t know if he’s going to want to be a part of her life yet. Far better at this stage just to play it safe, don’t you think?’

      Four in the afternoon and Helen, Lily and I are just streaming with the crowds coming out of the multiplex cinema, with Lily singing at the top of her voice then, as usual, demanding ice cream, when my mobile rings. The office of course, screaming at me to get in, that there’s an emergency with next week’s Culture section that needs troubleshooting.

      Rats, so much for precious Sunday afternoon Mummy-time. Reluctantly, I drop Lily and Helen back home, then race on into work. And on the way, with my resolve still solid, I call Jake and arrange to see him for dinner later on tonight. He already left a few messages for me yesterday evening which to my shame I never got back to; couldn’t. Needed time to plot and plan out what the hell to say to him.

      ‘You know I’d love to,’ he says. ‘But I’ve got a night class at eight. Unless I pick you up at work beforehand and we have a quick bite to eat then? Would that work for you? I’m already starving.’

      I tell him that’s fine, thinking that it’s not really; I’d far rather have the whole evening to talk to him when he didn’t have to rush off, but it’s at least better than nothing. He agrees to call into the office for me and that’s that. The stage is set.

      Three long hours later and I’m still with Marc from Culture, hammering out the final layout for the following week’s magazine and having one of my bickering sessions with him over what gets the final cover. As usual, it goes along the following lines:

      Him; has to be some band that have played fewer than twenty gigs in their whole life but who are now not only a massive YouTube phenomenon but who are about to play their debut gig at the Oxegen festival and need all the press promotion they can get. Otherwise they’ll end up gigging in a remote field in County Meath, surrounded by a few indifferent cattle, while half a dozen mud-drenched revellers drunkenly look on. Assuming they’re lucky and get even that much of a turn out, that is.

      Me; over my dead body, no one’s ever heard of that shower, barring they’ve spent the past two years on the lunatic fringes of the internet. They’re way too obscure, and anyway, who wants to read a magazine cover story about a band that’s largely unknown outside of their own living room? The cover needs to go to either a big Oscar-winning movie that’s opening or else our national theatre’s touring production