Cathy Kelly 6-Book Collection: Someone Like You, What She Wants, Just Between Us, Best of Friends, Always and Forever, Past Secrets

Dispirited by both her phone calls, Leonie decided there was nothing for it: she’d drop in on Doug.

Putting Penny’s lead on, she walked briskly down to his house.

He emerged from his studio with tired eyes, his old jeans covered with paint.

‘Fancy a walk?’ she asked brightly.

He grinned. ‘Great idea. I’ll be ready in two minutes. We could do a few more miles on the Wicklow Way.’

The answering-machine light was flashing hysterically when she got home from the walk with Doug and the three delirious dogs. Hugh had left four messages, each more anxious than the one before.

‘I’m sorry, Leonie. We’ve got to talk,’ he said each time.

Talk to a bloody psychiatrist! she hissed as she pressed the delete button. The walk had calmed her down, although she hadn’t told Doug what had happened. He was very intuitive, so he had probably figured out that something was wrong. But he would never pry.

Hugh rang again that night.

Leonie was reasoned and calm this time, having regretted her earlier outburst.

‘I respect the fact that you have children, Hugh,’ she said, cutting off his ‘I’m sorry, Leonie,’ before he could even say it. ‘And in the same way, you’ve got to respect the fact that I have too.’

‘I do,’ he protested.

‘You don’t seem to,’ she said sadly. ‘I know that when people of our age meet, we have a lot of emotional and physical baggage, but we’ve got to learn to cope with that. I find it hard to deal with Jane and you, apparently, find it hard to deal with my children.’

‘I don’t,’ he repeated.

‘Hugh, you didn’t want the girls to go on holiday with us.’ Leonie couldn’t think of anything more hurtful than that. ‘We’re a package deal, Hugh. You get me, you get the kids too. It’s that simple.’

‘Other people’s children are hard to deal with,’ Hugh said. ‘The only child I ever really got on with was Jane. Even with Stephen I wasn’t great. I’m not good with kids.’

‘That’s a cop out,’ she said frostily. ‘I made an effort with Jane even though she hates my guts. You won’t even try with my children. How often did you want to come here and have dinner with us? Once, that’s all. You preferred to meet in town or at your place, and now I know why.’

‘Jane doesn’t hate you,’ Hugh said, still stung by Leonie’s remarks about his daughter.

Leonie lost her temper. ‘Wake up and smell the coffee, Hugh! She hates any woman who tries to take you away from her. Are you honestly telling me that she doesn’t?’

‘She’s sensitive about my dating someone,’ he said.

If it hadn’t been such a serious conversation, Leonie would have laughed out loud. Jane, sensitive?

‘Hugh, if you think it’s because she’s sensitive, that’s your business,’ Leonie said, resisting the impulse to say that Jane was an obsessive, manipulative, control freak who needed a sharp injection of reality to make her cop on. ‘I think we should cool things for a bit, step back and consider our relationship.’

‘Why?’ he demanded. ‘That’s code for breaking up, you know it, Leonie.’

‘It’s not. It’s giving us time to think. You need to decide if you want to date a woman with three children and I need to decide if I want to date you.’

There was a pause. ‘You’re very hard about this, Leonie.’

‘I’m not being hard,’ she said. ‘I’m being realistic. I actually worried over whether Penny would get on with your dogs. I should have been worried about whether you’d get on with Abby, Mel and Danny, and how I’d get on with Jane and Stephen. And, crucially,’ she paused, ‘how they’d feel about us.’

‘We can’t break up over something so silly,’ Hugh blustered.

‘It’s not silly and we’re not breaking up. We’re taking time out,’ Leonie pointed out. ‘I’ll phone you in a couple of weeks when we’re all feeling less emotional.’

‘But what about our holiday?’ Hugh wailed.

‘Go with Jane.’

When she hung up, Leonie thought about how she felt. Would she burst into tears and head straight for the gin? No. She smiled grimly. She wasn’t emotional at all. Hugh had been a nice idea: a lovely man to go on dates with, see films with and have sex with. But he’d been nothing more than that. He wasn’t the one to fill her with passion and longing. If he had been, she’d have been sobbing her heart out now. She’d have fought tooth and nail to loosen Jane’s stranglehold over him. And he’d have understood how much she loved her kids. He wasn’t the One after all.

She went into the kitchen and decided what to cook for dinner. Poor Hugh, she thought as she chopped up vegetables for a stir-fry, he’d never escape from the claustrophobic embrace of Jane. He longed for love and she’d frighten off any woman who dared to get close to him.

Hannah sat on a cushion on the sitting-room floor, carefully unwrapping ornaments from tissue paper. She’d unwrapped everything from the kitchen and had painstakingly put every cup, plate, saucer and bowl away, after carefully washing out the cupboards first. Now she was working on the sitting-room boxes. There were so many of them. How did she have so much stuff?

The front door slammed and the china she’d left on the floor rattled with the vibration.

‘Hannah!’ roared Felix. ‘Are you home?’

Where the hell else would I be? Hannah growled. I don’t know anybody, all my friends are in Ireland and I don’t have a car. Where am I going to go?

‘In here,’ she called.

Two hands appeared at the door, one holding a big pink gift bag, the other, an enormous bouquet of lilies.

Then Felix appeared, his handsome face lit up with a giant grin. ‘Pressies for you, my love. Because you’re the most wonderful woman in the world.’

In spite of herself, Hannah smiled. He strolled over to her, bent down and presented her with the bouquet. She inhaled the wonderful scent.

‘There’s more,’ Felix said, handing her the pink gift bag. Inside was a bottle of champagne which she held up and waggled at him. ‘I can’t drink, you dope,’ she said mildly.

‘That’s for me,’ laughed Felix, taking it from her. ‘The rest is for you.’

The rest was a bottle of Chanel’s Allure, one of her favourite perfumes, a box of hand-made chocolates that would go straight on to her already swelling tummy, Hannah grinned, and finally, a sliver of amber silk that shimmered as she held it up to admire it. A slinky, short nightdress that must have cost an arm and a leg. An arm and a leg they didn’t have. Since the backing had collapsed for the film Felix was supposed to be making in September, money was even tighter than ever.

‘Felix,’ she said, lost in admiration, ‘we can’t afford this.’

‘Yes we can, my love,’ he said, sitting on the floor beside her and nuzzling her neck. ‘We’re in the money again. They’ve approved a second series of Bystanders and the wages have gone mega.’

‘Oh, Felix,’ she said gratefully. ‘That’s fantastic. I was so worried about money…’

‘And about me, I suppose,’ he said ruefully. ‘I know, I’m sorry. I’m a bastard to live with when I’m out of work. I’ve been horrible, but I’m going to make it up to you. Forgive me?’

She nodded tremulously.

Felix began to pull her cardigan off. ‘Let’s see what this wonderful nightie looks like on,’ he murmured.

‘Felix, we can’t!’ said Hannah. ‘It’s still light. The curtains are open. Anyone could come up the path and see us.’