by Suzy K Quinn
When we got back to the Oakley Arms I was all flushed and sweaty – my hair all frizzy around my face.
I thanked Alex for the run, and he said, ‘I’ll be here again tomorrow. Same time. We’ll do ten miles. Make sure you’re ready.’
Monday, September 12th
Another run with Alex last night. We did ten miles. Just like he said. Didn’t talk much. But it was nice. Just running together.
Tuesday, September 13th
The whole village is talking about Alex and me.
I’m trying to make out like it’s no big deal. But secretly I’m MEGA happy.
I get butterflies in my stomach whenever Alex calls at the pub.
And also, I’m running further than ever.
Friday, September 16th
Alex and I went running EVERY night this week.
EVERY NIGHT!
At times it’s hideous.
Alex is incredibly strict and doesn’t go easy on me.
‘Come on!’ he barks, as he bounds around me. ‘Keep up! Push yourself. PUSH yourself!’
But I have to admit we’re getting amazing results. I’ve run further and faster than ever. There are definitely times when I want to kill Alex and myself. But they’re getting fewer.
I’ve been so full of energy in the day that I’ve even run with the stroller sometimes. Just on a whim. Daisy always looks a bit shocked. Like I’m shoplifting her or something.
Saturday, September 17th
Helen phoned today.
She’d heard about Alex and I running around the village.
‘You’re barely out of your wedding gown,’ she said, ‘and you’re out in public with another man.’
I told her that since Nick got my bridesmaid pregnant, I could go out with whomever I liked.
‘Nobody knows Sadie was with Nicholas prior to the wedding. Or that she was pregnant so soon after. And I think it best we keep that on a low level. No sense in causing a scandal.’
God!
‘When Sadie has the baby it won’t be hard to work it out, will it?’ I shouted.
I could almost feel Helen wince down the phone. ‘There’s no need to swear.’
And then she said how important Nick’s reputation was in his profession.
‘He’s not a priest Helen,’ I said, ‘he’s an actor. A bit of scandal might do his career some good.’
‘BUT IT WOULDN’T DO ME ANY GOOD!’ she snapped.
Then she talked about men being men and said Nick’s father had been the same.
I said Nick’s dad sounded like an bastard.
She got annoyed then and threatened to ‘end this conversation if you can’t be a grown-up’.
I told her that since she phoned me, I didn’t mind in the slightest if she ended the conversation. In fact, I’d prefer it if she didn’t phone me up and tell me what to do.
I said, ‘I’m not engaged to your son anymore. I’m not living in your apartment anymore. And I don’t have to be nice to you anymore. So if I want to go jogging with Alex Dalton, I bloody well will.’
‘You’re only doing this to get at Nicholas, aren’t you?’ she said.
‘Oh get a life, Helen,’ I shouted and hung up.
Mum, Dad and Brandi gave me a round of applause.
Callum said, ‘Who was that headache?’
He sounds so much like Brandi sometimes.
‘The evil stepmother,’ said Mum.
‘Did she ask about Daisy?’ said Dad.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not once.’
Sunday, September 18th
HORRIBLE thing happened with Callum this morning.
Brandi and I were in Mum and Dad’s living room, when suddenly Callum’s Darth Vader costume caught on fire.
His black cape was literally a ball of flame.
I managed to throw Callum to the ground and roll on top of him while holding Daisy aloft in the other hand.
I thought I was crap at yoga, but it turns out I’m pretty bendy in an emergency.
Brandi was quick too. She shook up a bottle of Coca-Cola and used it like a fire extinguisher.
Luckily Callum was just fine. He has nine lives, that kid.
We both shouted at Callum for the next half an hour. It turns out he’d found an old lighter in the garden.
Brandi was really upset with herself for letting Callum get the lighter. But it wasn’t her fault. Callum had hidden it under his Darth Vader armour.
Monday, September 19th
Apparently, Alex and I running together is now officially the gossip of the village.
This is according to Mum, who is almost certainly the one spreading it.
Let them talk.
It’s perfectly innocent, much as I wish it weren't.
While we were running last night, I told Alex I’d updated my Facebook status to ‘single’.
‘God, is that what Facebook is all about?’ he said. ‘Telling everyone whether you’re in a relationship or not?’
It turns out HE’S NOT ON FACEBOOK!
I always wondered why I could never find him. (Yes – I did try to cyberstalk him when I was younger.)
Then he said I was ‘far too good for Nicholas Spencer’.
My knees go all weak when he looks right at me. Which isn’t all that good when I’m running.
Tuesday, September 20th
Did a ‘bad mother’ thing today.
Needed to get the forms filled in for all the legal stuff with Nick.
Put Daisy on her baby gym while I was doing it, thinking she’d be safe. But somehow she managed to pull my handbag off the sofa, unzip it, pull out a share-sized bag of Cheesy Doritos, open the packet (HOW?) and eat a load of tortilla chips.
I had a heart attack thinking about all the salt.
Spent an hour obsessively googling ‘baby salt death’, with Daisy crying in my arms.
It turns out a baby died from eating cereal!
And cereal can’t be half as salty as Doritos.
Panicked.
Took Daisy to Accident and Emergency.
After a few hours, two midwives came to see me.
They laughed when I told them about the Doritos.
Then they told me all the salty things they’d given their babies.
Pretzels. Bacon. Chicken Chow Mein.
‘And they turned out just fine,’ they kept saying.
Midwives are strange. One minute, they tell you to sterilise everything. The next minute, they’re making fun of you for being overly cautious.
You just can’t win.
Wednesday, September 21st
Went through the bin bag of stuff from the old apartment today. The one Nick packed up for me.
I really should have gone through it ages ago, but there have been so many more important things to do – like stopping Daisy sticking her fingers in plug sockets.
Silly Nick. He put the knick-knack coffee tin in there, which has his emergency credit card in it. The one Helen pays off.
I spent a long time staring at the credit card, wondering if I should take it on a big spending spree.
But no. I will be mature. The courts will (eventually) order him to give me money.
Saturday, September 24th
Ate takeaway Chinese with the family tonight – chicken chow mein, egg-fried rice, chicken in black bean sauce, prawn crackers, spicy battered beef and Chinese chicken curry.
Little bit of a splurge is okay right now because I’m losing loads of weight.
Still, it’ll be a job to squeeze into my running gear tonight.
Blah.
Better get ready. Alex will be here soon.
Sunday, September 25th
Oh good God in heaven.
Did fifteen miles with Alex, which I think is amazing in itself (although Alex had already done five by the time he picked me up).
When we got back to the waterfront, Alex said, ‘Fifteen miles. I think that deserves a drink, don’t you?’
I agreed, wanting to add, ‘And five pack
ets of dry-roasted peanuts.’
Usually, I would have said, ‘Dad will give us a free beer at the Oakley Arms.’
But I felt weird about drinking at Mum and Dad’s pub.
I was pleased when Alex said, ‘I was thinking the Yacht Club. It’s right over there. The wine’s very good.’
‘I didn’t know you drank wine,’ I said. Because I’ve only ever seen him drink whisky.
‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘But you do. White wine. And Guinness. Not together. Obviously.’
‘How did you know that?’ I asked.
‘Observation,’ he said.
I’ve only ever been to the Yacht Club for private parties (you have to be a member to drink there), so it was nice to go on a normal night.
The whole place is basically one long panoramic window built into pale, Swedish-style wood, so we had an amazing view of the river and all the boats bobbing in the water.
Alex was right about the wine – it was delicious. I mean, not that I really know much about wine. But it definitely tasted better than the stuff at Mum and Dad’s pub.
For a while, we sat watching the river, me drinking white wine, and Alex sipping some dark-coloured whisky with a Scottish name.
Then we started talking.
I found out that Alex spent part of his childhood in Shanghai, Singapore, Bahrain and a whole load of other places. Which explains a lot – namely why he and Zach weren’t around for most of the village events, but would magically appear at the Dalton charity balls with fantastic suntans.
I asked him how it was, growing up in lots of different places. He said it gave him an education.
I asked if Jemima liked staying in Great Oakley.
Alex said, ‘Of course. Why wouldn’t she?’
‘I just thought … I mean, you Daltons are well-travelled,’ I said. ‘I thought Great Oakley might seem too small for her. She might want to live in London eventually.’
Alex said Jemima loved Great Oakley.
As we were talking, fireworks went off along the river, in honour of some village celebration or other.
I thought of the burn on Alex’s arm and said, ‘You must hate fireworks.’
‘Loathe them,’ he smiled. ‘But that’s our secret.’
‘We didn’t have to go running tonight,’ I said. ‘You could have cancelled.’
‘Fireworks don’t bother me anymore,’ said Alex. ‘Although I’d never let Jemima stay in Great Oakley on Bonfire Night. So I suppose I still carry a few scars.’
I was a teensy bit drunk at that point – all that running had burned out the contents of my stomach. So I said, ‘There were so many rumours about that fire. No one knows what to believe.’
Alex’s expression didn’t change at all. ‘Great Oakley likes its rumours,’ he said. ‘Tell me. Would this be the rumour about my father setting our house alight for insurance purposes? Or the rumour that he left me in there to burn?’
I felt awful then. Because it’s true – they were the rumours.
Alex took a sip of whisky and said, ‘When the house was on fire, my father got me out. And Zach. So you see, Mr Dalton Senior isn’t all bad. And no – it wasn’t an insurance job. A firework set the stables alight, and the fire spread to the house.’
‘So how come you got burned?’ I asked. ‘No one else was hurt.’
I knew I’d gone too far then, because Alex looked out at the boats bobbing in the water and said, ‘I’ll tell you another time. Let’s talk about something else.’
So we did. We talked about growing up in the village, and the woods and the fishing stream and all the things we both did as children.
I teased Alex about being the stuck-up rich kid, and he teased me for being a chatterbox and wearing too many bright colours.
He said, ‘You were always the curly-haired blonde girl with the big voice and the bright pink cycling shorts.’
Of all the things he could remember … those cycling shorts!
And then he asked me if I remembered the rope swing.
‘The ten-foot-high one?’ I said. ‘The one that kid got knocked unconscious on? Of course I do. It’s still there, isn’t it?’
‘Do you remember the day I wouldn’t get on it?’ Alex asked.
I said yes.
I remember that day very well, actually. Some older boys teased Alex for being a wimp. You could see he was about to get into a fight, so I helped calm things down.
‘My father beat me with a tennis racket that morning,’ said Alex. ‘So hard I couldn’t sit down. That’s why I wouldn’t get on the swing. But I wasn’t about to tell those kids that. I would have fought all of them first.’
I was completely shocked. First, that his dad did that to him. And second that he was telling me, of all people.
‘That’s … shit,’ I said.
Because I couldn’t think of a better way to say it.
‘Do you remember the four-leaf clover you gave me?’ Alex said.
I laughed and said, ‘I remember.’
Fancy him remembering.
When the fight was kicking off, I found this perfect four-leaf clover and gave it to him. I told him it was lucky and he mustn’t break it by fighting.
It worked – Alex calmed down, and the other kids left.
Alex said, ‘I kept that clover. You didn’t know that, did you?’
‘You did?’ I said. ‘Why?’
‘It’s my lucky mascot,’ he said. ‘And probably saved me getting beaten up. When you can barely walk, fighting is never a good idea. I’ve never told anyone that before.’
‘About not wanting to fight?’ I said.
‘No,’ said Alex. ‘About the tennis racket.’
I felt like the whole room got really quiet. Like there was no one else around. Just the two of us.
Then Alex leaned forward and kissed me.
It was amazing. Just AMAZING.
Like being swept away.
Then Alex pulled back, and he said, ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’
‘Why not?’ I asked.
‘You and Nicholas Spencer,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it’s over. You have unresolved issues.’
I was all breathless, but managed to say, ‘What’s to resolve? He ran off with my bridesmaid.’
‘But you’d still get back together with him,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘We have a baby.’
‘That’s the trouble,’ said Alex.
We sat holding hands for … I don’t know. Maybe twenty minutes or something. Looking at each other. Not saying anything.
And then, bloody Helen came bobbing up to the table. I’d forgotten that she and Henry drink at the Yacht Club sometimes.
She said in her horrible shrill voice, ‘Alex. What a pleasure to see you. I’ve just been talking to your mother about arrangements for the New Year’s Eve Ball.’
Then she pretended to look all surprised to see me. ‘Juliette! Goodness, I didn’t expect to see you here. Where’s baby Daisy? Have you left her to the wolves?’
She was wearing a Vivienne Westwood suit that made her look like Cruella de Vil.
Henry was swaying beside her, clearly extremely drunk.
I told Helen that Daisy was with Mum. And Helen said, ‘Well I suppose your mother knows all about babies. She’s had enough of them.’
Alex didn’t take his eyes off me. He kept a firm grasp of my hand and said, ‘Good evening Mrs Jolly-Piggott. My solicitor Jeremy Samuels sends his regards. He’s representing Juliette now. So any comments you have to make, make through him.’
Helen’s mouth fell clean open.
Then she stammered that she thought Ted Grunty was representing me, and why wasn’t she told about this new development? She shouted at Henry for not passing correspondence on to her. Then she said, ‘Well! I suppose legal matters and socialising don’t mix. Isn’t that what they say? So. Anyway, Henry and I were just getting a drink.’
‘It looks like Henry has dru
nk enough for both of you,’ said Alex.
I started giggling. Once I start giggling, I can’t stop. And I didn’t. Not when Alex led me out of the Yacht Club, or up the little roads back to my parent’s pub.
I was still giggling when we reached my front door.
‘You’ve got to stop that now,’ said Alex.
I asked why.
‘Because otherwise, I can’t kiss you goodnight.’
I was suddenly all serious. I said, ‘Goodnight, Alex.’
‘Goodnight, Juliette.’
He stood watching me for a moment, with that little smile of his. ‘I’m usually so in control,’ he said.
And then he kissed me again.
It absolutely took my breath away.
He was so sexy. So warm. So dangerous. So … everything. And I didn’t want it to end.
When Alex pulled back, I was left all giddy and silly, holding onto the front door.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow for training,’ said Alex.
I think I must have said okay. I remember nodding dumbly, at least.
‘Eight o’clock,’ he said. ‘Be ready.’
Am now shitting myself.
It feels like I’m in an alternate reality.
What next?
Afternoon
How can time be going so slowly? When will eight o’clock be here?
Late afternoon
Too nervous to eat.
I just can’t stop thinking about Alex.
This is madness.
Daisy slept soundly last night. Yet I was wide awake – crazy infatuated like a teenager.
Oh, this is ridiculous. I’m a mum now. A single mum. I don’t have silly romances. None of this makes sense.
It was just kissing. Just stupid, drunken kissing.
Oh my God!
What am I going to say to Alex? Are we going to pretend like it didn’t happen?
Will he want to forget all about it?
Or … or …
6 pm
Crazy storm outside.
It’s like the world knows something is happening. And all this energy is just flying around the sky.