The No-Show by O'Leary Beth

Author:O'Leary, Beth [O'Leary, Beth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Adult
ISBN: 9780593438442
Goodreads: 58678549
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2022-03-09T10:14:15+00:00

Jane

Jane’s thumb hovers over Joseph Carter’s name.

They’ve communicated a couple of times since the wedding, but they haven’t seen each other for the last month and a half. It’s just innocuous texting, the sort that Jane hates – conversation with no substance. How are you? Doing good thanks, how’s things with you?

They may have said they were friends, but is this really friendship, this how-are-you-ing? If it is, she doesn’t want it. She wants the whole of him, the smell of him, his arms around her as they dance. She has given up on fighting this feeling now. The pain of that wedding dance in September showed quite how futile it was to try not to love Joseph Carter; accepting the agony of it all has been a peculiar kind of relief. Being a human is messy, Jane, Aggie told her the other day. No amount of rules can fix that. Sometimes you just need to let yourself feel something, even if it’s ugly.

Slowly, deliberately, Jane taps Joseph’s name. The message she’s drafted is waiting there: Are you still on for dinner this evening? x

They’d made the plan long before the wedding – they’d been talking about cooking after reading To Lahore, With Love, and Jane had mentioned her special chicken curry, the one she makes when she needs comfort food. He’d jumped on it. You have to make it for me, he’d said. I’m inviting myself around for dinner, here, hand me your phone. She’d laughed at his enthusiasm, told him it wasn’t that special; he’d picked a date months ahead, so she had plenty of time to practise, he’d said. She’d relaxed – November was so far away. Cooking Joseph dinner would break all the rules she’d built to keep him at a distance, but she had plenty of time to find an excuse to wriggle out of it.

Perhaps he knew that she’d only accept if he picked a long-distant date. Far enough away that it felt safe. Jane has changed so much since comfort curry for Joseph went into her diary – now the thought of not having that dinner is much more awful than the idea of cooking for him.

With a sudden intake of breath, Jane shifts her thumb across the screen and taps send.

She’s so preoccupied staring down at her phone that when the bell tinkles above the door of the charity shop, Jane takes at least five seconds to look up and notice her old colleague Lou standing there, rolling on to the sides of her feet, looking uncomfortable.

‘Hi,’ Lou says apologetically. ‘I didn’t know how to get in touch with you except by turning up here, and . . . we need to talk.’

‘Oh,’ Jane says, glancing towards the back of the shop, where Mortimer is sorting piles of tatty paperbacks. ‘Sorry, you . . . you came all the way from London? To see me?’

Lou nods, pressing her lips together. ‘Would you like to go somewhere private?’

‘I’m OK here,’ Jane says, suddenly a little afraid.

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