“But it wasn’t your decision, was it?” Richard’s tone was flat. “It wasn’t your place to intervene in our relationship. But you did it anyway, and this is where we are now.” He turned to Milly. “You’ve known her forever, and you think she’s your best friend, but would a true friend really do that? She destroyed our marriage, Milly. You might want to think about that when you’re protecting her from the fallout of having done exactly the same thing to someone else.”

Without giving them a chance to respond he left the boathouse, slamming the door behind him.

Silence descended. Nicole couldn’t breathe. Her vision was blurred by tears.

She needed to say something, do something, but what?

Where should she start? How could she possibly make this right?

She couldn’t find the words. Maybe there weren’t any words that would fix this because some of what he’d said was true.

Chapter 20Milly

Milly stared at the door that Richard had just slammed behind him.

She felt shocked and shaken. What did that all mean? What had just happened here?

She was struggling to make sense of it, to turn the words and the looks into something she could comprehend.

Nicole had known about Richard’s affair. Nicole had confronted him. And she’d never mentioned it to Milly. Not then, and not in response to any one of the desperate emails and messages Milly had sent in her direction after Richard had left her.

She’d ignored her.

Milly walked to the nearest chair and sat down before her legs gave way.

She’d thought that Richard’s affair had been the lowest point, but now she was discovering it was possible to go lower.

And there was no point in asking whether what Richard had said was true, because she could see from Nicole’s face that it was.

The fact that Nicole had known intimate details about the state of Milly’s marriage even before Milly had was so deeply uncomfortable and humiliating that she wanted to curl up in a ball and hide. She felt like a fool, as if she’d missed something obvious that everyone else had known about. Being the last to know something was never a good place to be, especially when the topic in question was your marriage.

“Why didn’t you tell me? When you overheard Richard’s conversation on the terrace that day, why didn’t you come straight to me?” She couldn’t believe her friend had known all this time and hadn’t said a word. And there had been so many opportunities.

Eighteen months of opportunities.

And the last few weeks when they’d gradually healed their relationship, or so Milly had thought, Nicole still hadn’t said anything despite multiple opportunities.

The sense of betrayal was painful.