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Back Because She Loves Me Save as PDF
Chapters (50)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication Page
  4. Contents
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Ninteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-one
  26. Twenty-two
  27. Twenty-three
  28. Twenty-four
  29. Twenty-five
  30. Twenty-six
  31. Twenty-seven
  32. Twenty-eight
  33. Twenty-nine
  34. Thirty
  35. Thirty-one
  36. Thirty-two
  37. Thirty-three
  38. Thirty-four
  39. Thirty-five
  40. Thirty-six
  41. Thirty-seven
  42. Thirty-eight
  43. Thirty-nine
  44. Forty
  45. Forty-one
  46. Forty-two
  47. Epilogue
  48. Letter From the Author
  49. Acknowledgements
  50. About the Author

I stared at my phone. Sasha must have got it wrong. Of course she had. Normally, I would have known that straight away, but with everything that was going on . . . I sent Charlie a text, asking her to call me when she got a minute. After that, I looked in the fridge and took out a bottle of wine. I needed to get drunk.

When Charlie called me, a couple of hours later, I had almost finished the wine. I didn’t ask her whether she’d been in Herne Hill yesterday afternoon, unable to think of a way of asking it without revealing all my suspicions. She told me about an amusing incident on the course, said that she missed me, told me they were going out in Newcastle but she didn’t really want to go.

‘What are you doing tonight?’ she asked.

‘Nothing. Staying in, watching TV.’

‘You should go out. Why don’t you go and see Sasha?’

‘Really?’

A soft sigh. ‘Yes, really. I know there’s nothing going on between you, and she’s your best friend. Apart from me, I mean.’ She laughed. ‘I need to make an effort to be friends with her.’

I felt like my brain was being ripped in two. ‘She said something very similar earlier.’

‘You saw her today?’

‘No, she emailed me.’

‘Oh, right. Well, that’s good. You don’t want the women in your life to be at war, do you?’

I couldn’t tell Charlie that I didn’t want to go out because I had no energy, that I was worried sick, that all I wanted to do was hide in my flat. So I said, ‘No, I think I’m going to stay in. There’s a film on that I want to watch.’

I woke up late the next day with another hangover, having polished off nearly two bottles of red wine. This needs to stop, I thought, running myself a hot bath, planning to sweat out the alcohol.

Charlie would be back the next day and, sitting in the bath, I made my mind up. I was going to ask Charlie about everything. I would tell her I knew about her offering Kristi money and visiting Karen. I would also tell her I knew she lived with her ex-boyfriend. It was the only way forward. I would be able to gauge her reaction to the news that Karen had died of a drug overdose, see what she had to say about Kristi and Fraser. I would look into her eyes as we spoke and, I felt confident, I would know.

I didn’t know, however, what I would do with this knowledge.