Chapters (50)
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication Page
- Contents
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Ninteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Epilogue
- Letter From the Author
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
Charlie looked at me. She didn’t answer my question. ‘Andrew, I want you to understand something. About me being jealous . . . I don’t know what Fraser told you about me. But whatever it was, he was a liar. He always lied when we were together. About everything. I loved him at first and he destroyed our relationship by lying, lying, lying. He slept with at least three other women while we were together and denied it. It was like he had a disease that stopped him from telling the truth. But the thing was, I thought it must be me, doing something to men to make them cheat on me. I already told you about Leo.’
I nodded. That was the boyfriend who had previously been unfaithful to her, the break-up causing her to turn to sleeping pills.
‘I thought about this a lot while I was away. The stuff with Fraser and Leo . . . that’s what made me so jealous and paranoid when I was with you. It was learned behaviour from my relationships with them. I thought you must be the same as them. That every man I met would let me down, betray me.’
‘I would never have betrayed you, Charlie.’
The look she gave me stabbed me in the heart.
‘Maybe not in that way.’ She sighed. ‘When I told Fraser I was leaving him, he couldn’t cope. He thought he was the one with all the power, that he would choose when to leave me. I spent that week between our first date and when I contacted you trying to deal with him. He was going psycho, threatening to kill himself. It was a real mess.’
‘Did you sleep with him that week?’
She was taken aback. ‘Would it matter?’
‘I guess not.’
‘For the record, I didn’t. I couldn’t stand him anymore.’
‘But that night, the night we first went out, you went home with him?’
‘I didn’t have a choice. He texted me, saying he’d seen me with you, that he was going to talk to you. I knew he’d tell you all sorts of lies about me and, well, I liked you. I didn’t want you to go off me. I spent that night trying to dissuade him from jumping off Waterloo Bridge. Maybe I should have let him.’ She paused. ‘I’m sorry I lied to you about that.’
‘You don’t need to apologise.’