‘This is making me crazy, isn’t it?’ My sister’s face is as white as the driven snow when she looks up at me. ‘I have completely lost my mind because of this man. I have to call an end to this, Annie, don’t I?’

I take Lauren’s horrible orange-gloved hand in mine. ‘Yes, darling, you do.’

My sister’s tears fall again. And I cry with her.

Chapter 72

Chapter 72

Eventually, Lauren comes out of the toilet cubicle. ‘My bum was getting numb,’ she complains as she waddles forth.

My sister takes off her gloves and splashes her face with water. ‘What are we going to do now? I can’t go back in there, Annie. It would kill me.’

‘Stay in here until I can find somewhere quiet for you to go. I’ll tell BC that you’re not feeling well.’

‘Seasick,’ Lauren says. ‘Tell him I’m seasick.’

To be honest, my stomach is rolling too as if I have got some kind of sympathetic travel sickness.

‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ I tell Lauren. ‘Don’t move.’

‘I can’t bloody move in this!’ she howls after me.

I scuttle off down the corridor in search of Blake Chadwick, but I don’t have to go very far. As I turn the corner, or whatever the nautical term for it is on a boat, I find who I’m looking for.

Stopping in my tracks, I’m transfixed.

There, pressed up against each other in a little nook, are BC and Minny. His tongue is down her throat, one hand is on her breast, the other up her skirt. Now I do feel like I’m going to be sick. Nausea smashes into me, heaving up to my chest.

I reel back against the wall and practise deep-breathing techniques.

How can I have been so stupid? How can I have ever believed that this man was interested in me? To think that I had my hair done for him. And bought a new dress. To think that I could have – may well have – jeopardised my marriage for him?

‘Someone might see us,’ Minny murmurs.

‘Who cares?’ Blake says back, and continues his tender assault.

Who cares, indeed?

I do. I care. Fool that I am.

‘What if Annie sees us?’ Minny says, mouth still on his. ‘She’ll be upset. She’s got a crush on you.’

Blake presses against her. ‘She’s old enough to be my mother.’

I only just stop myself from gasping out loud or jumping out of my hiding-place to protest. For the record, I am so not. Though how could I, a plain, boring mother of two grown-up children, think that someone like Blake Chadwick could have looked at me with a twinkle in his eye? Of course he’s going to want a younger, slimmer, more available girl, rather than a middle-aged woman with a spare tyre and stars in her eyes.