‘And I love you too,’ she said. ‘That’s why I’m letting you go.’

She worried that if he kept coming round, kept working his way back into her good books, kept protesting his love for her, then she would not have the strength to resist him. And, this time, Lauren so wanted to.

Before she could put this into words, Jude glanced at his watch. ‘I have to go. I’ve got an appointment with the bank.’

There was always somewhere else that her lover needed to be. She should remember that. Put that at the forefront of her mind and forget how wonderful he could be when he wanted to. Was it an appointment with the bank, Lauren thought, or was Georgia sitting waiting for him somewhere? She realised that as long as she was with Jude, she’d never be entirely free of those thoughts.

‘Come back to work,’ he begged.

‘I can’t. I need time. I’ll take a couple of weeks’ holiday until I decide what to do.’

‘I can’t live without you,’ he said.

And Lauren only wished that he’d decided that much, much earlier.

Chapter 82

Chapter 82

Following Chelsea’s advice, I now have a growing pile of rubbish – sorry, saleable items – to take to a car-boot sale. I’m sure there must be a dozen round here. I’ll have a scan through the local paper and pick my pitch.

I did also discover, to my surprise, that I do, in fact, have a pretty basket lurking in my loft. So I bribed my dear son to nip down to the local Co-op supermarket for me to buy a few groceries. Now I’ve spent over an hour, propped on my good leg, making a range of sandwiches, chocolate chip muffins and pretty iced cup cakes to sell to my colleagues for their lunch tomorrow. Making sandwiches on one leg, rather than washing cars is, I have to admit, infinitely easier. If not as profitable. Though if I manage to sell twenty sandwiches at two pounds and twenty of the cakes at fifty pence each, that should net me around fifty pounds – which isn’t too shabby and doesn’t involve me wearing ridiculous costumes. And, frankly, I feel that I’ve now developed a severe allergy to silly outfits.

Talking of silly outfits brings my sister to mind. I’ve called Lauren a dozen times today but she’s still not picking up. She does, however, reply to all of my texts. She tells me she’s perfectly fine and I don’t believe a single word of it. If I can’t talk to her today then I’m going to go down to her flat after work tomorrow to see exactly what’s going on.