In my heart I’ve made a pact

Promised myself I won’t look back

But it’s never long before I do

I’m too afraid to look around me in case my husband or my friends have made the link or can see the pain in my face, and I feel panic arise within me. Tom didn’t say my name, that’s one good thing, but God that was close. I had absolutely no idea that song existed but his fans knew every word. I can’t believe he wrote those words about me. I realize that just like Sophie, I’m crying too, but for so many different reasons.

For lost love, for regret, and for the aching I have right now in my heart and the confusion in my head.

I feel perspiration soaking the back of my neck and I’m finding it hard to breathe. I look around me quickly to see that Jack, Sophie and Harry are thankfully way too excited as finally the sound of the big song they’ve been waiting on, ‘Move Into Me’, makes the set list next, so they aren’t noticing my build-up of anxiety. I manage to excuse myself, pretending I desperately need the loo, and I interrupt the entire row to get out past them.

‘You all right, love?’ Jack calls after me, craning his neck as I shuffle past the others in our row.

‘I’m fine!’ I say, giving him a smile and a thumbs up. ‘Just need the loo!’

I hate telling lies, especially to Jack. I hate everything about this, except the song. I love the song. Is that wrong? The lyrics and melody are stuck like a carousel in my mind.

Oh how I wish I could stop

Thinking about you

I climb the steep steps that take me into the cool light of the tunnel-like corridor that runs around the arena, thankful to be out of the heat of the sticky crowd.

Again and again, I swear blind

That I’ve let you go …

But that’s never been the truth

I need water. I need to calm down. I need time to myself to digest that I’m in the same vicinity once again as Tom Farley, that a song he wrote is actually about me and that he has no idea I’m even here.

He hopes I’m happy. He’s met someone he wants to spend his future with at long last. In another world, in another life, that could have been me. I could have been another me.

I think I’m going to faint.

Chapter Nineteen