‘I don’t need to think about it!’ I plead with him in desperation. ‘I love you, Jack! I love you and everything we have together. I messed up and I’m sorry but I won’t ever be so foolish again.’

Jack laughs a little, not in a joyous way but in a way that looks like he is realizing something for the first time.

‘You know, Charlotte, it’s a bit ironic, this whole thing,’ he says to me, his mouth bitter and twisted and sad. Yes, mostly sad.

‘How do you mean?’ I ask him.

He pauses. ‘Matthew’s decision to get into his car that day was his own decision, no one else’s,’ he says to me. ‘Yes, you upset him with your big announcement about your relationship with Tom, but his reaction to that was all his own making. It’s about time you let your own involvement in that go, but maybe you don’t want to?’

‘What?’

‘Maybe it’s the only thing left that links you to Tom Farley and you don’t want to ever let it go?’ he continues. ‘Have a really good think about it. We can see where all of this – our marriage, our home and whatever future we have – stands when I get back, but I won’t tolerate lies, Charlotte. You mean more to me than that, and I thought you felt the same way too.’

I watch him walk away from me without glancing back. I urge him to look back but he doesn’t.

The taxi driver opens the boot of the car and Jack puts his case in, then goes to the back seat and takes out his phone, using that as his focus until the car drives off and our cottage here in Ardara is far out of sight.

I close the front door and scream into the silence.

Damn you, Tom Farley. And damn my weakness for you too.

What on earth am I meant to do now?

Chapter Twenty-One

I ignore several phone calls from Sophie as I lie in bed later that evening, contemplating the stretch of ten days ahead with no Jack, no job and no clue of where I’m going in my life.

I haven’t eaten all day, I haven’t showered and, in true self-destruction mode, I make the mistake of going on social media where I come across photos of last night’s gig, multiple shares of the song ‘You’ and thousands of comments from fans drooling over Tom, still wondering who his mysterious Dublin girl once was.

If only they knew the very unglamorous truth. If only they could see me now, lying here alone with my tear-stained face and my relationship in tatters.