“But it felt right?” Georgie said, copying Brendon and back-swinging her leg.

“It did feel right.” Megan sighed. “Very right. And with hindsight I wish I’d stayed, talked to him, gone into the kitchen where he was. But my heart was going like the clappers, the dream was so fresh in my head. I was claustrophobic, I was…”

“Scared,” Brendon said, sitting and crossing his legs. He held his hands in the air, making ‘O’s with his thumbs and index fingers, and again he shut his eyes.

“Yes,” Megan said, also sitting. Gucci jumped onto her lap and she fluffed his fur. “I was scared. James is so mature, so grown up. He’s got a big job, a future, he’s kind and—”

“The opposite to Dylan.” Georgie righted herself and sat like Brendon.

“Yes, that’s exactly it.”

“Dylan was always such a mummy’s boy,” Brendon said, tilting his chin. “I bet that’s the last way you’d describe James.”

Megan was quiet for a moment. Brendon was right. Dylan was a mummy’s boy. James, on the other hand, was exactly the type of man she’d always hoped Dylan would become once he was a husband and a father. But she’d been a fool to get so far down the road with him that she’d stood in a white dress in a church. People didn’t change because they had a ring on their finger or because they’d produced offspring. Dylan would be the way he was forever.

Thank goodness he was no longer part of her life.

“So you haven’t seen him since last night?” Georgie said. “James, that is.”

“No, I spotted my clothes spread over the floor.” Megan groaned as she remembered hopping around naked, trying to untangle her underwear and get them on. She’d been able to hear James humming downstairs and her brain had felt foggy yet adrenaline had coursed through her veins. She’d just had to get out of there. Shrug off the night and escape into the day.

But now…

Now she didn’t feel like that. She’d behaved badly towards James. What must he have thought when he’d found her gone? He’d been making breakfast for them, she was sure of it. She’d heard him banging around in the kitchen as she’d grabbed her purse and let herself out of the front door.

She’d only taken three steps at a walk then had burst into as fast a run as her red heels would take her. She dreaded to think what a sight she would have been to passers-by and to the taxi driver she’d hailed once on the main road. She’d hugged her arms around herself in the cab, the streets of London a blur as they’d moved through traffic. Her limbs had felt twitchy, her heart still pounding.

She’d just had to escape.

Get away.