‘I don’t know what to say to you.’ His tone was short, alienating her further still.

She waited, hoping he might say more, and when he didn’t, she drew on every bit of strength she could muster and took the lead. ‘It’s been the most terrible day . . .’ She whispered the understatement.

‘Yes.’

‘Did you, erm . . . did you get nervous?’ She’d hoped he’d speak freely, and she resented the fact that she was having to prise answers from him. ‘Was that it?’ She hated the note of hope in her question, knowing that she needed answers, no matter how painful.

She didn’t have to be looking at him to see him shaking his head in her peripheral vision, and awareness of this slowly pulled the plug of hope from her gut.

‘I . . . I just don’t understand,’ she began.

‘It’s complicated.’ He swallowed.

‘It’s not really, though, is it? Or at least it shouldn’t be.’ She cleared her throat, her spit thickened with nerves. ‘You asked me to marry you. You told me you loved me. We planned the wedding. I put on a massive frock and you didn’t show up.’

He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I don’t know if I can deal with this.’

‘You don’t know if you can deal with it?’ She felt the first flash of anger and it cracked open her kindness and her desire to figure this out civilly. Maybe Bella was right: the reason he hadn’t shown was because he was a coward and a knob. But if this were true, she felt diminished by the fact, knowing he was her great love and that she had picked him to marry. ‘You don’t have a choice, Digby! You can’t do something so bloody awful to me and hope it all just goes away! You have to deal with it. This is Port Charles, not London – I can’t hide away or lie low until it blows over! This is a tiny place and what you have done to me is big news.’ Her chest heaved at this truth. Everyone would be talking . . . everyone . . . It was a thought as monstrous as it was unbearable.

‘I know, I know.’ He covered his eyes briefly; she suspected that like a child he hoped that when he looked again she might have disappeared entirely. No such luck. ‘I’ve had my mother going at me all night and again this morning and I’m exhausted with trying to get everything straight in my head!’ he levelled.