‘There were … twins?’

‘Yeah. We’d wanted to keep it a secret for a while. That there were two of them, like.’

‘Oh Gareth,’ whispered Catrin, wrapping her arms around him.

He seemed unmoved, his body rigid. ‘It was a little girl,’ he said. ‘And she was smaller. Than Jack.’

‘Oh God,’ sobbed Catrin.

They stood in silence, each deep in their own thoughts.

‘I need to see her,’ said Catrin quietly. ‘I need to see Jude.’

‘D’you want me to wait here with you, Gar?’ asked Sol.

‘No, you’re all right. There’s something I’ve got to do.’ And he stubbed out his cigarette.

‘Can’t we help? With whatever it is …? I mean, wouldn’t you rather stay put?’

‘No. Tell Jude I’ll be back in an hour,’ Gareth said, and he took a few steps before suddenly stopping in his tracks.

‘We called her Georgia, by the way.’

His voice finally breaking when he uttered her name, wiping away tears of rage.

31

Lana

Her mother had knocked twice on her door that morning and both times she’d shouted out to be left alone, that she was still sleeping. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. Luckily her sister Jess was away for a sleepover at a friend’s, otherwise she’d have had no peace. Since Lana had left for college, Jess had commandeered the room they’d once shared, pushing Lana well and truly out of the nest. She lay on the bed with her back to the door, staring at the wall, feeling utterly bereft, hungover and alone.

How could she? Lana asked herself over and over again.

How could Judith, her best friend since they were five, do this to her? It must have been going on for months – Judith and Gareth, Jude and Gar, playing the happy couple in secret, sleeping in the bed that she’d slept in with him, having sex, sharing jokes, making dinner, making a baby …

Looking back, it all made sense, of course. All these months when Judith had cold-shouldered her, even when things were apparently OK again with them – the pizza night at Cat’s, the hen night in Cardiff – she’d obviously been sleeping with him all that time.

Thief.

Traitor.

Disloyal, two-faced, backstabbing bitch.

It hurt her, despite everything, to call her best friend a bitch. But she was in so much pain. And what made the pain so much worse was that Catrin knew too. A double disloyalty. A double deception. A double loss.

Sleep had eluded her. All night, thoughts of Judith and Gareth had swirled around her head in a taunting maelstrom. She was the hard-done-by one. The wronged woman. The spurned girlfriend.

Except she wasn’t his girlfriend any more, was she? She’d relinquished that title the moment she’d invited Damian Magill back to her room. So what right did she have to be upset? And yet it wasn’t Gareth she was most upset with – it had long been over between the two of them, after all.