‘We might have guessed,’ Jake said. ‘She’d turn up at the opening of an envelope. Anything trendy, happening and free.’

‘Yeah,’ his friend agreed. ‘It’s a shame she doesn’t apply the same criteria to her men. You’d never have stood a chance.’

‘It was such a shock. I just hadn’t envisaged seeing her so soon.’ Jake forced himself up and found his cup of tea. He distracted himself by stirring it unnecessarily with his spoon. ‘She said the baby was mine.’ He avoided looking at his friend. ‘But it’s gone.’ Jake could feel hot tears behind his eyes. ‘Gone. She was a little girl.’

‘Oh man,’ Pip said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Me too.’

‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Something like if you play with fire, you should expect to get every shred of your skin flayed off in the flames.’

‘You had no idea that it would turn out like this.’

He wondered if he had would he still have stomped in blindly with his size tens just for the thrill of an illicit affair. The awful thing was that at the time he hadn’t even stopped to consider the repercussions.

‘If it’s any consolation, Neve’s history at Dunston & Bradley,’ Pip offered. ‘The client hated her presentation on the Blow account. Alec is tiring of her demands already. I think he’s worried that he’ll get caught in the backlash.’

‘Good old Alec. Still looking after number one.’

‘Whatever way,’ Pip said, ‘my bet is that she’ll be out of there by Friday.’

‘It couldn’t happen to a nicer woman.’ Some women deserved to be mothers while some other women deserved all they had coming to them. And he had hoped that one day Neve would get hers. But even the knowledge of his exlover’s demise at work couldn’t fill the hollow that had sucked out the centre of him. There was only one thing that would make him feel whole again.

‘I want Lyssa back,’ Jake said. He wanted her back so that they could return to normal, stop living life upside down with her in another part of the world. He wanted to try for a baby again. And that would mean that he’d have to share the knowledge that he could become a father and that now it was something he wanted more than anything. More than anything except Lyssa. ‘I want Lyssa back and I don’t know what to do.’

‘You’ll think of something, mate,’ Pip said. But Jake wasn’t sure that he would.

Chapter sixty-four

Chapter sixty-four

‘So this is it?’ My rucksack is all ready and packed. It’s sitting neatly by the foot of the bed and even that looks bloody miserable.

‘Don’t be so sad,’ Dean says. ‘Think of the fun we’ve had.’