Falling for you

desperation, ‘but I honestly can’t remember it. God, it’s like having that thingy disease, you know, that whatjacallit ...’

‘Alzheimer’ s.’

‘You see? You see?’ Nuala wailed. ‘That could be what’s wrong with me! Either that or I’m going completely mad.’ This was the moment to come out and say it, to set the record straight and put poor Nuala out of her abject misery.

This was the moment .. .

OK, one, two, three, here it comes, here it comes .. .

‘I’m sure you didn’t do it,’ said Kate, realising that these weren’t quite the words she’d had in mind. Deeply ashamed of her lack of moral fibre but not ashamed enough to blurt out the truth, she went on, ‘It’ll be OK. Now, d’you need a hand with this bra?’

Nodding, Nuala turned her back. Kate unclipped the bra and helped Nuala into her dressing gown. Still racked with guilt — why couldn’t she say it, why? — she jumped as they both heard Dexter bellowing, ‘Hey, new girl, where are you?’

The next moment he appeared in the doorway.

‘What’s going on up here then?’ demanded Dexter. ‘Hot lesbian sex?’

‘Yes,’ said Kate. ‘Too bad it’s all over now. You missed it.’

‘Has it occurred to you that I’m trying to run a pub here? I’ve just called last orders and there are punters queuing three deep at the bar, so why don’t you get your ... self down there and start serving?’

He’d corrected himself, Kate realised; having been about to tell her to get her fat backside downstairs, he’d actually bothered to modify his language.

‘Fine,’ she told Dexter. ‘Keep your hair on.’ With a sweet smile she added, ‘What’s left of it.’

Chapter 24

‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ wailed Maddy the next morning. ‘I just want to kill myself, I can’t believe I said all those horrible things, of course you didn’t tell Jake about me and Kerr.’

‘I didn’t? Really? Oh, thank God for that!’ Clutching her chest with relief, Nuala sank sideways against the door frame. Last night she had slept terribly, racked by dreams of herself clambering onto the pub roof, calling the entire village to attention and announcing through a megaphone that Maddy was bonking Kerr McKinnon but that ... sshhh ... nobody must breathe a word because it was TOP

SECRET.

After that, being woken by the doorbell at seven thirty had come as a welcome reprieve.

‘What can I tell you?’ Maddy’s hair was looking distinctly bird’s-nesty, as if she hadn’t slept well either. ‘I’m so ashamed.’

Since she hadn’t been too ashamed last night, Nuala said, ‘What changed your mind?’

‘Jake, of course. He’d gone to bed by the time I got back. Deliberately, so I couldn’t interrogate him.

Then this morning I told him what I’d said to you and he went, 'Oh, it wasn’t Nuala.' Just like that, the bastard, as if I’d been trying to guess the mystery ingredient in a casserole. So I said, 'Oh fuck,' and of course that was the moment Sophie came into the kitchen and said, 'That’s a very rude word, Mrs Masters says only stupid people say fuck.' Which was, of course, the very reason I was saying it,’

Maddy concluded, ‘because I had been stupid.’ Looking anguished, she added, ‘I’m sorry. Really and truly. Will you still be my friend?’

‘Go on then.’ Nuala was just glad it was all over, dizzy with relief that she hadn’t let slip the secret to Jake when, in all honesty, she could so easily have done. ‘You’ll have to help me get dressed though – ow!’ she winced as Maddy threw her arms round her like an over- enthusiastic bridesmaid catching a bouquet.

‘Sorry, sorry!’

‘So who did tell Jake?’ Nuala was bursting to hear.

‘I don’t know! He won’t say! What am I going to do?’

‘ Finish with Kerr?’ Nuala ventured.

Maddy’s face crumpled. ‘I don’t think I can.’

‘OK, so you have to tell Marcella.’

With a shudder Maddy said, ‘I definitely can’t do that.’

‘Only one other thing for it, then. Find out who told Jake and hire a professional assassin.’

‘Excellent. Much the best way. And afterwards,’ Maddy said hopefully, ‘they could assassinate Jake.’

Monday night was darts night at the Fallen Angel. It was also discovery night for Maddy.

Every time she looked over at Kate working behind the bar, Kate hurriedly looked elsewhere. The real giveaway, however, was the expression on her face. With a jolt like accidentally sitting on an electric fence, Maddy knew that the person who had told Jake was Kate.

‘You’re wrong, it can’t be.’ Nuala, her eye by this time a dramatic explosion of magenta, inky-blue and yellow, was going for the sympathy vote tonight, perched on a high bar stool with her white denim skirt riding up to reveal tanned thighs. Revelling in the attention she’d been getting from the visiting team, her cheeks were pink and her eyes bright. Now, though, she shook her head. ‘Kate was with me last night, she knew why I was so upset. She would have said something if it had been her.’

Maddy doubted it. She still hadn’t the faintest idea how anyone, let alone Kate Taylor-Trent, could have found out about herself and Kerr, but somehow it had happened.