Falling for you

mistake she did, and give up on a perfectly good marriage for the sake of someone like Will.’

Estelle said stubbornly, ‘Maybe she had a perfectly good marriage. I don’t. Look, so what are you saying, that Will’s nothing but a con man?’

‘Not a con man.’ Lucy proceeded with care. ‘Not exactly. I’m sure he does care for you very much, in his own way. But we’ve done a bit of digging around and he does seem to make a habit of persuading lonely women to fall for him, then fairly rapidly losing interest in them. Usually after they’ve spent a bit of money on him, I have to say.’ She paused. ‘According to the receptionist at Carousel Productions, one of last year’s conquests bought him a brand new BMW.’

‘He doesn’t have a BMW.’ Estelle was numb.

‘I know. But it’s how he funded his trip to Australia. Finished with the woman,’ said Lucy with a grimace, ‘and promptly sold the car.’

Estelle swallowed; she felt as if she were trapped on a fairground ride, being spun round and round and not allowed to get off.

‘So I was an easy target, is that it? I’m sorry, I can’t believe this. Will told me he loved me.’

Next to her on the bench, Lucy took a slim notepad from her bag then flipped through it until she found the page she was looking for.

Did he tell you he’d never felt like this about anyone before?’ she said, and Estelle felt the palms of her clasped hands break out in a sweat.

She couldn’t speak.

‘Does he tell you that you’re the one he’s been waiting for, his whole life?’

There was a lump the size of a conker in Estelle’s throat.

‘Does he call you the other half of his soul?’ Lucy persisted, her French-manicured finger moving slowly on down the list. ‘Does he talk about the poem you’ll have engraved on your joint headstone when you’re both gone? Does he have nicknames for each of your elbows? Is he—’

‘Stop!’ Unable to bear it a moment longer, Estelle buried her face in her trembling hands. ‘Oh God,’ she wailed, ‘please, just stop.’

‘ You’re back!’ exclaimed Will. ‘Are you OK? When I saw the food on the floor I thought maybe you’d been kidnapped by aliens.’

He hadn’t been home long himself. The carrier bags of food Estelle had unceremoniously dumped before going with Lucy to the garden square were still there on the kitchen floor. The Belgian chocolate truffle ice cream had melted, seeping like treacle across the tiles. Estelle stood and gazed down at the mess, as well and truly ruined as her own life.

‘Something is wrong.’ Will looked wary, like a guilty man opening his front door to find a policeman on the doorstep.

‘Smile,’ Estelle told him, ‘you’re going to be in the Daily Mail tomorrow.’

‘The Mail. Oh God,-Oliver’ll go ape. He might pull out of the documentary.’

‘Well, it’ll be a real shame if that happens,’ said Estelle. ‘Again.’

Now Will looked like the guilty man discovering that the policeman had proof of his crime.

‘Moira Jonsson saw the piece in the local paper this morning.’ Had it really only been this morning? It felt like months ago.

‘Moira Jonsson.’ Will shook his head. ‘She’s just jealous. We were together for a while, then we broke up. She never got over it.’

‘You were making a film about her husband!’ Her voice rising, Estelle shouted, ‘All the things you told me, you’d already told her. And it’s not just the two of us, either.’

‘Who told you this?’ Will’s eyes narrowed.

‘A journalist.’

‘Oh, come on, now you’re being naive. They’ll make up anything

‘ Not this time,’ yelled Estelle. ‘Apparently there are quite a few older married women around.

whose elbows have nicknames!’

Trapped, Will said, ‘So? It’s not against the law.’

‘Yesterday,’ Estelle said shakily, ‘you brought a bag of travel brochures back here. We spent half the evening talking about going away on holiday. You kept saying you’d love to go to the Caribbean, remember? Because you’d never been there before.’

From the look on Will’s face, he knew what was coming next. ‘OK, so maybe I have. Once.’

Sulkily he said, ‘But it wasn’t much of a holiday, let me tell you, with Moira clinging to me like a leech the whole time.’

‘She probably felt she was entitled to be clingy, seeing as she paid for the entire trip. Tell me,’ said Estelle, ‘is it all a deliberate ploy? Do you do it to spice up your documentaries, make them more interesting for the viewers?’

‘No.’

Estelle had already guessed as much. After all, Magnus Jonsson had pulled out of filming; his documentary had ended up not getting made.