‘True. That’s if he stays around. He’s not got the best track record in that department, has he? He favours abandonment somewhat.’
‘Nope. Once I started thinking about it my mind wandered to all sorts of things. Like if he’s in her life, he’ll be at her wedding if she gets married, he would be a grandparent... it’s going to be tricky for sure. And even trickier if I let him get to me.’
‘Crikey. When you look at it like that, he could well be around quite a lot.’
‘He could. You know Doris at work who I always talk about? Her daughter’s ex-husband, who is the father of her two boys, purposely causes dramas at every family event. Normally by bringing one of his latest partners of either sex, gets drunk, and starts trouble. I do not need a predicament like that in my life. I need my relationship with Bella’s father to be at the very least bearable. Grin and bear-it-able,’ Juliette said, sighing and shaking her head.
‘The more I hear about families, the more I feel not quite as bad at my current situation being alone.’
‘You’re not alone - you’ve got your fair share of dramas here with us! So, yeah, all in all, I thought, Juliette pull yourself together, and get it over and done with,’ Juliette said, tucking the hanging baskets around the corner and leaning them up against the back wall.
Daisy sighed. ‘Who would have guessed Jack Fitzgeralde reappearing? Not me! How much did we talk about him in the early days? For hours and hours on end. Remember? Bella in that tiny little cot and we’d sit there, and you’d tell me all about him.’
‘Oh, I certainly remember. It took me years and years to get over it. Years.’
‘I know it did. And now he’s back.’
‘Yup. Back and still, it seems, totally as self-centred as ever. I mean I know I can’t talk lately. I totally acknowledge that I’ve been a pain in the behind since the accident, but Jack takes the biscuit in thinking only of himself.’
Chapter 51
Juliette stood up against the worktop and slowly and methodically dipped cold, leftover pasta shells from the fridge into chocolate spread, and popped the shells into her mouth.
Bella had been to the Smugglers with one of her friends and was now in bed, Maggie was long gone to sleep and Luke, who had swimming before work, had retired early which left Juliette standing in the kitchen in just the twinkle of the fairy lights mulling over everything over the last few years. Her divorce, meeting Luke, the death of her parents, the reappearance of Jack, the accident. At least my life is not boring, she thought to herself.
She thought about how the next day was going to go. It was all very simple; her and Daisy had calculated that the whole meeting Jack episode would, hopefully, last not more than five minutes. The only fly in the ointment would be if Jack tried to invite himself in and wanted to have a look around. They’d worked that scenario out too - if he did try to come in, Juliette had already planned that she would have her bag and jacket ready by the door and would say that actually she was on her way out too. Surely, he wouldn’t be so bold, so cheeky as to do that? He’d left her all those years ago - presumably he wouldn’t think she would be agreeable to him coming into her house?
Juliette stood there with the chocolate covered pasta and thought about Jeremy too. She’d called him the day before on her way to work about her meeting Jack and his reaction had not been impressed. It had made Juliette feel even more uncomfortable about the whole thing. Even more uneasy about it all than she had been.
There was one thing you could say about Jeremy and that was that he treated Bella as his own and had done from day one. He was still very much involved in her life too. Going up to stay the weekend in Oxford, coordinating things with the hospital after her accident, looking into buying her an e-bike. Even though he could be a royal pain in the behind he was part of their little unit, and give or take, it all worked fairly well. Even with Luke on the scene, Jeremy had been fine. He did not sound fine about Jack in Pretty Beach, though. Not at all. There were no two ways about it; Jeremy felt as if his nose had been put out of joint and Jeremy Sparkles did not cope well with that.
Juliette went to put the jar of chocolate back in the fridge and stood there with the door open, the glow of the fridge light reflecting off her glasses and spooned more of the chocolate spread straight from the jar into her mouth.
She smiled to herself, remembering the first time she’d been introduced to chocolate spread when she’d first had Bella and had only just met Daisy. Juliette had never even heard of chocolate spread. One particularly colic-filled evening where Juliette and Daisy had spent hours pacing around with Bella trying to pacify her, Daisy had made Juliette a piece of toast thickly covered with chocolate spread and when Juliette had bitten into it she’d thought she’d died and gone to heaven. From those heady early days, her and Daisy had moved in different chocolate spread spheres - Daisy made her own homemade version, they’d carted ginormous jars of it back from France, and Juliette had ordered boutique versions from far-flung places on the internet.
In the Hungry Years with Jeremy, chocolate spread had been a big no-no and it was banned from the house. So, Juliette had kept a secret jar of it in her locker at work. Since Jeremy was no longer in charge, there had always been a jar of it around ready and waiting for the stressful times. She screwed the
