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‘I’m headline news again. That’s what’s happened. Good photograph but terrible article.’ She looked at the letter in her hands and couldn’t stop herself from reacting. ‘Oh my God!’
‘Freya? Are you OK?’
Freya stared at the letter. There was one word stuck onto the piece of paper, made out of newspaper cuttings.
Bitch
Freya stared at the word, then turned the piece of paper over to look at the reverse side. It was blank.
‘Are you still there?’
‘Sorry, I’m still here.’ She folded up the paper and slipped it into the pocket of her robe.
‘So, what shall I tell the journalists?’
‘Nothing. Say I have no comment to make. Listen, I probably won’t be in this morning. What’s in the diary?’ She picked up The Gazette.
‘Diana Farrington at ten. Miles Blake at eleven-thirty and Jonathan Sanders at one.’
‘Right, well postpone Diana. Do you think you could see Miles? I’ll make it for one.’
‘No problem. Are you sure everything’s OK?’
‘I’m fine, honestly. I’ll see you later.’
She ended the call and put the phone down on the countertop. One shaky breath later and she felt like passing out. It was starting all over again.
15
‘I don’t want to wait.’
It was almost one and she was travelling to Carlton with Nicholas. That morning, after the news about her father and the hate mail, she had walked into Mayleaf, bought a hair colour and spent the rest of the time dying it dark brown.
‘Jeez! Will you look at this traffic? What is going on?’ He pulled into the queue of cars waiting to go the same way.
‘Nick, I don’t want to wait to get married.’ She put her hand on his leg, trying to get his attention.
‘What d’you mean?’ He turned to look at her.
‘Twenty-second of December, it’s too far away. I don’t want to wait that long.’
‘Are you kidding me? It’s next month!’
‘I know, but it’s the end of next month and what’s the point of waiting? I mean, we love each other, right? And we don’t need anyone else there really. And if we just went off and did it without telling anyone then the press wouldn’t be hassling us and we’d have the quiet wedding we want.’ The words flew out of her mouth at top speed.
‘But yesterday, you really wanted to get married on Corfu. You were excited about that and I don’t believe you really want to have your special day without Emma there.’
‘I just want to marry you and you said it didn’t matter how we did it. You said it was the commitment that’s important and I agree.’
‘This is just a reaction to the newspaper article. Freya, I know it’s got to you and I understand why, but it will be alright, you know. Primarily, your father is a businessman and I really don’t believe he would let a news feature, as pathetic and pointless as that one, stir him up.’
‘It isn’t anything to do with the article. It really isn’t. I love you, Nick. I just want to get married. Don’t you want to do it? We could just go off somewhere and get married and spend our honeymoon driving round the country on the Harley. We could stay at cheap motels, drink beer and eat junk food,’ she suggested.
It was sounding good and she had kept the desperation out of her voice.
‘We can still spend our honeymoon doing that if that’s what you want.’
‘Why don’t we just get a flight to Vegas on Friday night and just do it?’
