Page 9 of The Work Husband

Desperately, I tried again to keep things normal – or to make them normal again. ‘What shall we do?’

Sam sat up, pushing the duvet off his legs while making sure it stayed tucked round my body. ‘Georgia, I have to go somewhere.’

Okay. Normally, this would have been unusual but not earth-shattering. Sometimes we did have separate plans on Sundays. Sometimes Sam had to travel for an early shoot on Monday morning or had been invited to watch a football game by a friend. Sometimes I had a duty visit to pay to my mother or needed to go into the office to firefight some crisis or other. It happened. Just not like this.

‘Okay,’ I said as brightly as I could. ‘Where are you off to?’

‘Manchester.’

‘Manchester?’ He might as well have said the moon. ‘Why? Are your family okay? Has something happened? Should I come?’ I was already half out of bed, wondering where my travel-sized dry shampoo was and whether there was enough in it to salvage my hair.

‘Everyone’s fine.’ He swivelled round to face me, his long legs crossed on the bed, and took my hand. ‘And no, you shouldn’t come.’

‘Sam, come on.’ I turned to face him, our knees almost but not quite touching. ‘Something’s going on. Ever since you got that text yesterday afternoon, you’ve been weird. Just tell me. Whatever it is, it’ll be okay.’

But would it? Hypothetical scenarios whirled through my brain: Sam had committed some terrible crime, back in the distant past, and his misdeeds had caught up with him. He’d been diagnosed with a horrible disease and needed emergency surgery, and the only specialist able to perform the operation was up north. He was leaving me and had decided to wait until the day of his departure to actually tell me that he was going.

It couldn’t be that last one at any rate – Sam was incapable of packing for more than a night away without pulling every garment he owned out of the wardrobe and leaving it on the bedroom floor, and I’d have noticed if he’d done that.

‘Of course it will.’ He squeezed my hands. ‘It’s nothing to worry about, I promise. But you might not like it.’

I forced a smile. ‘Come on. Hit me with it. How bad can it be?’

‘It’s not bad. Not at all. It’s just – I’m going to see Ava.’

Ava?

The breath whooshed out of me, like I’d been punched in the stomach. My ribcage felt too tight to get enough air back in so I could speak, so it took a few seconds before I was able to reply. ‘Ava? As in, Ava your ex?’

‘Is there another Ava?’

There was, of course. There were lots. Ava Gardner. Ava Max. Reese Witherspoon’s daughter Ava.

But equally, at this moment, there wasn’t. Not one I’d ever met and clearly, as far as Sam was concerned, in the entire world.

‘I guess not. But why? Why do you want to see her?’

I tried to keep my voice calm. Rationally, I knew that calm was the appropriate response: people had exes. They stayed friends with them. They followed them on socials. Obviously, sometimes they met up with them. I knew that.

But something – everything – was screaming at me that this wasn’t the case here. This wasn’t just a casual meet-up with a former girlfriend. If it had been, Sam wouldn’t be being so damn weird about it.

‘Because she asked me to,’ he said simply.

‘But you and she… you haven’t seen each other for ages or even been in touch, have you?’

Maybe they have, I thought with a sudden flash of fear. Maybe they’ve been messaging each other for ages on the sly and I just haven’t known about it. But that didn’t make sense. Sam’s reaction to the text he’d received the day before hadn’t been the reaction of someone receiving an expected – if clandestine – communication.

‘Nope. Not seen each other, not been in touch. Truly, Georgia – scout’s honour. I’d have told you, like I’m telling you now.’

So what’s the big deal? demanded the rational part of my mind – the part that knew Sam loved me, that we were together, that I didn’t need to be insecure about Ava or anyone else, not least because if he decided he wanted to be with someone other than me, being clingy and needy about it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference.

It wasn’t a big deal. It didn’t have to be a big deal. But Sam’s reaction to the whole thing was as good as screaming that it was a big deal for him – and therefore it was a big deal for me too. I couldn’t help feeling it – like when someone yawns in front of you and you do it too, even though a second before you hadn’t needed to.

‘Why does she want to see you?’ I wasn’t doing so well on the sounding-calm front any more; my voice came out all thin and anxious, and now I could feel a lump in my throat alongside that tight constriction around my chest.

‘I don’t know. She wants to talk to me.’

So you’re going to get on a train, on a Sunday, when it’ll take the best part of three hours each way and cost a fortune, to talk? What’s wrong with FaceTime?