Cara put a finger to her lips and sideways nodded towards the bedroom, where Sophie lay on the bed with her colouring book.
Danielle turned so that her back was to the bedroom door and lowered her voice. ‘So, how did it go? Has he got a big house?’
‘Yeah. Really big house. And a wife.’
Danielle’s eyes widened. ‘Wife? You never mentioned he was married.’
‘I didn’t know until I got there on Friday night.’ Cara threw the last few things into the box. There was nothing else she wanted to take.
Danielle was staring at her, head on one side. ‘Look, I’m going to say it one more time: are you sure about this? I know we always moan about Lee and what a lazy lump he is, but I’ve stayed in much worse places. If you leave this flat and need to get rehoused, they are going to put you in a bedsit in a high-rise somewhere awful.’
Cara had thought about that. ‘We’re not going to need to be rehoused.’
Danielle folded her arms. ‘How can you be sure? Especially if Sophie’s dad is married. I can’t see his wife suffering the two of you in their house for very long.’
Danielle was digging for gossip, but there was no way Cara was going to tell her why she was so confident. That she knew Jack better than he realised. And that she had a plan.
12
Rebecca
Although they both worked from home, Monday mornings were kept free for Rebecca and Izzy to meet up, sync diaries and catch up on their plans for the week. Since Christmas this had always happened at Izzy’s house because her stockbroker husband, Tim, had surprised her with a garden office: a wooden construction with large glass windows, a desk to work at and a round table for her and Rebecca to ‘conference’ at, as he had patronisingly put it.
They sat at the table now, with coffees from the state-of-the-art machine and a plate of Waitrose biscuits. Rebecca was working up to her revelation: they might as well get their business meeting done first.
Starting up their business three years ago had been risky, but Izzy had an address book of great connections and they had plenty of experience working for a company called City Events in London. In fact, she had been working with Izzy the night she’d met Jack. They’d always been a good team, playing to each other’s strengths.
Meeting at Izzy’s allowed for casual clothes. Still, Izzy had that kind of wholesome appearance where she still looked beautiful with her hair in a ponytail and no make-up. ‘Right, don’t shout at me. I need you to take over the Ross-Hamilton wedding.’
Rebecca nearly spat out her coffee. ‘What? I don’t do the weddings. I don’t do any of the touchy-feely stuff. That was the agreement. I do corporate.’
She had been really clear on that with Izzy from day one. It wasn’t that she didn’t like weddings or retirement parties or christening dos. It was that people organising a party for a family occasion were unpredictable, emotional, needy. She much preferred working with professionals. However demanding they could be, they were at least clear and dispassionate about the whole thing. She could plan the event, present it to them, tweak anything that needed changing and then move on. No histrionics because the flowers on the cake were the wrong shade of purple.
Izzy pushed the plate of biscuits nearer to Rebecca. ‘I know, I know. And I wouldn’t ask you but you know how long we’ve been waiting on an appointment for poor Jonty to have his rotten tonsils removed. I can’t go through another winter of him needing weeks off school at a time. I just can’t. And Tim’s away for work that week, so someone will have to be here. Samantha ‘soon-to-be-Hamilton’ Ross will flip her lid if I’m not there and firing on all cylinders. It would be much better if you take it over from now and then you can be on hand.’
Posh biscuits weren’t going to even come close to appeasing Rebecca. Why did people with children always get to play the family card? Of course, she understood that Izzy would want to be with her little boy, but she had some serious stuff of her own going on right now.
Plus, the Ross-Hamilton wedding? Izzy had been moaning for the last year how crazy the bride-to-be was driving her. Nothing was quite right, and even when it was, her opinion on it might change within days. And now she wanted Rebecca to take over. ‘Can’t you carry on for now and then I’ll cover it the week of the wedding if I have to? I mean, you must be pretty much there, right?’
Izzy nodded. ‘Oh, I am. Everything is done as far as I know. But you know how these things work. Stuff happens at the last minute. Balloon modellers come down with food poisoning, caterers drop cakes, there’s an international shortage of avocados.’
Rebecca groaned. She did know. And that was exactly why she didn’t do weddings. But what could she say? ‘Okay. Give me the file.’
Izzy clapped her hands and passed it over. Her glee at offloading the wedding filled Rebecca with dread. ‘Thank you, thank you! I owe you one. Have a quick flick through and then we can get Samantha Ross on the phone and book a meeting.’
The file was twice the thickness of the ones Rebecca kept on her events. A quick look at the Event Summary page explained why: magicians, bouncy castles, doves, fireworks. This wasn’t a wedding, it was a festival. She looked up at Izzy. ‘Are you serious?’
Izzy didn’t react. ‘Have a look at all the helpful notes I’ve made in the margins. Do they make sense?’ She picked up a biscuit from the pile and broke it in half.
Rebecca flicked over a page and squinted closely at the text. ‘Yes, I think I can decode your scribbles.’
Izzy poked her tongue out at her. ‘Okay, perfect pants. We can’t all have a colour-coded system for rotating the bath towels. Some of us lesser mortals get by with a sticky note and by the seat of our pants. I know that your wedding was a well-oiled machine.’
Rebecca put the folder down on the table, took a deep breath. ‘Jack has a daughter.’
Izzy must have aspirated the biscuit in her shock. It took her a whole minute to stop coughing. ‘What?’
Rebecca nodded. ‘Yep. Friday night his ex-girlfriend turns up on our doorstep with Jack’s four-year-old daughter.’
‘Oh my God, Rebecca. How has it taken you—’ she counted out on her fingers ‘—three days to tell me this? What a bombshell. Are you sure the child is his?’
It was a relief being able to speak to someone about it all. ‘Oh, it gets better. Jack knew about the girl. Sophie.’
Izzy’s eyes nearly bulged out of her head. ‘What? For how long?’
She knew she was being unfair to Jack, but she needed someone on her side right now. ‘He had his suspicions at the time, apparently. He heard she was pregnant after they split, but that didn’t prompt him to look her up and find out for sure.’
‘Wow.’ Izzy was looking at her open-mouthed. ‘So, how are you feeling?’
That was a good question. ‘Angry. Upset. Shocked.’
Izzy nodded. She picked up her mug and sipped at the coffee. ‘It would be a big shock for anyone.’
How could Rebecca explain that this shock was double? Finding out that Jack had a daughter was bad enough, but discovering that he might have known about her and done nothing? That was even worse.