His response stabbed her in the gut. 'Since she was sixteen.'

'Not ever since. I haven't slept with her since I met you. It's all over. As soon as I met you I knocked all that laddish stuff on the head, I swear to you,' pleaded Rich.

Tash whipped around to face Rich. The tears and tension brimmed through her eyes, nose and mouth. She swiped her arm across her face, smearing snot, salty tears and saliva on to her sleeve. It was only in movies that parting scenes were ever beautiful.

'You swear to me? Ha! What does that mean? You are a liar.'

'She's history. The kiss the other night, the grope, it didn't mean anything.'

'What kiss? What grope?' Tash yelled, more confused, more furious. Hadn't he just said it was over?

f.u.c.k, it looked as though Jayne had omitted that bit. Rich was making things worse. He didn't know what to say. He didn't know what not to say.

'I love you, Tash.'

And the peculiar thing was that she knew he did love her, as much as he was capable of loving anyone. She knew that he could not have faked the intimacy that they had shared over the past nine months. But he'd still lied to her, misled and deceived her. The fact he loved her while doing so made this betrayal worse, not better.

'Did you send her to say the wedding was off? Did you get her to do your dirty work?' Tash couldn't quite decide which of the many betrayals was the most offensive.

'No. I didn't tell her to do any such thing. I didn't want you to know about us.'

'So there is an "us"?' she screamed angrily.

'No, no, there isn't. There never was.' Rich tried to sound soothing. He sounded panicked. 'Look, she was a s.h.a.g-buddy. She didn't mean any more or less to me than the dozens of other girls I've been with.'

'Other girls you've told me about or other secret s.h.a.g-buddies?' asked Tash sarcastically.

Suddenly, after months of avoidance, Rich wanted to explain. He knew it wouldn't excuse, but he wanted the facts on the table. 'She was the only person I failed to tell you about. It started years ago. I'd call her up from time to time. It went on longer than I expected. It didn't mean anything.'

'Why didn't you tell me about her, then?' Tash took a guess. 'Was she your back-up? Were you planning on keeping her on the side, just in case things cooled down between us and you ever fancied a bit of extracurricular?'

'No, of course not.'

Rich wanted to plead with Tash. He was prepared to beg. He wanted her to trust him again, to believe him. The problem was he didn't wear sincerity particularly well. No one ever did after they had been caught cheating.

'She's very beautiful,' said Tash.

Rich stayed absolutely still. Any gesture he made would be interpreted incorrectly. Yes, of course, Jayne was very beautiful, but he wouldn't be helping himself by admitting as much to Tash.

'She's very s.e.xy. Really extraordinarily so. And she's wealthy. Your friends like her. Even b.l.o.o.d.y Mia likes her. She's the perfect girl for you.'

Jealousy stained the soul, blurred vision and threw judgement. This was not, thought Tash, the moment to be pointing out Jayne's good points. Tash had never known jealousy until this point. She had never felt the frenzied battle between good sense and evil imaginings. The brief fears she'd held that Rich might have something going on with Mia were nothing compared to the crazy, illogical terror that had seized her mind now.

Every time he'd tongued her tiny t.i.ts had he been longing for Jayne's voluptuous curves? Had he found her blondeness bland in comparison to Jayne's more exotic dark looks? Jayne worked in the same company. Had they been meeting for coffee, every day for a decade? Did he f.u.c.k her after hours, then take photos of her a.r.s.e on the photocopying machine?

'No, no, Tash. You are the perfect girl for me.'

Tash barely heard the interruption. Did he prefer her b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs? Did she make him laugh? Had they ever had a bath together? Did he blow in Jayne's ear? She wanted to hit Rich. She wanted to clobber him over and over again with her Jimmy Choos or, better still, with her huge snow boots they'd do more damage. He had reduced her to inarticulate violence, such was her frustration, her disappointment, her foul anguish.

She had thought that she knew everything there was to know about the women in Rich's past. They'd had numerous conversations to exorcize any potential demons. She knew the pitch of their moans, their on-top-or-underneath preferences, their foibles about going out without make-up. She had processed and compartmentalized them all. She had steadily worked through his history, a.s.sessing it under a microscopic light to see if there were any latent threats or tantalizing unresolved issues. She'd thought she was in the clear and in control. She thought they knew one another. She thought they were honest with one another.

She hadn't held anything back. She'd told him everything. The things that put her in a good light and the things that left her looking shabby. He knew about her drunken s.h.a.gs and the time she'd tried (and failed) to seduce a married man. He knew that she'd sometimes treated hearts carelessly. Neither of them was a vestal virgin, but the thing they had going for them, the thing that set this relationship apart from all the others that they had both stumbled through, was that they had been honest with one another. They had started with a clean slate.

Or at least that's what she'd thought.

Rich moved towards Tash; she backed away. He stretched out to her, but she flinched, as though he was diseased. He wondered whether he ought to pull up a chair and sit down and try to go through the whole thing from the beginning. It might look too presumptive. She might be about to throw him out at any second. If he sat down and made himself comfortable or at least less uncomfortable because right now, he was about as comfortable as man who had endured an all-over body wax and was now being b.u.g.g.e.red by a giant hedgehog then she might be further incensed. It worried him that, throughout this conversation, Tash had continued to pack her clothes. All that her case needed now was her toiletry bag.

'I am sorry I didn't tell you. I'd never told anyone.'

'Why? I thought you and Jason got off on retelling one another's adventures?' Rich was momentarily surprised. He hadn't realized Tash knew that.

'I was ashamed, OK? I was sorry and ashamed. You saw the photos. She was a child.'

'So were you. You were only three years older than her.'

'I thought I was so mature.'

'I can't imagine why.'

'I felt to blame, as though I'd taken advantage of her. I didn't think Ted would be too pleased.'

Tash fought with the humiliation. She felt such a fool. They'd been right. Everyone who raised an eyebrow and said that she and Rich were rushing things and that they didn't know each other well enough, they had all been right. She didn't know him. She'd been an idiot to trust him. Could she even trust what he was saying now? She went into the bathroom and re-emerged with a bulging toiletry bag.

'Even if I accept why you kept it a secret from your mates all those moons ago, it doesn't explain why you didn't tell me. You were young in the photos, too. Young enough to make a mistake. I'd have understood.'

'I don't think I treated her very well,' admitted Rich.

'You're right about that, at least.'

'I didn't want you to think badly of me.'

'That doesn't wash. I know you did a stripper for a bet on a stag weekend. That was hardly your finest moment, but I didn't care. It was in your past. Oh, my G.o.d, she knew that, too.'

'What?'

'Jayne. When she was talking about her ex, the one that had broken her heart, she mentioned he'd once s.h.a.gged a stripper and that she'd been driven to distraction by the thought. Oh, G.o.d, all that time she was swapping confidences with me, they were about you. My fiance.' Tash needed to sit down. Or to run away. 'I feel sick.' Tash collapsed on the bed and covered her eyes with her hands. The room was swaying.

'I didn't want you to be friends. That's not my fault.'

'It is your fault,' she yelled. 'It's entirely your fault.'

Rich knelt on the floor next to the bed and carefully took hold of Tash's hands. He gently lowered them, moving slowly as though he was coaxing a timid animal, until her eyes were uncovered once again.

'It's you I love. You I want to marry. You have to believe me.'

His breathing was heavy. It was an important sentence. Possibly the most important one he was ever going to utter. She had to believe him. Rich studied Tash's lovely face. He'd studied her big, blue eyes, which at the moment were red and framed with smudged mascara. He stared at her beautiful mouth, her plump, magenta lips. If he could have, he'd have sold his soul at that moment to see her broad smile radiate and to hear her happy laugh. He gaped at her cheekbones, the fine lines around her mouth and the tiny hairs on her ears. He tried to commit every detail about her to his memory. He was scaring himself by doing so because he was behaving like a man that was letting go. He'd lost her.

'I do believe that, Richard.'

Hope?

Her face was still cold and closed.

No hope?

'Then what's the problem?' he asked.

Tash thought one of the problems was that he didn't see the problem, but she decided that line of argument would confuse him. She strove for clarity.

'Rich, I agreed to marry you after only two months because I thought we had a unique connection. I thought you understood what was important to me and that you had the same values. But it was all fake. You never believed in no secrets, no lies, just 100 per cent respect and honesty. You just told me what you thought I wanted to hear. The same as you've done with countless women before me. Just as you are probably doing now.'

'I'm telling you the truth,' insisted Rich, frustrated.

'I can't trust you. You've snuffed out the magic. I don't know you. It turns out I never did.' Tash stood up, zipped up her suitcase and pulled it off the bed. She walked to the door, only pausing to take off her engagement ring and toss it into the ashtray on the dressing table.

68. Girlfriends.

Tash didn't really know where to go or what to do next. She had already rung the airport earlier on that afternoon, only to discover that there were no more flights that evening. She'd asked about booking herself on to a flight home the next day, but she'd been told that there was no availability. Her scheduled flight wasn't due for departure until Sat.u.r.day. She had two nights and a day to kill. It was Rich she wanted to kill. She stood in the corridor and felt very alone. She needed a room and she needed a drink. She needed the drink first.

Tash dragged her suitcase to the lift and headed to the hotel bar.

'Going somewhere?'

Tash turned to see Mia sitting in front of the open fire in the bar. She had a bottle of wine open, half of which she'd already drunk. Tash couldn't imagine anyone she'd have less liked to b.u.mp into.

Except Rich.

Or Jayne.

Tash sighed. It was a small hotel, and it wasn't exactly br.i.m.m.i.n.g with her favourite people. She shrugged and sat down next to Mia, giving in to the inevitability and spite of fate.

'Yes, but only after I've had a drink.'

'You can share this bottle with me, if you like.'

Tash thought that any port in a storm had never seemed more pertinent. She did need a drink. Tash could almost taste the deep-red, fruity liquid. It was just too tempting. She nodded, reluctantly. Mia signalled for the waiter to bring another gla.s.s. When he had done so and discreetly disappeared back into the fabric of the hotel, Tash said, 'The wedding is off.'

'Oh.' Mia paused, then added, 'I'm sorry.'

'You're not really,' said Tash.

She no longer needed Mia to do a reading at the wedding, let alone to become a lifelong friend, and therefore no longer felt that she had to be diplomatic. 'You weren't exactly overjoyed for us when we announced the engagement.'

Mia sighed. She'd done a lot of thinking herself that day and a lot of drinking, too. One or the other made her explain herself.

'You seemed very young.'

'I'm twenty-seven. I'm only six years younger than you.'

'Yes, but you were full of the giddy confidence of a twenty-something, and I am stuffed full of the deadening cynicism of a thirty-something. We seemed light years apart.'

'Well, at least the giddy confidence has been bashed out of me now,' groaned Tash as she took a large gulp of wine. 'So, do you now think I am officially grown up?'

'I think we're all old enough to know better, but do our worst anyway,' sighed Mia. 'It wasn't just your age. Rich had never introduced any of his women to the gang before. We didn't know what to expect.'

'Something other than me, though, hey?'

Mia shrugged. 'And the engagement was very quick. You were bound to come across a certain amount of reservation. It wasn't personal.'

'It was.'

'It wasn't meant to be.'

The girls fell silent and together watched the open fire hiss and crackle, spitting out sizzling amber sparks that looked like tiny fireflies. Tash was too stressed to think about whether the silence was comfortable or uncomfortable. She felt too weary even to consider making polite small talk. She didn't care any more.

Mia respected the stillness. She wished she had the courage to tell Tash that she'd had her own concerns, her own dramas, and therefore hadn't been as polite or welcoming as she ought. She could see that now. Mia kept quiet. Tash was bound to ask what the concerns and dramas were, and Mia wasn't prepared to share. Mia stole a sneaky, sidelong glance at Tash. Tash was correct, her self-righteous c.o.c.kiness which Mia had rather charitably referred to as 'giddy confidence' clearly had taken a beating. Tash looked frail. She didn't shine, and it surprised Mia that she felt sad that another light had been extinguished in the world. She thought she'd try her hand at being sympathetic.

'I was very surprised about Jayne.'

'You knew?' Tash's fury at Rich was reignited. He'd even lied about that. The gang did know. Once again she felt peculiarly excluded. She imagined Mia and Rich cosied up, Mia offering an ear and advice as Rich confided in her that he was torn between two lovers. Mia would have loved that.

'I caught them kissing in the foyer of the cinema on Monday night.'

'Oh.' The relief that Rich hadn't been confiding in Mia was shortlived as Tash computed the info. 'On Monday night? The b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

'Quite,' nodded Mia, with what she hoped came across as the correct blend of compa.s.sion and understanding. She didn't want there to be a hint of 'I told you so'.

'I thought you were the problem,' said Tash.

Mia should have seen it coming. What with Tash's famed honesty, she knew she was due a home truth or two.

'Me and Action Man? You've got to be kidding. It might come as a surprise to you, but not everyone finds Action Man as irresistible as you and Jayne clearly do.'

Tash glared. 'Will you stop with the b.l.o.o.d.y nicknames? No one uses them but you.'

'Don't they?'

'No, Mia, they don't. Everyone else left them at uni. Everyone else has moved on.'

'That's because they all have something to move on to.'

Tash wasn't really listening to Mia. She had a few things that she wanted to get off her chest and now, when she was awash with pain, insecurity and fury, seemed as good a time as any.

'I always saw the "very private" nicknames for what they were, Mia a way for you to constantly dredge up the past and continue to exclude me.'