 
More Than Enough

by Delphie Gray

Copyright © 2019 Delphie Gray

The moral right of Delphie Gray to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or

mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing form the publisher.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Visit the author's website at www.delphiegray.com.

Other books by Delphie Gray:

More Than Everything – Book One in More Than... series
To B, all my love x

Chapter One

Liv checked her phone again. 7.54am. Only two minutes since she'd last checked the time. Bugger. And she'd tried really hard not to look at it too. She'd put her phone in the zipped inner pocket of her bag and forced herself to read a tatty copy of yesterday's newspaper she'd found under her seat. She'd even looked at the financial pages and the sport at the back. That had to have wasted at least 10 minutes but no, when she gave in and fished her phone from her bag, it was only 7.54am. Why did time go so painfully slowly when you desperately wanted it to speed up? She wanted it to be 8.30 now so that the appointment would be over and they'd be out of here.

"I don't know why you're so twitchy," huffed her best friend India, shifting in the uncomfortable hard plastic chair beside her. "It's my appointment, not yours."

"Sorry, I know," Liv apologised, putting her phone away again. "I'm just worried about you. I'll try and rein it in, I promise. Here, do you want a magazine?" She put down the emergency sick bowl she was holding on her lap and reached into her overstuffed bag. "I've got Grazia, Elle and Hello!."

"Ooh, Hello!" cooed India, taking the magazine from her and quickly opening it.

India was an unlikely fan of Hello!. With her messy twist of pink, unruly curls secured on top of her head with an old pencil, she didn't look anything like a typical Hello! reader. She was wearing her standard, paint splattered dungarees and lace-up DM boots. She smoked roll-ups (when she wasn't being constantly sick), had oil paint lodged under her nails and, unlike most Hello! readers, had never, ever had her colours done or set foot in a hair salon for a blowout. Despite all that, India loved Hello!. She loved the pages and pages devoted to a rich, leather-faced old man in a shiny Versace shirt and his ridiculously young, pneumatic wife showing the magazine round their gaudy Mallorcan villa. She loved the articles about obscure European royalty, especially Princess Stephanie of Monaco. "She got pregnant by her bodyguard, who then cheated on her with Miss Nude Belgium, and then she ran away to the circus and married an acrobat," India would tell anyone who hadn't asked but happened to be within earshot. "What's not to love?"

With India absorbed in something about a Dutch prince cycling to work, Liv secretly stole a look at the clock on the wall above the reception desk again. 7.56am. Only four minutes to go.

Liv and India weren't the only ones counting the minutes. The clinic was surprisingly busy for that time of the morning. The two rows of seats that faced the reception desk were full. There were couples in smart work clothes, briefcases resting against their feet, tapping away on their phones. There was a woman in her white beauty counter uniform and full face of heavy make-up accompanied by her partner in his Virgin Broadband polo shirt and Timberland boots. There was a woman on her own and then another woman with mad, backcombed hair who'd brought a whole tribe of kids with her, including a toddler in a very itchy looking hand-knitted jumper and nothing else. Liv couldn't work out whether the toddler was a he or a she to begin with – the child had beautiful waist length blond hair, which was probably heaving with nits but looked angelic. When the sagging cloth nappy dropped a little bit lower and the toddler could only waddle and not run, she/he ripped it off. There was no doubt about his gender now. Liv wondered how long it would be before he squatted down and had a shit. She guessed it would take his mum and dad (a weathered looking man with dreadlocks and combat trousers that had a sheen of dirt on them) even longer to notice or, for that matter, to care.

Liv tore her attention away from the toddler when the main doors slid open. A young woman in tracksuit bottoms shuffled in. A baby-faced, skinny man was holding her by the elbow and guiding her over to the nearest empty seat. Liv wondered why the woman, who was in her early twenties and didn't look in the least bit disabled, was moving so slowly. When the woman turned to sit down, the reason became obvious. The seat of her pale blue Ivy Park tracksuit bottoms were totally drenched in blood. The dark red patch was beginning to spread down the legs. She paused as the man spread out a large pad on the chair and then she sat down. The whole room fell quiet. Even the bare bottomed toddler stopped banging a 2016 issue of Heat viciously against the bin for a second.

The silence was broken by a nurse quickly stepping out from behind the desk.

"I think you'd better come this way," she said to the bleeding woman, helping her up and steering her over to the door marked "Treatment room". The skinny man got up and followed her mournfully.

Another nurse appeared wearing gloves, whipped the sodden pad from the chair, sprayed the chair heavily with some blue disinfectant and gave it a good wipe. Everyone watched in a horrified silence.

"Christ," India whispered to Liv, when the nurse disappeared. "That was intense. And disgusting. Pass me the bowl, quick, it's made me feel sick again."

Liv passed her the bowl. At least India's symptoms were a bit more discreet. Ok, she was throwing up a lot and her face was unusually washed out but she wasn't leaving a trail of blood behind her. In fact she didn't look that much different to any Sunday morning after a particularly heavy Saturday night. The only sign that anything was wrong, apart from the vomiting, was the fact that she couldn't stomach a fag. Usually India was either rolling a fag or smoking a fag. She was never more than 10 metres from her pouch of tobacco at any given time.

Liv checked the clock again. It was finally 8am. There was little chance of them actually being seen at 8am – this was the NHS after all and the bleeding woman obviously needed to be seen before anyone else – but Liv was relieved to know that the clinic was open for business.

Twenty minutes later, it was India's turn.

"India Campbell-Blythe," called a middle-aged nurse with a severe parting and jet black Pippi Longstocking plaits. She had a thick line of black eyeliner under each eye and the rest of her face was plastered a ghostly shade of white.

"It's Wednesday Addams: the HRT Years," India muttered out of the side of her mouth as she got up.

Liv stifled a laugh. "Do you want me to come in?" she asked.

India nodded and Liv picked her bag and the bowl followed her.

Liv wished that Jakob was here instead of her. Bloody Jakob was apparently learning to forage for bloody berries and sodding mushrooms and other equally horrible inedible things in the wilds of Denmark. Trust him to be away, Liv thought unkindly and then checked herself. It wasn't his fault. He wasn't to know that India would start vomiting the second his plane banked over Bristol on its way to Copenhagen.

"It's a bug," India had told Liv over the phone at first. "Don't come over, you won't want to catch this bastard. It's evil. I can't eat anything." Then she'd rung off to be sick again.

When the vomiting didn't stop after a couple of days, Liv rang Kate. India's mother, who lived in the main house upstairs, didn't waste any time giving Liv her theory.

"She's obviously pregnant, darling. It was bound to happen. They've been at it like rabbits for months."

"Water buffalo, more like," Tim, India's dad, yelled in the background. "I've never heard such grunting and rutting. Don't let appearances fool you, Liv. He looks like such a gentle chap but he shags like a beast."

"It's true," Kate said. "We've lost some of our commemorative Royal figurines. The walls were shaking so hard one evening that the shelf came loose and the statues of the Queen stroking her two corgis and Diana and the two princes were smashed to pieces."

"Thank fuck for that," Tim muttered. "Anyway, she's probably being sick because he's rammed her stomach right up into her throat. He hammers away like a Viking blacksmith on an anvil."

Liv smiled. She was used to the way that India's parents talked about sex now and even felt quite sentimental about it. At first, though, when she'd moved in with them at the age of 15, she couldn't believe the things they talked about at the dinner table. Anything from periods to the merits of the missionary position were up for discussion.

"It's easier on the knees as you get older," Kate had advised Liv and her three teenage children. "You won't appreciate that now but when you're over forty, kneeling for any length of time is far from pleasurable. I can see why they make you do it in church. It's a punishment."

Tim agreed. "Once you're down there, there's no guarantee you'll be able to get up again. Remember that time in Rome?" Kate nodded wistfully. "We were going at it doggy style and then afterwards, I couldn't get up. My knees just locked. I was stuck there on that bloody rug."

"Try explaining that to the receptionist in broken Italian over the phone," Kate added. "My little travel dictionary was no help at all. The receptionist thought Tim had been mounted by a rabid dog. I had to go down to the lobby in the end to act it out for them. And then I had to do it all over again when the doctor arrived."

It wasn't a scene Liv wanted to think about for too long but she could only imagine the reaction of the receptionist and the doctor, in the very city where the Pope lived.

The pregnancy theory went out of the window when India got her period the next day. Kate was still adamant that her daughter was pregnant.

"For God's sake, Mum, you can't have your period and be pregnant," India said between heaves.

"I suggest you Google pregnancy, bleeding and vomiting and see what you come up with," Kate answered smugly and put down the phone.

Liv was as surprised as India to find that Kate was right after all. They'd never been pregnant or ever tried to get pregnant so they had no idea their own bodies could be so contrary. Liv rang NHS Direct just to make sure.

"They said you should go to the Early Pregnancy Unit at the hospital," Liv told India. "To check."

"Do I have to?" India moaned from sofa. She had a washing-up bowl between her knees and a bottle of Lucozade in her hand. She glared at the bottle. "Why the hell does Lucozade make me heave? It's never done that before. It's usually, like, a healing medicine when I'm hungover."

"That's because you might be pregnant and not hungover," Liv ventured cautiously.

"Of fuck off," Liv snarled and was promptly sick into the bowl again. When she was finished, she wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and sighed: "Alright, I'll go. Just to get you and Mum off my back."

"It looks like you're around nine weeks pregnant," said the sonographer, turning the monitor round to show India. India craned her neck to look. There wasn't much to see and what she could see, she couldn't understand. The grainy black and white image made no sense at all.

"See that little blinking dot?" asked the sonographer, pointing to a bright spot at the centre of a black patch. "That's the heartbeat."

Liv and India watched the little dot blinking away for a minute. Liv found the whole thing difficult to get her head around. That winking light on a screen was actually a baby in India's womb. It all seemed so absurd and abstract. India, the least motherly and most boozy, faggy person you were ever likely to meet, was pregnant. Liv knew the mechanics of getting pregnant – after growing up with Kate and Tim how could she not? – but she was struggling to imagine India having a baby. What would she do with it? Take it to the pub with her?

"This is just insane," India said, sitting up so that she could throw up in the bowl on Liv's lap. "I can't be pregnant. I can't even find my own house keys!"

The sonographer said nothing. She'd clearly seen it all before. She ripped some paper tissue from a big roll and handed it to India to wipe the jelly off her stomach. "I'll leave you to get dressed now."

Liv helped India to get up and put her dungarees on again.

"For fuck's sake," India ranted before the sonographer had even left the room. "This is just mad. I've only been going out with Jakob for four months! I don't know him properly. I can't even remember how he takes his tea! I can't have his baby."

She shoved her foot angrily into her DM boot.

"You love him though?" Liv asked.

"Yes! I do fucking love him but I also love Nando's macho peas and Taylor Swift but I don't want to have their baby!" Liv decided it was better not to mention that this made no sense. She watched India shove her other foot into the other boot. "Can you lace them up please? If I bend down, I'll puke again."

Liv crouched down to tighten up the laces.

"He works literally all the time in his restaurant," India continued. "I never see him apart from to shag between shifts and then when he finishes work at one in the morning. How can I know that he'd be a good dad or even a good partner? I'd be left looking after a baby by myself."

Liv straightened up.

"He loves you and he's a responsible person. He's got his own business and he employs lots of people."

"Just because he can julienne a bloody carrot and sort out someone's tax code doesn't mean he'd be any good with a baby!" India countered. "And I earn fuck all and I live in my parents' granny flat. I'm hardly parent material either!"

She had a point – the circumstances weren't ideal - but Liv also knew that India could talk herself out of anything, good or bad, if left to her own devices. She had a habit of getting caught up in very complicated arguments in her own head and losing sight of what she actually thought or felt about something. Liv thought of the evenings she'd spent sitting on the sofa, stomach rumbling and watching India talking herself out of having an Indian takeaway when Liv knew that eventually, after debating the pros and cons of a Chinese takeaway, India would end up having a curry.

"Look, you don't have to decide anything now," Liv said.

"I've only got three weeks before the cut off! How can I possibly decide? I've got 21 days to work out my whole future! " She looked like she was about to cry.

The tension was broken by a nurse coming into the room.

"Here's a prescription for the tablets to help with the sickness. You can get them from the pharmacy downstairs. And we'll need to see you back here next week to keep an eye on things. Make an appointment at reception on your way out."

Liv wasn't surprised to see a familiar black car waiting for them by the main entrance. For once she was relieved to see it idling by the kerb. As she steered India through the sliding doors, Trevor, the driver, hopped out and opened the passenger door for them.

"Morning, Miss and Miss," he said politely.

"Thanks, Trevor," Liv said apologetically as India barged her way into the car and flopped down dramatically on the back seat.

"Bowl!" India yelled.

Liv quickly passed it to her. "Sorry about this, Trevor," she said, knowing that his immaculate leather seats were about to be assaulted by a very angry young woman with terrible nausea and bad aim.

They peered down into the car as India heaved into the bowl.

"I'll be as quick as I can," he said as Liv slid into the back seat and he closed the door behind her.

"Well?" said Kate, opening her front door the second the car pulled up at the kerb outside the house. She strode over the car with the family dog Daphne trotting at her heels and took the bowl from a grateful Liv. There was only so much sick that she wanted to see in one day. India gingerly got out and was promptly sick into the gutter.

"I'm pregnant, alright!" India hissed. "You were right. Are you happy?" She began to stamp over to the stairs that led down to the basement granny flat where she lived.

Trevor took the chance to slide back into the car and drive away.

Kate and Liv followed India.

"Darling, it's not a question of being right or wrong. I take no pleasure in either. I just want you to be ok."

India turned around and yelled: "Well, I'm not ok, alright? I'm fucking scared and I'm fucking sick of being sick!" She juddered with a new wave of nausea. She looked round for the nearest receptacle. It turned out to be a wheelie bin. She pulled up the lid, was promptly sick into it and then closed the lid as if she hadn't just heaved into a bin.

Kate went over and pulled her into a hug. India resisted at first and then collapsed onto her mum's shoulder.

"What am I going to do, Mum?" she sobbed, wiping a snotty trail onto her mum shoulder.

"Let's go inside, have a cup of gin and think about it," said Kate.

Chapter Two

They reluctantly settled down into their usual places at the kitchen table. Kate sat at the head, India sat on one side of the large, battered farmhouse table and Liv sat on the other. Daphne curled herself round Liv's feet on the floor. A tall, glass pot of mint tea sat stewing in the middle of the table. India's washing up bowl sat next to it.

"Can you move that stuff away from me? It's making me heave." India pointed at the teapot and then pulled the bowl towards her. She put her forearm across the bowl and let her head rest on it. "Why does everything make me feel sick?" Her voice reverberated into the bowl.

"It was the same with all three of you," said Kate, pouring some tea for Liv and herself. "I couldn't stand being near food, let alone eat any of it, for the first trimester. I lost at least a stone with each baby at the beginning. Piled it all back on once I could eat again. In fact, all I did was eat for the next six months. I ate for Britain, Europe and the Commonwealth. Your father said it made him feel quite sick watching me eat."

"Please don't say the words 'eat' and 'sick' in the same sentence," India moaned into the bowl. "You'll make me hurl and I really don't need any help in that department."

"Sorry, darling." Kate stroked her daughter's head and tucked one of India's wayward pink curls behind her ear. "Now, shall we talk?"

There were only a few words that could strike fear into India and Liv's hearts as quickly as 'shall we talk?'. It was phrased as a question but they both knew that there was no choice involved. Kate was going to talk and they were going to listen. And, if Kate got her way, agree with her. If Kate felt there was an 'issue', then a 'talk' was the only way to solve it. When they were teenagers, the 'talk' was mainly about sex. Once, Kate started off by saying: "Now, I'm sensing that you girls aren't quite as open to exploring your sexuality as one might like. Try it all, girls. Everything – anal, women, ménage à trois. You will regret it if you don't. I certainly have. Though you father is nothing if not highly experimental, I feel I haven't experienced women fully enough." Her other favourite 'issue' was the patriarchy. "Don't let the patriarchy limit your expectations, girls," Kate would say, pushing a few dog-eared feminist books across the table. "Whatever you choose to do, whether it's architecture or sweeping streets, make sure it's your choice and yours alone. And, most of all, tell the misogynists to fuck right off. It's the only way."

India and her brother Rufus would snigger about the 'talk', always adding sarcastic finger quote marks. They'd roll their eyes and yawn while Kate was talking. Liv, not being one of Kate's children, tried to be polite. She never openly disagreed with Kate or rolled her eyes but she was always aware that Kate had the luxury of privilege. The whole family lived in a lovely, upper middle-class bubble. They lived in a tall, pale honey coloured, five floored Regency townhouse in the poshest part of Bristol. Tim was a classics lecturer at the university, they had a second home in Cornwall and all the children had been to private schools. Though Kate would never admit it, she had her own expectations. She wanted her children to be creative, expressive and well-travelled but she also wanted them to have a decent income, a partner and children. That was the way life played out for people of her class. Liv, on the other hand, came from a working-class family and her parents had no problem heaping expectations on her. Get married, have children, live near your parents, get a nice, little job while the children are at school and don't let yourself go. Your husband cannot be blamed for straying if you 'stop making an effort', which was unsubtle code for getting fat and letting the grey show through. Having grown up in a city, Liv found their expectations very limiting. If Liv stuck to them, her life would be just like her parents and, in her view, very small. Small town and small-minded, in fact everything that Kate despised. Luckily these two worlds didn't collide often. Liv was grateful that her family lived in Italy and hadn't been back to Bristol since they'd emigrated ten years ago. Kate and Tim had dropped in to see Liv's family one summer when they'd been on their way from Tuscany to Sardinia. They'd stayed for lunch, had a walk round town and then exited after coffee. Liv had cringed inwardly for every single second but Kate and Tim were oblivious. They found it 'charming and delightful', in that way that wealthy tourists look at olive farmers in Umbria. Other olive farmers see back breaking work, long hours and failed harvests but tourists see beautiful scenery and something nice to dip their focaccia in.

Liv didn't need to think too hard to know how this current conversation would pan out in her parents' house. If Liv got pregnant, they'd go absolutely ballistic. Their default reaction was ballistic – everything from forgetting to make their beds to scratching the car got a full-blown theatrical performance. Pregnancy out of wedlock would take the performance to a whole new level. There would be shouting, crying and God would be called on to answer some tricky questions. Between sobs, Liv's mother invariably looked at the ceiling and ask God how she could have brought up someone with no morals. How she'd been a good mother and provided everything she could and for what? To turn out an ungrateful whore! Once she'd got that off her chest (and her father had sloped off to fume in the garage and avoid talking about any 'womanly' things), her mother would lay out the future. Engagement straight away, wedding next month and then a premature 'honeymoon' baby. Everyone knew that a 'honeymoon' baby wasn't the result of the bride and groom getting a bit too frisky after some cocktails in Bali. And it wasn't premature either. You could probably track the baby's conception back to approximately eight weeks before the shock engagement was announced.

Kate, Liv knew, would handle this very differently. For a start, God and prostitution wouldn't come into it. India might strop and rail but Kate would usually keep calm and level-headed. Her suggestions were usually spot-on but India, always the contrary teenager at heart, rejected them out of hand until she'd had time to think about it.

"Now," said Kate in her calmest, most non-confrontational voice, "I appreciate you are in a very difficult position, darling. You feel dreadful and you have monumental decisions to make."

"Thanks for pointing that out, Mum," India snapped from inside the bowl. "I really need you to emphasize just how shit this situation is."

Kate waited a moment before continuing. "I was merely sympathising with your predicament, darling. I am in no way judging or criticising you. How are you meant to be clear-headed when you feel so absolutely terrible?"

India sniffed in reluctant agreement.

"Shall we think around the issue, then?" Kate asked in her lightest possible tone, knowing that anything she said could easily be a touch paper for India's flaring temper.

"S'ppose so," India muttered reluctantly.

"So," said Kate, "let's just get the facts right and see where it takes us? You and Jakob have been seeing each for how long?"

"Why are you asking this, Mum?" India snapped. "You know the answer. This isn't an episode of Hercules bloody Poirot. Just get on with it."

"I am darling," said Kate smoothly. "I'm merely establishing the facts so we can get a handle on the situation."

"Four months," India shouted. "Four sodding months. Is that ok?"

"Yes, darling, that's fine," said Kate. She glanced at Liv who was sensibly keeping out of this conversation until she was asked to join in. Liv gave Kate a thumbs-up of encouragement and then circled her hand round and round in front of her, motioning Kate to speed it up a bit before India lost patience. They hadn't been best friends for fifteen years without Liv knowing exactly when India was liable to snap. She was a dreamy, arty type but she did have limits, especially when talking to her mum about tricky issues.

"Look, Mum, let's cut to the chase," India began, as she was hit by another wave of nausea. They waited till India had finished and then Liv picked up the bowl and took it to the downstairs loo to empty it.

When she got back, India was lying with her head on the table, looking pale and limp. Without lifting her head, she said: "Liv, tell her what she wants to know. I'm not going to last too much longer and I haven't got the energy to talk."

Liv and Kate mapped out the basics. They started with India's more negative spin on things. India and Jakob had been together for four months, most of which time had been spent shagging the living daylights out of each other. Jakob was always working, running his new restaurant nearby, but he would squeeze in visits to India between shifts and then after the restaurant closed at night. He'd all but moved in with India, partly because he was so tired and his own flat was further away. He'd turn up at 1am, they'd either shag or chat or shag and then chat and then he'd inevitably fall asleep.

"I don't know him very well but I seems like he's a decent guy," said Liv.

Kate nodded. "He's very sweet, thoughtful and polite."

"I bet they said that about Jack the Ripper," India snapped from the table. " 'He had such exquisite manners.' " She used a mocking, plummy voice.

"But it's true darling," said Kate. "He's very respectful with your father and I, always asking how we are and engaging in genuine conversations. He is, also, absolutely gorgeous. A chiselled Nordic God and frankly, darling, if you don't want him, I most certainly do."

"Jesus, Mum, it's not just about his looks," India yelled. "I know he's fucking gorgeous. It's about whether he's right for me in the long term and to have a baby with."

"Well, only you can know that from inside the relationship, Ind, how you feel about him and how he makes you feel," said Liv. "Benedict's known him for years and he wouldn't have backed Jakob's restaurant if he didn't think Jakob was reliable, trustworthy and a generally all-round good bloke. He can spot a bullshitter from space."

"Indeed," Kate agreed. "Unlike most abandoned children, Benedict has never been swayed by sentimentality about his parents. Even as a child, he knew his mother was nothing but trouble and has never wanted to see her. That's not to say he's hard hearted. Far from it. He simply knows when someone's worth trusting."

Liv knew this was true. Benedict's mum, Genevieve, had left his father for a man she'd met at the gym. She'd not just left him but moved to New York suddenly, with no notice, and had never made any attempts to stay in touch with Benedict and his little brother Olivier, who had been just four and two at the time. One minute they'd had a mother and the next it was like she'd never been there at all.

"I know, I know," said India wearily. "He's lovely, he's fit and he's driven but I can't make any decisions when I feel like this and even if it does wear off by 12 weeks, it'll be too late to change my mind. Oh God," she wailed. "I might be one of the Kate Middleton types who's sick till the baby's out."

"It is a possibility I suppose," said Kate, "but let's try to be as positive as we can in the circumstances. Have you told Jakob?"  
"No!" India squealed. "I can't tell him over the phone. Anyway, he's back tonight and I can tell him then. I said I'd go to the airport to get him."

Kate and Liv looked at each other. Just getting from the car to Kate's front door had been a journey, with India stopping to vomit copiously in the wheelie bin. There was no way she'd get to and from the airport on her own or even with someone to drive her there.

"Look," offered Liv, "why don't I go and get him? That way you can have a sleep this afternoon and then you'll be in a better frame of mind to talk to him."

"Mmm," said India, noncommittally.

"I think it's a good idea, darling. You don't want to have that conversation in a car with you throwing up every five minutes."

"But I don't want to have that conversation at all!" India wailed. "Once I tell him, I'll never know if he wants to stay with me because of me or because I'm pregnant."

Kate reached over and stroked her daughter's head. "Darling, everyone is troubled by that kind of uncertainty. Does he love? Will he love me when he has seen me empty my bowels in labour? It's an endless question. Undoubtedly, you're facing that question before most other people have to but the uncertainty is still the same. Love is a gigantic leap into the unknown. You hurtle into the abyss hoping and praying that the other person loves you as much as you love them. That's all you can do: hope."

"God, that's a cheery thought, Mum," India snorted from the table. "My entire life and potentially the life of a baby hangs on a hope. Very reassuring."

"Darling, without getting all existential, that's all we have. Life is from one minute to the next. You have to believe that you're making as informed a decision in that moment to carry you to the next. No one can predict what will happen in five minutes or five years. You can only be sure in the moment. Anyway," said Kate, getting out of her chair, "I think you should save your energy for this evening. Why don't you go up to my room and have a sleep? That way I can wait on you hand and foot in my own house rather than going out the front door and down the stairs to your flat every time that blasted bowl needs to be emptied." She turned to Liv. "I've had to buy a baby monitor so that I can be summoned from downstairs."

Kate helped India get to her feet.

"Thanks, Liv," said India. "I really appreciate you picking up Jakob."

"No worries," Liv answered. "What shall I tell him if he asks what's wrong with you? Whatever I say will look dodgy."

She was right. If she said India had a stomach bug, then that would be a lie. If she told him India was pregnant, then the cat was out of the bag before India had had a chance to speak to him. Either way it made for an uncomfortable conversation in a car with someone she didn't know particularly well.

India looked defeated. "I don't know," she said simply. "I can't think straight. Mum?" She looked hopefully at Kate.

"Why don't you tell him that she's still under the weather but she's getting better and she'll tell him all about it when he gets back?"
Chapter Three

Liv closed the front door behind her and felt her shoulders relax. She was pleased to be back outside on the street, this time without the ever-present bowl in her hand. The last few days had been an emotional rollercoaster and she was tired and tense. Usually she was the one riding the damn thing but this time it was India. It made a change, she supposed as she walked down Cheltenham Terrace and towards the university, from always being the one in need. She'd got sick of that after her boyfriend Matt had died two years earlier. The pitying looks, the way a well-meaning person took your hand between theirs, stared into your eyes and asked 'how are you?'. The worst were the people who crossed the road to avoid you, like tragedy was contagious and they could catch it just by talking to you. Liv had reluctantly come to realise that tragedy was normal – everyone suffered some at one point or, if they were really unlucky, several points in their lives – and you had to pack that tragic thing into your emotional baggage, pick it up and keeping on walking. Your bag would be heavier than before but, after the shock and grief had subsided, you still had to keep on walking. It was either that or give up. If people could see beyond the tragedy, they'd see that you were still you, just a more muted, slightly sadder version of you. You still wanted to talk about Love Island and avoid talking about Brexit. Other people didn't seem to get that and stopped you slipping back into ordinary life with their pity, concern or rudeness. Don't patronise me or mollycoddle me or be rude to me, Liv had wanted to scream a year after Matt died, just talk to me like I'm the same as everyone else. Let's talk about the weather like everyone else.

There was no chance that India was going to let anyone patronise her. Right now, she was weepy, tired and washed out but she wouldn't lie down and let anyone steamroller her. Liv smiled as she thought this. India wasn't great in a medical emergency – she was too absorbed in her paintings to think about calling about NHS Direct or using a tea towel as a tourniquet – but Liv was sure that once the sickness had stopped, India would know what to do. She'd make the right choice whatever Liv, Kate or even Jakob said or did. She was stubborn but her gut instincts were usually spot-on. After all, she'd known that her older brother Rupert was dangerously infatuated with Liv when everyone else had laughed it off as a sweet crush and look how that had turned out. Rufus had refused to accept that Liv wasn't romantically interested in him until Benedict had appeared. Then, unable to bear seeing Liv and Benedict together, he'd taken a summer job in the US. The summer job had been extended and he was still there.

Liv was just thinking that her own instincts had been spot-on with Benedict when her phone vibrated in her pocket. When she fished it out, she saw that it was him.

"That's funny. I was just thinking about you!"

"You could call me at any time or the day or night and I'd be thinking about you," Benedict answered in his usual serious tone. Liv smiled at the way he could answer any throw-away or light-hearted comment with something so earnest and intense. He didn't do casual. At first, she'd thought he was being sarcastic but now she knew that he really meant every word of every compliment or admission of love he'd ever said to her.

"I know," she said. "I think about you all the time too. You're my mental wallpaper. I don't mean mental as in nuts, by the way," she corrected quickly. "You're not nuts. I meant you're like the background in my mind."

"Don't worry, I know." She could hear the smile in his voice. "How's India?"

Liv stopped at a zebra crossing and waited for a gap in the traffic to cross. She took a deep breath and ploughed on. This conversation wasn't going to be as heavy going as the one India had lined up for tonight but it still wasn't going to be easy. Benedict had told Liv on their first date that summer that he was infertile. Charlotte, India's older sister, had given him chlamydia when they were having a relationship as teenagers. He'd been unable to get it treated in time and when he eventually saw a doctor, it was too late. There was no chance of him having children. Hearing about someone else's baby news, even if it was an unplanned one, was going to hurt. The issue had been on his mind even more than usual since Charlotte had dropped a bombshell at the end of the summer. She'd decided to reveal that not only had she given Benedict chlamydia, she'd also been pregnant and had had an abortion without telling him. It had caused a rift in the family, with Kate and Tim falling out with Charlotte. Benedict had retreated a little further into himself whenever the subject of babies was brought up. Liv braced herself to bring it up now. Given the situation with India, there was no avoiding it.

"She's definitely pregnant. She had a scan. She's still puking nonstop and she's now in full-on panic about what to do." Liv spoke fast, leaving little gap for Benedict to chip in. She wanted this conversation over as quickly as possible to spare him as much pain as she could. She knew, deep down, that she couldn't shield him from every mention of babies or pregnancy but she still wanted to try. "Jakob's back tonight. I said I'd pick him up from the airport as India's too sick to go. She was determined to go but we talked her out of it."

There was a pause while Benedict absorbed this onslaught of information. "If I know Jakob, I'd say he's going to be ok with it. He's totally in love with India. I've never seen him so into anyone before. And besides that, he's always wanted to settle down and have kids."

Liv was surprised. How could she say that without sounding bitchy? "He doesn't look like the type to want to settle down," she said carefully.

"Because he's an Adonis?" Benedict laughed. "Yeah, I can see that. He's tall and good looking and he's a chef. Potentially he could be out there pulling left, right and centre but he's not like that. At least I never saw anything like that when we shared a flat in France. We picked grapes all day, surfed in the evening and on our days off. We went out for the odd drink but that was it. He was always surprised when women slipped him their phone numbers – and they did. A lot. As far as I know, he never rang any of them back. Not because he thought he was better than them but because he genuinely seemed confused by the attention. I don't think he has any idea what he looks like."

It was true that Jakob had that special glow around him that only the beautiful or famous have. To start with, at six foot six with long white blond hair, he was hard to miss, probably even back at home in Norway. Liv had only ever seen him in food splattered chef's whites, with his hair in a messy top knot, but that hadn't dimmed his radiance. His face was perfectly symmetrical and he had ice blue eyes with a penetrating gaze that he fixed on you, making even the most trivial conversation seem very important. Liv suddenly had an image of Jakob and Benedict, 19 years-old, tanned and ripped walking into a seaside bar somewhere in France and all eyes swivelling to check out the two unfeasibly good-looking guys. She felt a sharp pang of jealousy.

"And what about you? Did you get many numbers? You're not exactly too shabby yourself." Liv could hear the insecure, whiny girlfriend in her voice and she didn't like it. She was usually so measured and controlled in what she said but Benedict was her weak spot. Whenever she thought of him with anyone else, it felt like standing on a thumb tack in bare feet. The reaction was involuntary and the pain was real.

Benedict laughed. "I'd just managed to get away from mad Charlotte so I didn't want anything to do with women for a long while. I was happy to be far away from England." Benedict paused. "You're not jealous, are you?" There was a definite hint of amusement in his voice.

Liv snorted. "Jealous of what? Some superficial French women who threw their numbers at you years ago?" she said scornfully, though he'd pretty much hit the bulls' eye.

"Thought so," Benedict teased. "You're jealous." He was surprisingly quick to tease for someone who was prone to as much irrational jealousy as she was.

"No, I'm not," she said hotly. After a beat, she had to admit that she was. "Well, I am a bit but I'm not proud of it."

"I think it's sweet. I'm the same about you. I don't like the idea of anyone else touching you or worse, you wanting them."

Liv didn't hesitate to let him know that she couldn't imagine either of those things ever happening again. "God, you don't need to worry about that. It's so different with you. I've never wanted anyone the way I want you," she said, darting down a side street where it was quieter and she wouldn't be shouting something so personal over the roar of a bus. She stopped a few houses down from the corner and leaned against a garden wall. "I know I'll never want anyone else. When we're together, I know that and I know you feel the same way too but sometimes, like now, I get all panicky and jealous and say all kinds of stupid, immature things. I know it's pathetic." She could hear him breathing hard down the phone but he didn't say anything. "Are you angry?" she said, worried that she'd annoyed him by being such a teenager.

"Where are you?" he said, not answering her question.

Liv looked around for a street sign. "Edinburgh Crescent," she answered. "Why?"

"Wait there. I'll be there in two minutes."

Chapter Four

Liv leaned against the wall and waited. She expected to see Benedict's car turn into the street and pull up by the kerb but instead she saw Benedict round the corner and run towards her at speed. Seeing him never failed to floor her. Even though she woke up next to him every morning, when he had crazy hair and sleep in his eyes, she was dazzled by his physical perfection. Like Jakob, there was something captivating about him. He wasn't quite as tall but he was just as striking with his model-like angular face and caramel tousled hair that fell skimmed his shoulders. India had likened him to Gabriel Aubry, the Canadian model Halle Berry had been in a relationship with. Liv could see the likeness; both Benedict and the ridiculously hot Canadian had a square jaw that tapered into an equally square chin. Their cheekbones were high and sharp. Below Benedict's perfectly straight, long nose, his top lip had a pronounced cupid's bow, while his bottom lip was fuller. His slanted, hooded eyes were a clear green and his skin was golden as if he's just come back from a few days in St Tropez. When he wore a white shirt, as he did now under his usual charcoal grey slim cut suit, he looked particularly suave and French. And, Liv thought, totally fuckable. She'd never met anyone else who'd been able to turn her on so dramatically, even when he was 100 metres away.

When Benedict reached Liv, he slowed down for a second and grabbed her hand.

"Come with me," he said and started to run again. He was so much faster than Liv, especially in her high heeled boots, so she let go of his hand and tried to walk as fast as she could behind him. The view was better anyway, she thought. Benedict looked so good when he ran. There was no flapping or flailing. He was all speed and efficiency, like a superhero about to rip off his daytime suit and take off. Liv had always thought of anything sporty as brutal and messy (she'd seen her ex Matt play enough rugby to know that sport could leave you broken and bloody). That was until she'd seen Benedict running. Every part of him moved smoothly and in sync, his arms tucked into his sides, his powerful thighs powering him forward in long, fluid strides.

Benedict stopped suddenly when he reached the bend in the crescent. Liv saw him fish a huge bunch of keys out of the pocket of his jacket. He was flipping through them when Liv finally caught up with him.

"What are you doing?" she asked, hand on thighs and out of breath.

"Here it is," he said, holding up a key. "Follow me."

He turned and strode up the garden path of the house marked number 43. Liv followed him uncertainly, wondering why they were going into a strange and, from the look of it, empty house. Through the big bay window she could see into the living room. It was totally bare apart from some spotless cream carpet and heavy dark red velvet curtains at the window. Benedict put the key into the lock and opened the tall, heavy front door. It pushed back a wave of mail across the carpet in the hallway. Benedict held the door open for Liv to enter. She stepped over the sprawled letters and flyers for local pizza delivery and went inside. The hallway smelt as empty as the living room looked. From the sun shining in through the window above the door, she could see dust motes floating in the slightly stale air. She heard the swish and then thud of front door close behind her and turned around. The noise reverberated through the empty space, muting the sound of the traffic outside. All Liv could hear now was the sound of her jagged breathing and the fast pulse of blood in her ears. Benedict stepped forward so there was just the slightest gap between them. She could feel his chest rising and falling quickly. She could also feel the heat emanating through his thin white shirt. There was more heat in his gaze. His eyes bore into hers. He gently but firmly pushed her so that she had her back to the cool wall. Then he leaned in closer so that his face was millimetres from hers, resting his forearm on the wall by her head.

"I want you to know that it's you and only you. There's never been anyone else and there never will be."

Liv gasped. He was so close, so intense, that it took her breath away. What he was saying made her head reel. He loved her and wanted her as much as she loved and wanted him.

"Anyone I've slept with before is nothing. Any feelings I had for anyone else are nothing. It's just you." His voice was quiet and steady but there was no doubting the ferocity of his feelings behind it. "I want you so much that it hurts. It only stops hurting when we're together. When I'm inside you."

She nodded silently. She felt that too.

"I like that you're jealous. Don't be ashamed of it. It means that I'm yours."

She nodded again and swallowed hard. His voice had an edge to it now, a low growl that made a small thread of adrenalin pass through her. It darted through her chest, down through her stomach and between her legs.

"I'm going to show you that I'm yours. I'm going to show you how much I want you. I couldn't wait to see you later. I had to see you. I have to have you now, be near you and inside you. That's the only way I can stay sane."

He pressed his mouth hard to hers and brought his free hand to cup the back of her neck. She relaxed into it and let him kiss her. She could feel all the yearning and fear and love through his lips. Before she could respond and kiss him, he stepped back. He tore off his jacket, loosened his tie and threw them all on the floor. He then took the bag from her shoulder and threw it on the floor next to them. Next, he reached round her waist and found the button on the waistband of her skirt. He quickly unbuttoned it and pulled down the zip and let her skirt fall to the floor. She stepped out of it and he kicked it out of the way. That left her standing in this strange, quiet hallway in her knickers, bra and blouse. She could hear her own breathing quicken, this time from expectation. Her pulse rushed in her ears. What was he going to do? She didn't know but she was sure that whatever it was would feel amazing.

He got down on his knees in front of her and brushed his lips across the flimsy fabric of her knickers. This light movement across the fabric and the pubic hair beneath made the hairs on Liv's arms stand on end. Even the brush of his lips was electrifying. Liv collapsed back against the wall and waited for his next move. She looked down and watched as he brought the heel of his palm to where his lips had just been. This time he pressed hard through the fabric, pressing down on the sensitive flesh that disappeared between her legs. He kept circling his palm, rubbing close enough to her clit to make her squirm with pleasure. Then he slipped his thumb between her legs, pushing past the thin fabric of her knickers. She felt the flimsy lace catch on her pubic hair as he pushed the sliver of material to one side. The tip of his thumb found its way through her closed lips, gently pushing them apart to reach his goal. She could hear her own wetness as he eased them apart. He hadn't even gone inside her yet and Liv was already feeling as heady as she did just before she came. Her head spun, her breath caught in her chest and she felt herself fall backwards into a dark chasm of heightened sensations.

His thumb found her opening.

"God, you're so wet," he murmured in wonder.

He gently slid his thumb inside her.

"And so fucking tight and hot."

He hooked his thumb so that the pad slid against the most sensitive spot inside her.

Liv gasped with pleasure and tightened around his thumb.

"You have no idea how good that's going to feel on my cock but I'm going to make you come first."

He pressed his face into her knickers, breathing in. "I love the way you smell." His tongue flicked at her hypersensitive clit and then down to meet his thumb, licking round it as he rhythmically rubbed inside her. "And I love the way you taste." He drew his thumb out and slid two fingers in and then halfway out so that he could lick her wetness from them. She could feel the tip of his tongue lapping up the silky cream. Then he plunged his fingers hard into her, taking her breath away. He plunged them in again and again and then began lapping at her clit. Liv let her head fall back against the wall and opened her legs as far as they would go. She wanted to give him all of it, to feel his tongue in every single millimetre of flesh between her legs. He licked it all – the soft hood of her clit, the hard nub inside it, her swollen lips, the hot, wet opening, the tender, silky skin behind it. Round and round all the while fucking her hard with his relentless fingers.

Liv felt herself shifting further up the wall with every thrust. She was panting and moaning. She hooked one thigh over his shoulder and pulled his face in closer. She wanted him to be as close to her as possible, for him to devour her. She also wanted to come. She needed to come. Much as she loved his tongue lapping and swirling on her clit - it was all so good – it was becoming painful. Each lap made her flinch in exquisite agony.

Benedict cupped his hand around her arse and pulled her right into his face. He was licking hard and fast and his fingers were working in time. It felt so intense that she couldn't imagine that there was anywhere further to go. Surely this was as good as it was going to get? But she was wrong. His tongue, his fingers, the feverish way that he pushed her towards a climax, it all turned her on so much that it was overload. Her body desperately wanted to come that it started to convulse even though she wasn't coming yet. Her arms and legs went rigid, tensing against the unbearable pleasure. She dug her nails into the wall behind her. Benedict lapped faster on the hard nub that was now sensitive beyond belief. He slipped a third finger inside her, pulling her lips away from her clit to expose it some more. Seconds later, she was grinding her face into his tongue as her cunt clenched around Benedict's fingers. It rippled around them, squeezing them hard as they pumped her. She clawed the wall and clamped her leg hard on his shoulder. Her cunt spasmed as her mind went into freefall. Falling down through layer upon layer of exquisite pleasure.

"Stop, stop, you've got to stop," she gasped. "I can't take it anymore."

Benedict didn't stop. He kept on lapping until the clenching finally died away. Then he stood up. Without saying a word, he undid his belt, unzipped his fly and pulled off his trousers and pants. His cock sprang out from his shirt, thick, long and so erect that it was almost touching his stomach.

"Turn around," he said gruffly. "I need to fuck you hard right now."

Liv turned around gingerly on her shaky legs and leaned her palms against the wall. Benedict grabbed her hips and pulled them to him roughly. He pushed her knickers further to one side and then she felt the thick head of his cock pushing against her. He didn't probe gently and ease his cock in, letting her get used to him bit by bit like he usually did. This time he slammed it in, knocking all the breath out of her. His cock was so big that it went in deep, banging hard against the end of her, stretching her tender cunt further than it had ever been before. He was relentless, ramming into her and pulling her body hard into his with each stroke. Liv could hear the sheer physical effort in each thrust and the insatiable lust behind it. He thrust and grunted, hard and fast. Over and over again. She felt sweat beginning to drip from his bent head onto her shoulder. His breath was hot on her neck and his fingers were digging into her hips but she didn't care. They couldn't get enough of each other. They couldn't fuck each other hard enough or often enough. They were at their happiest when they were merged together, his cock inside her, a hot tangle of bucking, frantic limbs.

"You are mine," he grunted. "I fucking love you so much. Do you understand?"

She nodded and moaned.

"You make me so fucking horny. I want to bury my cock in you. I want to come inside your tight cunt."

Liv moaned. Knowing that she made him horny made her even hornier. When his big cock released hot cum into her, she knew it was because she could get him off like no one else had or would.

"Fuck me as hard as you can," she gasped.

"Like this?" He rammed his cock in even harder.

She nodded and began to let out small, breathless gasps, as if she was touching something that was almost burning her skin. "Come for me."

Benedict dropped his forehead against her shoulder and rammed as hard as he could. Liv knew he was reaching his peak when he began to ease off, his strokes shallower. He rose up onto the balls of his feet as he got closer still, inching towards a massive climax. Liv could feel just the fat tip of his cock dipping in and out of her. Its thick, engorged rim had to stretch her to get in and she loved it. He was taking her with every stroke, pushing his way in and moulding her round him. Finally, he took one final full thrust and then he came, his fingers curled into her hips, his legs stiff, his cock jerking inside her. She heard his low moan as his cock spurted into her and gently rocked back and forth. Liv could feel every spasm as he filled her up. When he was finished, he wrapped himself around her, enveloping her in a hot embrace.

"I love you," he whispered, as he nuzzled her neck.

"I love you too," she answered, tipping her head to one side so that her cheek rested against his.

They stayed like that for a while. Slowly the sounds from outside started to bleed back into Liv's consciousness. Her own rushing blood and heaving breaths began to calm. She opened her eyes and was almost surprised to find herself in full daylight in the hallway of a strange house. She'd been so deep into herself that resurfacing took some adjustment.

"Can I pull out?" Benedict asked. His cock was beginning to shrink by increments.

"Mmm," she answered, still in her post orgasmic fog.

He eased the rest of his cock out of her and reached for a handkerchief in his jacket pocket. She gratefully pressed the handkerchief between her legs to catch the thick, heavy cum and turned around to face him. He was smiling at her with that secret, sweet smile that only she saw. It lit up his already beautiful face.

"I love you," he said, cupping her face and kissing her lightly, "but you're going to kill me! I need to sit down."

He slumped down next to her on the floor and she joined him there. They leaned back against the wall, grateful for the cool plaster behind them.

"Can you pass me my bag?" Liv asked.

He reached over and gave it to her. She fished out a bottle of water and gave it to him. He glugged down almost half and then passed it to her. She swallowed the rest in one go, enjoying the sensation of the cold water coursing down her throat and cooling her as it went.

Benedict took her hand and they sat in silence for a while.

"What is this place?" Liv asked.

"It's one of my properties. I've got a few on this street but this is the only one that's empty."

"I could have come to your office, you know," she said.

"I couldn't wait that long. I wasn't joking when I said that I had to fuck you there and now. I did. I always do. Fucking you is like this urgent need, like an emergency."

She rested her shoulder against his shoulder. She knew exactly what he meant. When she was away from him and heard his voice on the phone, especially if he sounded anxious or insecure, she was seized by a primitive urge to get to him and have him. To merge with him and show him that she only felt complete when they were together. She'd heard people say that kind of stuff before and had dismissed it as Hollywood rubbish, stuff pedalled by Instagram fairy tales that made you feel hollow inside because your life was nowhere near as passionate, exciting and fulfilling. She'd always cringed when someone said 'my other half' to describe their partner. I don't need another half, she thought to herself, I'm already whole. What a load of crap. Then she'd met Benedict and suddenly it all made sense. She resisted it at first because she felt like a cliché. She was a feminist, after all, and feminists didn't go round saying that a man completed them. They were strong and independent. She'd yelled along to Destiny's Child, believing every single word of Independent Women. She'd paid her own way and forged her own career without needing to fall back on anyone. And yet. And yet. Here was Benedict. Liv had to admit that even Beyoncé had changed her tune. She'd even put up with a cheating husband, for Christ's sake. That was hardly the stuff to make Germaine Greer cheer. Maybe Beyoncé felt this same irrational, inexplicable and frankly insane love for JayZ. It obliterated feminist principles. Nothing abstract or intellectual could stand in its way. It was raw, gripping and overwhelming.

"Yeah, an emergency," she agreed. "You're my A&E." She lifted their entwined hands to kiss his. It smelt of her and instead of being disgusted, it made her feel that all was right with the world if Benedict was infused with her scent.

The spell was broken by a violent buzzing. It came from the pile of clothes. Benedict checked his watch.

"Shit, it's 11. I've got a meeting." He frantically scrabbled around for his phone and then stood up to answer it. "Hi, yes Liz, I know I've got a meeting. I've been held up. I'll be there in 10 minutes. Can you give them coffee and get Charlie to show them the figures for 2018?" He turned to Liv. "I'm sorry but I've got to go. I've had this meeting scheduled for months and I can't let them down."

He held out his hand and she got up too. "That's ok. I've got to get to the office too. Is there a bathroom anywhere?"

"Top of the stairs, turn right. I'm going to wash my hands in the kitchen and then go. Is that ok?" He finished zipping up his trousers and shrugged on his jacket, stuffing the tie into his pocket.

"That's fine. I'll see you later."

"Just pull the door shut behind you when you leave," he called over his shoulder as he shut the front door.
Chapter Five

Five minutes later Liv shut the door behind her and walked back down the garden path and out onto the street on aching legs. She knew she was walking strangely. It reminded her of seeing her sister Lucia just after she'd given birth, gingerly picking her way down the hospital corridor with her legs apart like an old, bow-legged cowboy. Liv felt like that now but for entirely different, altogether less traumatic reasons. Her thighs were half numb, half sore from all the pummelling. And everything between her legs was so overstimulated that even her knickers brushing gently against her made her wince. Anyone seeing her arrive and then leave number 43 would have instantly guessed what she'd been up to. In through the door in a mad rush and then out again half an hour later looking flushed and unsteady. Even though the street was quiet and there was no one looking, Liv self-consciously smoothed down her hair and pulled her bag further up her shoulder to make herself appear more respectable than she really felt.

This wasn't the best start to her working day. The sex, as usual, had been amazing but she didn't want to arrive at work looking freshly shagged. She had to face Toby. Bursting through the door late with flushed cheeks and bowed legs didn't exactly scream professional, unless she was a high-class hooker. And she wasn't. She was an academic. Academics were serious and cerebral. And most of all, she didn't want to give Toby any ammunition. He was always quick with a cutting remark or criticism. If he got a whiff of Liv being anything less than proper, he'd pounce on her. Liv sighed. If only she could open the office door and see an empty chair at Toby's desk. She could relax then and get on with her work without watching her every word and action. She missed the good old days before Toby had turned up at the start of term three months ago. Liv clung onto the tiny, vain hope today might be different. He might be ill or, even better, he might have been mown down by a huge bus. Squashed to a pulp by the massive wheels. Now that was a vain hope worth entertaining! That thought cheered her up. It was much better than wasting more time worrying about just how much Toby was going to annoy her today.

As soon as she got to the university, Liv headed straight for the nearest loos to tone down her post orgasmic face. She cleaned up her smudged eyeliner, reapplied her foundation and then picked out a nude lipstick to tone down her dark red swollen lips. Sex had been so rough and passionate that her lips felt bruised and the skin around them was slightly raw from Benedict's stubble. As she patted ridiculously expensive Tom Ford concealer around her chin and mouth, Liv was grateful that Benedict had filled his bathroom with everything he thought she'd need after their first night together. Liv would have been happy with a quick sweep around Boots to pick up the essentials but Benedict had sent someone to Harvey Nicks to stock up on expensive cosmetics, a dress, lingerie and a pair of shoes. She'd been slightly uncomfortable (but secretly thrilled) about that at the time but now, as the concealer blitzed the beard rash, she was glad he had. She doubted that the waxy stick of Rimmel she used to buy as a teenager would hide this.

With her composure regained, outwardly at least, Liv finally reached her office. She glanced at her watch. Shit, it was 11.15. She'd look like a total flake for strolling in so late. She took a breath to calm herself and pushed at the door with as much fake confidence as she could find. The door didn't budge. Good, he's not here yet, she thought, fishing out the key and letting herself in.

It wasn't the most inspiring office in the world. A long thin room with a window at the end, there was a harsh strip light on the ceiling and very little natural light. The breeze block walls had been painted white a long time ago and were dotted with greasy marks where previous occupants had Blutacked things. There were two desks, one of each side of the long room with just a sliver of space between the backs of the two chairs. The view wasn't up to much either, unless you liked staring out at the air-conditioning unit humming away outside. The room didn't matter though, it was what it represented to Liv. That she was finally back on track.

In the three months she been there, Liv had tried to turn the office from looking like a holding cell at a police station into a somewhere she didn't mind spending eight hours a day. On her side of the room, she'd tried to cover up the tatty wall by putting up a few framed pictures. India had painted one of Daphne, Kate and Tim's basset hound, for her and she had a beautiful watercolour of a hotel in Italy. She'd stayed there with Benedict last summer. Perched on the top of a cliff overlooking a bay, the hotel was something out of a fairy tale. High towers, whitewashed walls and tumbling flowers. Benedict knew she loved it and had commissioned someone to paint it for her as a gift for the first day of term.

Liv dropped her bag onto her desk and stopped to looked at the picture for a moment. She always had very mixed emotions when she really took the time to study it. It reminded her of the turmoil she'd felt when she'd first got together with Benedict. They couldn't bear to be apart but being together was too painful. They were both scared or petrified if Liv was being really honest. They clung to each other with the fervour of shipwreck survivors and yet the slightest thing could break them apart. Liv felt like they were a jigsaw they couldn't solve. They had all the right pieces – they loved each other and wanted to be together – and yet they wouldn't fit together however much they forced the pieces into place. After one spectacular miscommunication, Liv had run off to her family in Italy, believing that the relationship was over for good. It had been such as stupid thing to end things over. She'd made a silly joke and Benedict had taken it totally the wrong way. All she'd said was that sex with him was so good that it ruined her for anyone else. She'd meant it as a compliment if anything. He was so good; the rest of the sentence didn't really matter. Not that she'd really meant anything by it. She was in the dreamy state after sex and she wasn't really thinking. Her brain was fogged by sheer physical exhaustion and pure bliss. And yet, seconds later, the atmosphere had soured. Benedict had turned away from her in bed. And he refused to talk to her. It seemed like such a crazy overreaction. She wasn't actually thinking about sleeping with anyone else but Benedict wouldn't listen or even acknowledge that she was there, sitting lying next to him, trying to reason with him. She couldn't believe it. After having wild, adventurous sex with him, he had cut her off. The thought that he could pretend that she wasn't in the same room as him, let alone that he'd just been inside her in a million different ways five minutes before, made Liv snap. He knew her history. Sex, particularly sex that intimate and daring, was a big deal for her. To do those things with her and then blank her made her feel exposed. Even after the short time they'd been together, he had to know that. Liv had told him quite clearly on their first night together. She'd told him that two years before her boyfriend Matt had been out drinking and taken coke for the first time. The result had been catastrophic. Matt, a normally sweet, laid back guy, had become psychotic. He'd raped Liv and then killed himself in the space of half an hour. That half an hour had changed everything. Over the following two years Liv had struggled to feel safe again, let alone to want to have sex again. Liv laid it all out quite plainly, keen to give him a chance to back out if it was all too much for him. He hadn't backed out then, when it would have been easier to walk away. In fact, Benedict had made a point of doing exactly the opposite. After her revelation, he was more full-on than she could have ever imagined. And yet, now here he was backing away with such violence and finality that Liv couldn't quite compute it. Now, when they were hopelessly intertwined and she'd come to trust him. How could that not sting?

Benedict must have known that and yet, there she was, frozen out by him after making herself so vulnerable. Her only thought was to escape. To run away from him. He was too immature to think about anyone else but himself. His own baggage made him way too complicated and what she really wanted was someone simple. Straightforward and grown-up. And most of all she wanted no drama. The last two years of her life had been nothing but drama and she'd had enough. She was tired of battling her way through each day. When she went to bed at night, she wanted to feel nicely tired from a busy day, not bone tired from wading against a tide of endless emotional pain. She wanted to feel light as she drifted off to sleep instead of suffocated by the dark weight of the past that always bore down on her the second she switched off her bedside lamp. The weight felt physical to Liv. It pressed her down hard onto her bed, making her limbs heavy and her chest constricted. She wanted that weight lifted and it seemed as if a relationship with Benedict was only going to suffocate her.

Liv had run away to her family in Italy fighting the pissy voice in her head saying that she'd been an idiot for getting involved with him in the first place. It fought with the sad voice that she said she loved him and she was heartbroken. It was easier to focus on her anger though, easier to be angry with herself than to admit that she was walking away from an intense, overwhelming love she'd never experienced before. She let the anger boil away for the next couple of days, hoping that when it subsided, she wouldn't feel the same about Benedict anymore. She'd see that she'd been weak and deluded. She wasn't in love with him, she was just flattered that someone so unbelievably gorgeous and wealthy wanted her so badly. His desire for her had swept her away. Surely, she'd see that eventually?

But she hadn't. When he'd turned up unexpectedly on her parents' doorstep looking for her, Liv had willed herself to feel nothing. He means nothing, she repeated over and over in her head as she walked slowly towards the front door, he means nothing. And yet, when she'd looked at him, she knew that she felt more than she could ever explain. There was pain and anger in there but there was also an intense connection and a crushing physical desire. He'd taken her to the hotel in the painting so that they could talk. When Liv looked at the painting now, she wasn't pulled into that riptide of anger anymore. The anger had been replaced by the small spark of hope she'd felt as they'd wound their way up the tight, twisted mountain roads to the hotel. Hope that they might be able to get past this and carry on.

Liv stared for a minute longer and then pulled out her desk chair and tried to sit down. As usual the chair wanted to veer off in the wrong direction, like a wayward shopping trolley. Liv gripped it hard and sat down. The padded, fake leather seat produced a loud puff of air. Great, Liv thought, not only is this chair possessed but it also farts. None of this was going to bring down her mood, though. Wonky, farting chair or even Toby. Liv finally felt like she was back in control of her life. She'd got through the worst two years of her life, a fact which still surprised her, and now she could see a way ahead. Positivity had been hard to come by for such a long time. A less cautious person would have said that everything was going her way. If she'd believed in karma, she'd have thought no more about it but as someone hardened by terrible experience, she had the lingering sense that it was all too good to be true.

Liv shook the mouse to wake up her computer. As she did that, the ring on her left hand caught the harsh artificial light. It was ridiculously sparkly for an old ring and threw multi-coloured spots up onto the ceiling. Liv rolled her hand gently from side to side, watching the little dots of light dancing above her. It's huge, she thought looking at the hefty square diamond. She couldn't quite get used to wearing it but she was too scared to take it off. Imagine leaving it next to the sink somewhere or accidentally throwing it out with the rubbish. She could just see Benedict's face as she told him that his grandmother's engagement ring was now somewhere in transit to the local tip. She decided to live with the inconveniences instead. The ring snagged on clothes and she'd scratched Benedict's face with it more than once. Apart from the injuries she was inflicting on Benedict's beautiful face, she was worried about attracting unwanted attention - she didn't fancy having her finger hacked off by a mugger. She'd tried to tell Benedict this but he'd been hurt by the idea that she didn't want to wear the ring.

"Don't you want to show people that you're engaged to me?" he'd asked, with that serious, pained expression creasing his forehead.

"Of course I do!" Liv answered, half annoyed by his neediness but half thrilled that he wanted her so much. "I'm just worried that it's your grandmother's ring and it's worth a lot of money. What if I lose it?"

"You won't. I had it adjusted so that it fits your finger exactly. It won't slip over your knuckle. There's no way that ring is coming off unless your finger comes off too." He laughed.

Liv had a momentary vision of a masked man wielding a glinting kitchen knife and pointing to her ring finger. "That's not funny," she said, indignantly. "That could actually happen."

"Look," he said, taking her hand and bringing it up to his lips for a kiss, "lots of people wear big rocks and nothing happens to them. Most people assume that they're not real diamonds anyway. If anyone asks, you can say it was £5 from New Look."

Liv looked at the ring. There was no way it cost £5 from New Look. It was far too tasteful. Okay, the diamond was huge in a celebrity engagement ring kind of way but it was surrounded by a halo of smaller, tastefully arranged diamonds. Despite its size, the whole thing looked delicate and elegant. In the end, she'd decided to wear it. It meant so much to Benedict and plus, if she kept it on, there was no chance of losing the damn thing.

Liv was interrupted from her thoughts by the door being thrown open. It banged noisily against an old battered metal filing cabinet. No wonder it's so battered, thought Liv, if he always opens the door like this. Toby slammed the door behind him with the back of his foot and went over to his desk. He had a bulging brown leather satchel over one shoulder and a dangerously high pile of folders and papers in his hands.

"Morning or should I say afternoon?" he said archly, dropping his stuff onto his desk and sitting down. His chair, Liv noticed, didn't fart. She made a mental note to the swap them later. "Nice of you to join us."

Liv tried not to react. "Morning, Toby," she said evenly, without turning around. She focused on her computer screen and tried to scan through her emails. A few minutes of quiet passed and Liv tried to relax.

"Why is it that you work on Spanish time?" Liv heard Toby's chair swivel round so that he could address her back. "Does your driver take you to see your personal shopper before you come to work?"

Liv had to hand it to Toby. Few people, probably only Toby and Boris Johnson, could be snide and racist and misogynistic all at the same time.

Liv decided, as she did every time she had to spend time in the office, that she'd try to rise above it by being sarcastic.

"Harvey Nicks does get clogged with undesirables after 11am so I thought I'd drop in here for a little intellectual relief," she said, not turning from her screen. "Not too much though as my lady brain is so small."

She heard Toby's unattractive piggy snort followed by the swivel of his chair as he turned back to his desk. She felt the usual swell of fury in her chest as her cheeks flamed. How could one person be so irritating? Liv had really tried since they'd been thrown together at the start of term. She'd been hoping to share an office with Callum, another postdoc she'd been an undergraduate with. They'd been friends for years and Callum was such easy company – he was funny, endlessly interested in Liv's work and generally an all-round nice guy, the kind of person who'd give you a glowing character reference or help you carry a ridiculously heavy wardrobe up some stairs. Callum was a small, slight guy in his late twenties with thinning, tufty blond hair. Liv always thought he looked like a baby chick with his fluffy down sticking up on his head. His skin was so pale that it was almost translucent. He had that underfed, slightly haunted look that reminded Liv of Macaulay Culkin but she knew that Callum was anything but underfed. His lovely girlfriend Bethany was always sending him to work with her baking experiments in a battered old Cath Kidston biscuit tin and Callum graciously shared them with Liv, wolfing down his own share in seconds and then eyeing Liv's for leftovers. Despite his irritating metabolism, Callum would have been the perfect person to share with unlike Toby, who was easily turning into the worst.

Callum had been paired off with another new postdoc called Julia and Liv had ended up with Toby. From day one Toby had grated on her. She'd generously put his annoying ways down to his nerves at being in a new job to begin with but, when three months down the line, he was still chippy and patronising, she had to accept that Toby on day one was the real Toby. He hadn't been nervous or desperate to fit in; he was being himself. And Liv, for all her efforts, really did not like his real self one bit.

Benedict wasn't a fan either. Inevitably, his first reaction was jealousy when Liv told him about Toby's many annoying ways.

"You don't like him, do you?" he'd said quickly, when Liv had come home complaining that Toby was constantly making snide remarks and trying to undermine her. "It's not that love/hate thing, is it?"

Liv was furious that anyone could think that she'd find Toby attractive. "He's the most irritating shit I've ever met," she snapped. "I just want to punch him in the face!"

In the brief moments when she'd been able to put her antipathy towards him to one side, she could see that, objectively, Toby was reasonably good-looking. Not an 11 like Benedict but, she reluctantly admitted, he was hovered around a 7. India wasn't convinced.

"Nah, he's a 5 and I'm being generous," said India, scrutinising his photo on the department's staff page. "He looks like a tubby James Franco. Or maybe a wax work of James Franco that's been left next to a radiator."

Toby had James Franco's dark hair, curated stubble and dirty, crinkly-eyed smile but that's where the similarity ended. No one had told Toby, though, and he clearly thought he was the full Hollywood 10. He certainly spent a lot of money on his appearance. More than once Liv had caught him looking in a little hand mirror and fiddling with his hair before a meeting. It didn't need fiddling with; it looked like it had been painfully tousled, lock by lock, that morning. Amused by the little mirror, Liv had sneaked a quick look in his desk and found a surprisingly large stash of beauty products. All high-end stuff. Charlotte Tilbury concealer, Dior city block, lip balm by Terry and even some Crème de la Mer moisturiser. Liv couldn't believe how vain that made him seem. Or, if she was feeling particularly charitable, insecure. She didn't even know any women, apart from magazine beauty editors maybe, who kept that kind of arsenal in their desks. She had a tube of old hand cream from Christmas circa 2015, some antibacterial hand gel, a couple of tatty tampons and an emergency roll-on deodorant in hers.

Toby couldn't have been more different to Benedict or Jakob. They weren't vain and they certainly weren't concerned with the effect they might have on women. Looks didn't interest Benedict in the slightest. He'd grown up with the idea that beauty could be toxic. His dad had been reeled in by his mum's beauty and look where that had got him. Abandoned and broken by someone who traded on her beauty to get what she wanted.

"He said she was 'all surface and no heart'," Benedict had said, when they talked about his mum and dad. "'Don't get taken in'."

Benedict had obviously taken that advice seriously. With his penetrating gaze, it seemed as if he looked straight past the surface and right into you, weighing up what kind of person you were inside. He'd only seen Toby for a few minutes one evening, when he'd picked Liv up from work, but it was enough for him to decide that Toby was, as he so delicately put it, 'a complete twat. Undoubtedly clever but a complete twat'.

Liv hated to admit it but Benedict was right. Toby was clever. When he talked about his work in the department, she was impressed by his subtle understanding of human psychology. He really knew his subject but, and this is where he fell down, he couldn't be modest about it. Lots of people in the department, like the readers and professors, knew their subject too but were understated in that particularly self-effacing, English way. There was nothing understated about Toby; he'd studied in the US and had absorbed the blunt, naked ambition (and ridiculous jargon) that the English are so squeamish about. He used words like 'drill down' and 'low hanging fruit' as if he were pitching some hot new technology to investors instead of sitting in a meeting about why students don't hand their work in on time. Despite this, Liv was sure that he'd get ahead quickly, stepping on anyone to get to the next rung without any guilt or hesitation. She knew that he'd happily step on her to get a permanent staff position. Callum had spotted it too.

"He'd sell his mother, grandmother and first born to get that job," Callum had said to Liv not long after Toby had arrived. There was an unconfirmed rumour that Sarah, one of the newer lecturers, wasn't going to come back from maternity leave. As she taught most of the psychology 101 lectures, the department would have to replace her. None of the more senior academics wanted anything to do with first year undergraduates. They'd been ecstatic to dump that all on Sarah when she was appointed. That was the way it worked. The higher up the ladder you got, the less contact you had with the first years. The other unconfirmed rumour was that Liv was in the running to replace her. "You'd better watch your back, Liv."

Liv had dismissed Callum's gossip. She'd been there a long time and had got a first, then a master's with distinction and then a PhD. Now she had funding for a three-year research project, which was catnip to any university department. If you were the star student, you published lots of research and you brought in money, then you were in with a good chance of getting a permanent job. Though Liv was more focused on her actual research than any possibility of a job, the idea that Toby might muscle in on her chances made her bristle. If she did decide to go for it, she'd have to keep her dislike of Toby to herself. It wouldn't look good for her to be bitching about him to other colleagues. She'd have to bite her tongue and hope that her CV would speak for itself.

Liv's thoughts were interrupted by Toby's mobile. He had The Godfather theme tune as his ringtone. Liv rolled her eyes. He was such a dick.

"Yeah," she heard him say to whoever was on the phone, "I've got that keynote paper I'm giving in San Francisco on the Saturday but I'm free from the Monday after. How about we hook up at the airport and then head out to Vegas."

Liv guessed the person at the other end was verbally high fiving him for his cleverness. "'Kay, fam, got to go. Speak later."

Liv rolled her eyes again. There was no way Toby was giving a keynote speech. Only academics at the very top of the ladder did that. He was probably giving a paper about his new research project to a roomful of other postdocs. It was just like him to overblow things. Luckily their desks faced opposite sides of the office so he couldn't see her expression. Liv didn't have to see his smug face either, though just being in the same room as Toby, even back to back, was hideous enough. There was a metre of so of space between the backs of their chairs when they were sitting down and Liv felt that was far too close for comfort. Toby jostled her chair every time he moved or got up. She didn't know how, but only Toby could manspread behind him as well as in front. She couldn't imagine what a nightmare he'd be on that plane to Vegas.

Toby leaned back in his tilting office chair again and began another conversation on his phone. Liv was buggered if she was going to move forward to accommodate him. Her instinctive reaction was to shove him back towards his own desk but she stopped herself.

"Yo, babe, it's me."

Who the fuck says 'yo' or 'babe' let alone 'yo' and 'babe' in the same sentence unless they're joking, Liv thought? Or Tim Westwood.

"Yeah, yeah at work, yeah, it's dull as shit."

Lovely, thought Liv. I love sharing an office with you too.

His voice was very loud, particularly as he was so close to her. She could practically feel his slick quiff brushing the back of her neck. She shuddered at the thought. She cleared her throat to signal that she was actually working and he might like to keep it down.

"You coming to mine tonight? Great. Time to crack out that Agent Provocateur stuff I bought you, I reckon."

For someone so intellectual, Toby loved talking like he hustled on the street for a living. Liv had a brief fantasy of dropping Toby onto the mean streets of Saint Paul's at 3am and seeing just how gangsta he was then.

There was a quiet knock at the door and Liv turned to see Professor Whitfield open the door and lean in. He opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by Toby.

"Yeah, the crotchless one," Toby continued, leaning back in his chair till he was almost horizontal. "Make sure you're all waxed and' that. You know I like it smooth."

Professor Whitfield coughed politely. Liv smiled at him, pleased that he was seeing Toby in his natural state, not sitting round a meeting table making brilliant comments about a research project or possible changes to a course outline. Instead here he was encroaching on her personal space and sniggering about crotches and bikini lines.

Toby's head swivelled round. He saw Professor Whitfield and snapped back to horizontal in his chair in a flash. "Got to go," he muttered into his phone and quickly slipped in into his desk drawer.

"We have a departmental meeting in five minutes," Professor Whitfield said. "I was hoping you'd both come along."

"Yes, yes, of course," said Toby, slipping back into an accent better suited to a country club in Surrey. "I'm looking forward to it."

"Good, good," said the Professor and turned to go. He paused a moment and then turned back to them. "The university's code of conduct is quite clear on the point of respect for your colleagues. If you need to make calls of such a 'personal' nature," the professor raised his eyebrows as quote marks, "in working hours, then I suggest you do so off the university grounds. See you shortly." He closed the door behind him.

Liv smiled to herself as she picked up a note pad and pen from her desk for the meeting. That's one nil to me, she thought.

Chapter Six

Liv was sprawled on the long grey sofa in the living room watching TV when Benedict got home. For someone used to living in a basement with Kate and Tim's cast-off furniture, she'd got used to Benedict's luxurious flat very quickly. The view from her old bedroom used to be the underside of Kate and Tim's concrete steps leading down from their kitchen into the garden. It was dark and the underside of the stairs were decidedly cobwebby and mossy. Here every room had an amazing view. The suspension bridge was just a stone's throw away. From the roof terrace, you had a 360-degree view over Clifton and over to the hills at Dundry. She'd been awed by everything in this flat to begin with – the view, the minimalist style, the fact that flat took up the whole top floor of the iconic, elegant building with its Parisian-style mansard roof. Liv was nervous there, like a fidgety child in the tableware section of a department store, too scared to touch anything in case she broke it or caused some terrible Niagara of shattered glass and porcelain. Now that she'd lived there for three months and they'd fucked on virtually every single surface available, Liv felt more relaxed. Benedict didn't seem to mind if they ruined the furniture with their combined weight and body fluids so putting her feet on the sofa didn't seem like such a problem.

"What are you watching?" he said, sitting down on the arm of the sofa nearest Liv's head. His fingers began to stroke and play with her hair.

"Some programme about people buying a house in Corsica. They're so picky. Apparently, a mountain top location, infinity pool and small olive grove just aren't ticking enough boxes. Christ, I'd live there in a heartbeat."

"Would you?" Benedict sounded surprised. Liv always said the countryside made her twitchy. Guests, like fish, might stink after three days but so did living out in the sticks. No phone reception, scary insects and nosy, geriatric neighbours. Give her traffic, anonymity and noise any day.

"Well, Toby wouldn't be there so it gets my vote."

"Aah," said Benedict, cautiously.

Liv sensed Benedict was secretly pleased that Toby was pissing her off. She knew that he still worried that she had a tiny crush on Toby or there was some spark between them. Liv could tell that he was trying to handle this carefully so that he didn't come across as insecure, needy or suspicious. They'd been down that road before and it hadn't ended well. He wanted to get the right balance between concern for Liv's career and his overwhelming need to punch Toby's lights out.

He slipped down off the arm of the sofa and onto the seat next to her. "What's he done now?"

Liv sat up and muted the TV with the remote. "He made some comment about how 'nice' it was for me to 'drop' into work, when I could be shopping round town in my chauffeur-driven car," she said bitterly, using her fingers as sarcastic quote marks.

"What an arsehole," Benedict said. "It's none of his business what life you live outside of work."

"I know! And then he started having this totally inappropriate conversation with his girlfriend on the phone, telling her to wear some crotchless knickers he'd bought her and to have a wax. To make sure she got all the hair off."

"In front of you?" Benedict asked, his voice tight.

Liv could hear him trying to keep his anger in check. She noticed he was squeezing his clasped hands so hard that his fingertips were very red. "Yeah, but the great thing is that Professor Whitfield popped his head round the door to remind us about a meeting and caught every word that Toby said. It was classic."

"What did Whitfield say?"

"He told us about the meeting and then paused and said that personal conversations should be had away from the university grounds. It was very understated but pointed. It's the first time that anyone in the department has seen what Toby's like when it's just me and him in the office so I'm really pleased it was Professor Whitfield. He looks like an old doddery academic but he's really sharp. I suppose you don't become a psychology professor without knowing exactly how to read a situation."

"Even so, you should log everything Toby says or does, record him saying stuff. Then you've got something concrete to take to Professor Whitfield." Benedict had suggested this before but Liv wasn't keen to make a fuss. After the last two years, when she'd been through the wringer with Matt's attack and then suicide, she wanted to stay off the radar for a while. People were only just starting to treat her normally at work. She didn't want to be back in the spotlight again, being the victim in another long, drawn out nightmare. She just wanted to plough on and get through it as best she could. Plus, with the job now up for grabs, Liv wanted to keep things professional, from her side at least. She knew it was a mistake to mention today's incident to Benedict but it had been on her mind all day. Any mention of Toby wound him up. Next time she'd have to keep it to herself or at least wait till India was better and then vent with her. For now, she'd agree to keep a diary of Toby's misdemeanours, knowing full well that she wouldn't do it.

"Yeah, I'm doing that," she lied and quickly changing the subject. "I've got to get ready to pick up Jakob from the airport. He's due in at eight."

"How are you getting there?" asked Benedict.

"I'm going to book an Uber," she answered, reaching for her phone.

"Before you do that, come with me." He stood up and held out his hand.

She looked at him quizzically. "Why?"

"Just come."

She took his hand and let him lead her over to the massive window that looked out over the street.

"I got you something." He pointed down to his driver Trevor, who was standing on the pavement below. Trevor saw them and gave them a curt nod.

"You got me Trevor?" she asked, confused.

"No, not Trevor," he laughed. "He's strictly mine. What else can you see?"

Liv scanned the street. "Er, well, there's a phone box, a lamppost, that little bit of grass across the road, a pug that looks like it's about to..."

"No, not that! What's Trevor standing next to?"

Liv peered down at Trevor again. He was standing by the kerb with one hand resting on the bonnet of a car. She turned to look at Benedict. "You mean the car?"

He nodded.

"You got a new car?" she asked.

"It is new but it's not for me."

"You bought it for Trevor?"

"No. I bought it for you."

"What?" Liv looked at him in disbelief. "Me as in me?"

"Yes, you as in you," Benedict laughed. "Do you want to go and look at it?"

"Of course I do!" she squealed, clapping her hands together like an overexcited seal.

The car was some sort of giant SUV. It looked fairly big from upstairs but down on the street it looked like something out of a Transformers film. It was bloody huge. Painted the deepest aubergine shade (that lovely Chanel rouge noir nail varnish sprang to mind), it looked like you could easily ram raid a bank without going above second gear. How would she even get in? Would she need a step? Liv walked around it, taking in every little detail. The Mercedes logo, the twin exhausts, the huge black grill at the front and the fancy spokes on the wheels. It probably cost more than a three-bedroom house and was exactly the kind of car that Liv criticised posh mums for driving down narrow city streets. She wasn't sure what to say.

"I've not seen one in this colour before," she said, deciding that was the most neutral thing she could say.

"I had it customised. Do you like it?" Benedict asked, nervously.

Liv gave out of little 'mm' as she peered in through the tinted windows.

"Do you want to get it in?" he reached out and took the keys from Trevor. "I don't think we'll need you this evening. Go home and I'll see you at seven tomorrow morning."

Trevor nodded, got into Benedict's own car – a long sleek black Mercedes - and drove away.

Benedict threw the keys to Liv. She ran round to the driver's side and got in. Benedict slid into the passenger seat. The interior was even more impressive than the exterior. It looked like the lounge of a select gentlemen's club. The doors and dashboard were inlaid with dark wood and the seat were a baby soft cream leather. The steering wheel had her initials stitched onto it.

"Wow," she breathed, running her hands round the smooth steering wheel. She could suddenly see why all the local moneyed mums wanted one of these beasts. Once you were inside you felt cocooned in your own bubble of luxury. And you felt safe, like no one, not even a rabid white van driver, could touch you. She liked that feeling. Being safe was a big deal to her, especially after what had happened with Matt, but she wasn't going to let that cloud her judgement. She steeled herself to say something that her recycling-carrier-bag-refusing conscience would applaud but her inner Melania Trump just wouldn't believe. "This is amazing but it's too much. I can't accept this. It must have cost an absolute fortune."

"Do you like it?" he asked again.

"Yes, of course," she said, "but I'll be frightened to drive it because it's so expensive."

"You'll get used to it."

"I don't know," she said, hesitantly.

"Look at it this way," Benedict said. "That twat Toby can't say you have a driver now."

"That's true!" she laughed and then paused. "I'm sure he'll have something to say about this monster though. It's not a typical car for an academic. A Volvo estate, maybe, or a knackered Saab but nothing this luxurious." She looked around at the Bang & Olufsen stereo and complicated satnav screen. "I don't think I can take it. It's a huge thing to give me. You've given me so much already." He had. He'd basically given her a new wardrobe and let her use the spare caretaker's flat in their apartment block as her office and sanctuary. Then the engagement ring that would probably clear the national debt of a few African countries.

"Look," Benedict said, turning in his seat to face her. "If your dad bought your mum a car, what would say?"

Liv frowned. There was no way she could imagine her parents in this scenario, even if it was hypothetical. Her parents thought going out for coffee was a major extravagance. Her dad would need to have had a stroke before he offered to buy her mum a car. "I'd say that it was a sweet thing to do."

"Right, so how is this different? We live together, we're getting married, I have a car and you don't so I've bought you one."

"Ok, I know," she said, frowning again. "It's just a very different world to me. People I know don't buy each other cars as presents. They buy dressing gowns, slippers and hand cream."

"Think of this as a twenty years' worth of dressing gowns, slippers and hand cream for Christmas and your birthday."

"You could have bought me a Ford Focus, you know," said Liv. "Or a Skoda."

"I could have," said Benedict, "but where's the fun in that?"
Chapter Seven

Jakob was surprised to see Liv and Benedict waiting for him in the arrivals hall. They saw him scan the loose knot of taxi drivers and relatives as the automatic doors slid back to let him through. Benedict waved to catch his attention.

"Hi, man," said Benedict, giving Jakob a one-armed hug. "How's it going?"

"Good, good," Jakob replied. He turned to Liv and kissed her on the cheek. "Where's India?" he said, his angelic face creasing in confusion. "I thought she was coming to get me."

Liv felt her cheeks go red as they always did when she was going to tell a blatant lie. She hated having her own inbuilt lie detector. It was like having a neon arrow pointing to her head saying 'Terrible Liar'. There was an awkward moment where Jakob scrutinised her face, waiting for her to answer, and Liv geared herself up to say blurt out the fib she'd been practising in her head all the way here.

Luckily Benedict stuck out his hand to take Jakob's leather duffle bag. "Come on, man, let's go." He put his arm round Jakob's shoulder to steer him out of the airport. Liv trotted alongside Jakob as the two men strode to the exit. Outside it was a proper late November night. Wet, dark and windy. The horizontal rain blew straight into their eyes.

"She's still not feeling well so I said I'd come and get you," Liv said loudly over the sound of the whining planes and suitcase wheels scraping across the hard, concrete walkways. "I hope that's ok."

"Sure," said Jakob, with his slightly Americanised Scandinavian lilt. "It's nice of you to come but I'm worried about India. I can't help thinking that she's trying to break up with me?"

Liv shot a look across to Benedict.

"When did you get so paranoid?" Benedict laughed. "She's ill, man. I've seen her. She's not trying to break up with you. Throw up, yes, spilt up, no."

"Trust me, Jakob, if India wanted to break up with you, you'd know," Liv chimed in with forced hilarity. She sounded slightly hysterical, even to herself. "She's not someone who holds back if she has something to say. You've met her family. They all love to argue. She's just ill and I thought I'd save her the journey."

"Right," said Jakob, not sounding wholly convinced. "What exactly is wrong with her? It's been going on for ages now."

"I know," said Liv, playing for time. "Ages. I think she's waiting for some test results. I'm sure she'll fill you in when you see her. I'll drive you straight over there now."

As they wove their way through the rows and rows of parked cars, Liv tried to hang back. She didn't want to say any more than she needed to. This lying business was exhausting and she was shit at it, frankly.

When they reached Liv's car, she unlocked it and opened the driver's door.

"Nice car," said Jakob. He opened the front passenger door and took a deep breath. "Mm, that new car smell. When did you get this?" He hopped in and, like her brother and every man she'd ever met, couldn't stop himself from pressing all the buttons on the dashboard. The screen lit up.

Benedict got into the back and clipped in his seatbelt. "It was delivered today."

Liv didn't want to get into the driver's seat, not with Jakob in the front with her. She hadn't thought this far ahead. She'd been so busy panicking about what to say to Jakob at the airport that she hadn't thought about the drive home. Shit, she thought, if I'm stuck in the front with him, he's bound to start talking about India again. Jakob looked at her. "Aren't you getting in, Liv?"

Liv opened her mouth to say something, what, she wasn't sure. She was hoping that some amazing lie would come to her when she got going.

"I ... er..." For the second time this evening, Jakob stared at her, waiting for her to say something.

"Tell you what," said Benedict, quickly unclipping his seatbelt, "I'll drive us back." He hopped down from the car and walked round to the driver's side. He took the keys from Liv and slid into the driver's seat.

"You drove here so I'll drive us back," she heard him say as she gratefully buckled herself into the back seat. She caught his eye in the rear-view mirror and smiled her thanks.

Liv sat back and let Benedict steer the conversation. He was asking Jakob lots of questions about his trip and then about the restaurant. Benedict had invested in the restaurant so there was talk of cash flow, payroll and other financial stuff. Liv half listened as she watched Benedict driving. Even his driving turned her on. He looked good behind the wheel. He drove with one arm out straight, with his hand clutching the top of the steering wheel. Liv could see the hard line of his tensed forearm and bicep through his shirt. With his other hand, he skilfully changed gear. As with everything else he did, his movements were smooth and controlled. He drove fast but with such concentration and precision that Liv felt safe. At a set of traffic lights, a pair of girls in the car next to them stared at Benedict and Jakob and giggled. Liv could see why. Even in the dim streetlight, Jakob stood out with his battered leather biker jacket and his white blond hair pulled up into a loose topknot. His bright blue, slanted eyes and tanned skin. Benedict with his sharp cheek bones, tousled caramel coloured hair and aquiline nose. They looked like a pair of male models in a luxury car advert. Liv imagined how much India would love this moment. She'd love that girls were trying to catch her gorgeous boyfriend's eye and her boyfriend hadn't even noticed them. At least, that's what India would have done a few weeks ago. Pregnant India was probably too busy hurling into a bowl at this precise moment to care about anything else.

At Kate and Tim's house, Benedict jumped out and fished Jakob's bag from the boot. Liv and Jakob got out and stood on the pavement. Before they could say goodbye, the front door of the house opened and Miles appeared on the front step with Kate. They hugged and Miles turned to walk away. Liv suddenly panicked. What was Miles doing here? Miles was engaged to India's older sister Charlotte. If Miles was here, then Charlotte would be here too. Liv gripped Benedict's hand hard. He squeezed it back. Neither of them wanted to see Charlotte. As Kate and Tim weren't talking to her, Liv was sure that they wouldn't want to see her either.

"Is that you, Liv?" Kate called, peering out into the dark. She put her hand over her head to keep off the slanting drizzle and dashed over to them. Miles followed her.

Liv anxiously looked past Miles back to the house.

"Don't worry," Miles said, catching the direction of her gaze, "she's not here. We're...er...not together anymore."

Kate patted Miles' hand as his eyes filled with tears.

Liv looked at Kate in surprise.

"She left me," Miles looked at the ground and stammered between sniffs. "Made a fool of me and then left me."

"It's a very sordid tale, I'm afraid, but Miles is being very brave, aren't you Miles?" said Kate as more of an instruction than a description. "Now, off you go. Drive carefully and stay in touch, Miles. You're still part of our family."

Miles nodded mutely and, despite the rain, trudged slowly down the road to find his car.

They watched as the lights on the car flared and then heard the clunk as Miles got in and shut the door.

"She was caught shagging a male colleague at his own wedding," said Kate, matter-of-factly. "A senior partner, no less. At the wedding reception, the bride went outside to have some photos taken with her parents and found Charlotte and the groom shagging in the sunken garden. On sun loungers, apparently. One can only imagine the aftermath of that particular tableau. It's like an upper-class version of Love Island."

Liv struggled to find something to say while they all took in that bombshell.

"Anyway, Jakob is here now," said Kate, clearly steeling herself for the next onslaught of drama her children had dragged home with them. "It never rains but it pours..."

"Sorry?" said Jakob, not sure what Kate was trying to say.

"Nothing," said Kate, taking him by the arm to steer him back towards the house. "It's lovely to see you. Let's not stand in the rain any longer. India is waiting for you."

And she was, standing in the pool of light from the open door on the front step. Liv noticed India was still holding that bloody bowl. Even at a distance, Liv could see that India was trying to hold in the tears. Her washed-out face was expressionless but she was blinking fast.

When Jakob saw her, he ran over and wrapped her in a hug. As soon as he did that, India began to sob.

"Dear God, it's like a Greek tragedy in there tonight," said Kate, as she kissed Benedict and then Liv. "I hope Tim has fired up the drinks' cabinet. I sense we are in for a long, dark night of the soul."

Then she turned and went inside.

Liv and Benedict looked at the closed door.

"Christ, what a car crash," said Liv.

"Unbelievable," he said, putting his arm round her shoulder and pulling her into his side. "Don't worry about Jakob, though. He's a good guy. He'll do the right thing."

But Liv wasn't worrying about India. She was worrying about Charlotte.
Chapter Eight

They were both quiet on the short drive home. Liv stared out of the rain lashed windows, lost in thought. She knew she should be worrying about India but thoughts of Charlotte kept muscling in. That was just like Charlotte. She wasn't even in the same county and yet she had a habit of bringing down everyone's mood.

Benedict finally broke the silence when they pulled into their parking space under their building. He turned off the engine but made no move to get out.

"Are you thinking about Charlotte?"

"Yes, I suppose so," Liv admitted reluctantly, not daring to look at him. She didn't want to be thinking about Charlotte but, much as Liv hated to acknowledge it, she was the ghost that was always ready to haunt the dark corners of her mind.

"What are you thinking?"

"That she keeps popping up and I'm worried about what else she has up her sleeve."

Benedict sighed. "I know what you mean but what more can she do to me? I can't imagine she's got anymore bombshells to drop."

"I hope not," said Liv quietly. The fact that Charlotte and Benedict had even had a relationship was troubling enough. Benedict seemed genuinely pained by the whole thing rather than misty-eyed, which reassured Liv to a certain degree. Charlotte wasn't the first lost love that he couldn't ever get over. She wasn't about to reclaim her rightful place in Benedict's heart. But then there'd been a potential baby. That changed everything. Charlotte wasn't just a silly teenage fling; she was almost the mother of his child.

"Even if she has, I think she's got enough of her own problems to deal with at the moment," he said. "I'm probably far down her to-do list."

This was definitely true. Charlotte had thrown a hand grenade into her perfect London life. Now that her affair had been so publicly exposed, she'd had to give up the white stucco house she shared with Miles in Regent's Park. The Cotswold bolthole, part of Miles' family estate, would be gone too. And the titled set of friends they mixed with. They'd probably side with Miles now everyone knew about the affair. And no more trips to the Rothschild's summer estate in Corfu. Maybe there is such a thing as karma, thought Liv. Charlotte certainly deserved all the shit she was getting. There was no way she was about to feel sorry for Charlotte, not after the way she'd treated Benedict last summer. Liv had her own personal history with Charlotte too. Charlotte had always resented Liv. She never hid the fact that she saw Liv as an intruder in her family home. The year that Charlotte had left to go to university, Liv had moved in. Liv hadn't planned it that way. Liv's parents had decided to move back to Italy and, as Liv was at the beginning of her GCSE year, she'd insisted on staying behind to sit her exams. As India was her best friend, Kate and Tim had generously invited her to stay with them during term time. To Charlotte it seemed like one in, one out. And then it turned out that the replacement was more popular with her family than Charlotte had ever been. She'd always been the odd one out at home, the uptight, disdainful voice in the otherwise cheerful, eccentric household. Charlotte hadn't fallen far from her paternal grandmother's tree. Granny Campbell-Blythe looked like Margaret Thatcher and was just as warm and cuddly.

"Why don't we think about something nicer?" Benedict suggested, unclipping his seat belt and unplugging his phone from the charger. "Like our wedding. Let's start planning that."

Liv smiled and let go of the door handle. She hadn't realised she'd been gripping it so hard. Her hand ached. It would be a relief to think about that after a day like today. India, Toby and now Charlotte. "Yeah, let's go upstairs and do that," she said, energised by the idea of getting married to Benedict.

Benedict leaned over to kiss her on the cheek. "Stop worrying about me. I'm not worrying about Charlotte. Deal?"

"Ok," she said, turning to kiss him. "Deal."

What she'd expected to be a quick kiss before getting out of the car became something much more. As soon as their lips touched, they both felt the electric spark, the inescapable pull. It was the same every time they kissed or touched - like two magnets locking together through the sheer power of their attraction. Their lips locked together and then a crackle of primal, animal energy ran through them. Liv felt the energy course from her lips down to the space between her legs. She felt that familiar tightness inside her, a thin thread of pleasure beginning to coil in her clit. Kissing Benedict was like flicking a switch in her body. A second before she'd been firmly in her head, thinking about Charlotte, and now her awareness was purely physical, in her mouth and between her legs. She felt a low but persistent buzz in her cunt, like an amp that's plugged in and ready to go. As Benedict's tongue darted into her mouth and slid around her tongue, the buzzing increased and became a definite ache. Liv sat forward and thrust her fingers into his hair to pull his hot mouth towards her. She wanted to devour him and just kissing him and touching his face wasn't enough.

"Let's go upstairs," she murmured, her face already scuffed by his light stubble. In the fading overhead light in the car, she could see the intensity in his eyes. There was only one way this was going to go when he had that look.

He reached out and took her hand, placing on that unmistakeable hard ridge in his trousers. "The idea of marrying you has turned me on," he said, not breaking eye contact.

The ridge was absurdly long and fantastically hard. She squeezed it gently and he moaned.

He leaned in. "I want to fuck you," he said running his tongue along her earlobe and then nibbling the sensitive flesh.

"Let's go upstairs, then" Liv said, squeezing his cock again. It flexed against her grip, swelling a bit further.

"I can't wait that long. I want to fuck you now."

"What, here? In the car park?" Liv looked around. The car park was full of cars but it was quiet.

"Why not?" Benedict murmured, slipping a hand under her skirt and up her thigh. "There's no one here."

Liv watched as he pushed her skirt up to expose her legs. There was something unmistakeably erotic about Benedict's manly, tanned hand peeling back the soft fabric to reveal her bare thighs. She knew where his hand was going but the anticipation made her heart beat faster all the same. His fingertips skimmed slowly up the inside of her thigh and across her swollen clit. He pressed gently on the hardening bud through her silky knickers. Liv couldn't stop her hips rising off the seat. The pressure felt so good.

"Do you like that?" he asked huskily, knowing full well that she did.

Liv nodded and shut her eyes as he started to move two fingertips in a firm circle on her clit. She felt a sudden surge of pressure into her breasts and the instant wetness between her lips. Her cunt rippled involuntarily, desperately wanting something hard to grip onto. Her eyes blinked wide at the unexpected wave of pleasure and she arched back into her seat.

"I want you to ride me," he said in a low growl. "I want you to slide your gorgeous wet cunt onto my dick and fuck me till I come."

Liv nodded breathlessly. She wanted that too. She wanted to fill that aching void inside her. She wanted his cock to stretch and pound her. She wanted to slam down onto his hard, muscly thighs while he bucked up into her.

Benedict pushed her knickers to one side and slid his two fingers past her swollen lips and deep into her cunt. Liv's moan caught in her throat.

"You're so wet and hot and tight," he said sliding his fingers in deeper and twisting them round. "I want that round my cock."

He kept on twisting them round. She knew what he was doing. He was opening her up to take his huge dick. There was no way he could go in cold; he was far too big for her. He needed to work her first. Liv spread her legs wider to let him in. She wanted him to get as far as he could, to feel his hard fingertips butt against every last swollen and sensitive bit of her. She could hear how wet she was with each turn and thrust. She opened her legs even wider, pushing herself up from her seat to take as much of his fingers as he could get in there.

With his other hand, Benedict reached round her to find the clasp of her bra. He unclipped it and yanked down the shoulder straps to release her breast. He pushed up her top to find her nipple with his mouth. He licked it first, swirling his tongue round it gently. Then he pulled it into his mouth with gentle suction, sucking on it, teasing the tip with his tongue. Liv's head fell back against the seat as she pushed her breast harder into his face. She wanted him to suck her harder, to bite her. She wanted him to hurt her with pleasure.

His mouth moved onto her other breast while he kept probing and stretching her cunt with his fingers. Liv felt a terrible, all engulfing need for his cock. His fingers and his mouth weren't enough. She wanted his hard cock inside her. Only that would satisfy her.

"I need you inside me," she murmured, gripping his head as he worked on her nipple. "I need you in my cunt now."

Benedict stopped suckling her nipple and sat back. She watched as he quickly slid his fingers out of her and then ripped the delicate crotch of her knickers with both hands. The expensive silk and lace gave way easily. Liv watched as he reached up to the waistband and ripped that too. Then he whipped away the torn knickers and dropped them on the floor. Liv felt the cool air rush on to the overheated skin between her legs. She suddenly felt exposed compared to Benedict. He was still all buttoned up in his suit. She pulled at the sleeve of his jacket, helping him to shuck it off. Then she reached over and unbuckled his belt. She unbuttoned his trousers and unzipped them. She reached down into his trousers to pull his cock out. Benedict lifted his hips up from the seat to help her. And there is was, finally. Huge and rock hard in her hand. There was already a drop of pre cum glistening on its thick head. Liv bent her head to lick it off. Then she closed her lips around the tip and took as much of it into her mouth as she could. It stretched her jaw and made her gag slightly but she loved sucking it. She loved the taste of him, the feel of his silky soft skin over his solid, veined flesh underneath. She loved the way the slightest lick or suck from her mouth made him even harder and thicker. Her mouth could make him grow in an instant and she liked the power it gave her. Any other time she would have happily sucked his cock till he came but right now she needed to have him between her legs. She lubricated his cock with her saliva, licking it several times from base to tip.

"Push your seat back," she ordered.

Benedict reached a hand down to the side of his seat and pressed something that made the seat glide back.

Liv slid across from her seat on to his lap. She turned to face him and drew herself up straight. Grabbing his headrest for balance, Liv put one foot either side of his thighs on his seat and slowly lowered herself onto the engorged tip of his waiting dick. She circled her hips round to get the wide head in. They both watched as she slowly corkscrewed her way down. She held her breath in anticipation of the exquisite fullness she was going to feel. She was never sure that her small cunt could take something so huge but when her thighs finally came to rest on the top of his, she knew that she had him all inside her. She took a moment to savour the way he stretched her. It bordered on painful but it made her feel more fucked that she'd ever been before. He filled her so completely that there was room for nothing else in her head. When he was inside her, she felt totally in her body in a way that she'd never felt before. She was aware of her tender flesh straining around his thick shaft, the way her legs couldn't open the tiniest fraction wider, the way her cunt was becoming wetter and her nipples swelling. It was overwhelming. The connection with Benedict was something bigger than her, it made her lose all reason. When they were fucking, she felt like she might lose her mind. They were like animals, frantically trying to possess each other. She wanted to merge with him and become one body. It wasn't anything she could explain and she knew he felt it too. There was an intensity between them that drove them wild.

"Fuck me, baby," he said. "Fuck me hard."

Liv looked him straight in the eye as she drew herself up till only the tip of his cock was inside her and then slammed down onto him again. He groaned.

"Like that?" she asked.

He nodded.

"Again?"

He nodded.

Without breaking her gaze, she began to pump him hard and fast. She clenched the headrest in her hands and gave it everything. She was going to fuck him harder than she'd ever fucked him before. She was going to make him come like he'd never come before. She'd make him cry with pain when he came. She didn't care that she was going to bruise the tender flesh between her own legs. She had to have him.

Benedict wrapped his fingers around her waist and pushed her hard onto his cock with each of her downward thrusts.

"Hard enough?" Liv asked, through gritted teeth. Her thighs were beginning to burn with the effort.

Benedict nodded. He'd closed his eyes and let his head drop against the headrest. He was breathing hard. Liv felt his nails dig into the bare skin on her waist as the pleasure mounted. He began to moan and gasp. It was a moan halfway between pain and pleasure, which is exactly where Liv wanted him.

"God, Liv," he moaned. "Oh, fuck."

Liv didn't drop the pace even though her legs were starting to tremble from the effort. She wanted to drive him over the edge. Overcome by a primal impulse, her body knew what it wanted to do. It needed to stake a claim, to tell him that he was hers. Only she could make him feel like this. Only she could make him come so hard. She was locked onto a course and there would be no let up until she reached her destination. She wanted to feel him come inside her. That would obliterate all the other women who'd been here before.

Liv let go of the headrest. Her fingers were white from holding on so tight. She cupped Benedict's pained but beautiful face in her hands.

"You are so fucking hot," she said, her breathing laboured. "You turn me on so much. I just want you to fuck me all the time. Do you hear me?"

Benedict opened his eyes and nodded.

"I want you so much I can't bear it."

"I know. I want you too." Benedict's fingers went rigid around her waist. His hips rose involuntarily from the seat as he got closer and closer. He began to buck up against her, needing his orgasm to release him from this lovely torture. They slammed together, working hard to get there.

"I need you to come," Liv said. "Come for me."

Benedict rammed up into her, his thighs tensing and locking as he reached his peak. He gripped Liv and kept her in place, his cock inside all the way to the hilt. Liv felt it spasming inside her. She clenched her core, milking his cock for every last drop of his cum. Benedict winced as he kept on coming.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," he whispered, his forehead dropped against her chest. "Jesus."

When he'd finally finished, he tipped his head back against the seat and looked up at Liv. His silky, caramel coloured hair fell away from his gorgeous flushed face.

"That was amazing. I don't know what you do but you make me come harder than I've ever come before."

Liv smiled and leaned down to rest her forehead against his.

"This is my favourite place," he said. "Here, inside you."

"Mine too," she said, brushing her nose against his. He smelt like lime, basil and sex. "You smell so good. I want to bottle that and carry it around with me."

"You don't need to. I'm always going to be here."

Chapter Nine

Planning a wedding was never going to be easy, thought Liv, but how the hell were they going to balance out Liv's huge family against Benedict's tiny one? His dad was dead and he had one younger brother, Olivier, and that was it. Well, there was his estranged mother but she knew how he felt about her – Benedict had absolutely no interest in speaking to her or ever seeing her again. Liv wondered if he'd feel differently now that they were getting married but she couldn't bring herself to ask him. It was such a sensitive subject. His mother had left his father for another man when Benedict was four and his brother was two. She'd packed her bags one day and gone to live in New York without so much as a backwards glance. They hadn't seen or heard from her since. Benedict's father has struggled to get over it, teetering on the brink of suicide when he'd had to accept that she really wasn't coming back. Would he feel her absence at the wedding, especially as his dad wasn't around either?

Sitting at the huge, smooth concrete table in Benedict's striking minimalist kitchen, Liv circled the total number of guests on the list they'd drawn up together.

"Is that everyone?" she asked. She tried to keep her voice light. She was conscious that her family alone came to almost 100 guests. Benedict's list came to just eight - his father's second wife and his five-year-old stepsister, his friend Philippe, Jakob, a couple of other friends he'd made while travelling and then Tim and Kate. Benedict had said he'd pay for the wedding and it seemed unfair that he'd essentially be paying for Liv's family to have a good time.

"Yep," said Benedict over his shoulder. He was busy rummaging in the fridge for a bottle of wine and some cheese.

"There's no one else you'd like to invite? Long lost relatives? Distant cousins?" She saw his back tense as he froze mid rummage.

"No," he said curtly. "No one else."

She hadn't even mentioned his mother directly but even circling round the idea of her could stop him in his tracks.

"I was just checking in case your family is like mine," Liv gabbled, trying to backtrack. "You can't leave anyone out in case they get offended and you end up causing a family rift for the next 50 years."

This was true. Liv's family couldn't have been more clichéd. They weren't just Italian, they were from Naples where saying the right thing to the right person at the wrong time could trigger all kinds of trouble. They made The Sopranos look like Mamma Mia!. Liv had unwittingly caused trouble a few years before by dropping in to see her aunts in the wrong order. Without thinking, she'd arrived for the summer and had gone to see her aunt Anna, her dad's youngest sister, first. When Clara, his oldest sister, had got wind of this, she took offence. Surely Liv should have respected Clara's position as head of the family and gone to see her first? By visiting Anna, Liv was showing great disrespect. Clara was enraged and couldn't be talked down. If she saw Liv in the street, which was often as they all lived in the same street as Liv's parents, Clara would look straight ahead and blank Liv. She refused to speak to her at family dinners. She'd sit at the table and pointedly turn her head in the other direction from Liv. Liv's father tried to talk to Clara, pointing out that Liv had grown up in England and so she wasn't aware of all the social rules in Italy. Clara's husband tried to talk to her, pointing out that the younger generation didn't stick to the old ways . Clara's children, Liv's cousins Paolo and Luca, tried to make their mother see how silly the whole thing was, joking that she was at risk of developing violinist's neck if she kept up the whole head turning thing. Finally, the family matriarch, the small but dangerous Nonna, who'd been known to stoke a few rifts in her time, ordered Clara to make peace with Liv.

"Don't be such a mule-headed idiot," Nonna had said in her usual tactful, sensitive way, totally overlooking the fact that Clara must have inherited her mule-headed idiocy from someone. "I'm going to die soon, so help me God, and I don't want all this nonsense at my funeral. Just think how people would talk if they saw you sitting in church, staring at the wall while everyone else looked at my coffin."

There was no way Nonna was going to die soon – she'd been threatening to for years and often indulged in fantasy funeral scenes but showed no signs of checking out, much to Liv's mother's huge disappointment – but the idea of shaming the family was enough to guilt Clara into making peace. Liv fervently hoped that Benedict's relatives, if he had any, weren't quite as mad as that. They were French, not Italian, so there was at least a chance that they'd be a bit more restrained. All sophisticated and much less shouty. He'd only mentioned his grandparents so far and she knew they'd died a long time ago. In fact, Benedict had given her his grandmother's engagement ring. Beyond that, Liv didn't know if there was a whole network of Cassel uncles, cousins and nieces out there somewhere.

"Right, well anyway," Liv continued, "at least we know how big the venue needs to be."

Benedict deposited a bottle of red wine, two glasses, a baguette and an armful of cheeses on the table. He pulled out a chair opposite her, sat down and began to unwrap one of the smellier cheeses. Being half French, he loved what he called 'ripe' cheese (or what Liv called 'rank' cheese). You couldn't really call it cheese if it was virtually liquid, she argued. You didn't call water melted ice, after all.

"So where shall we do it then?" he asked, cutting into the cheese and sliding a puddle of it onto his plate.

This was the next tricky issue. Liv wanted to keep it small and simple. She didn't really mind where they did it as long as it was low-key. Benedict, as far as she could tell, wanted something bigger and grander. He wanted it to be a 'proper' wedding, he said, as he was only planning to do it once and he wanted to do it right. Her parents wanted something even bigger and grander than that. Liv knew from her older sister Lucia's wedding that anything low-key and sophisticated would go straight out of the window once her parents got involved. They'd want golden thrones for the bride and groom to sit in, a phalanx of bridesmaids and an endless stream of fiddly food. They'd insist on paying too. Liv didn't want them to pay. She didn't expect them to and plus, if they paid, she'd have no control over anything.

In Liv's mind, the only way she could find to square this particular circle was to have the wedding at Benedict's hotel in France. That way her parents could still contribute but Benedict would be footing the bill for the venue. Only Benedict had other ideas. He wanted to get married at the hotel where they'd had their reconciliation in Italy. It was undoubtedly beautiful – a converted monastery on a mountain top along the Amalfi Coast, all white walls, terraced gardens and infinity pools – but Liv had Googled it and found out that the suite they'd stayed in cost three and a half thousand pounds a night. Add to that that the restaurant had a Michelin star and the menu didn't even list the price of anything. That usually meant that the people who ate there weren't mentally calculating the cost of the meal as they ordered, striking meals out from their diary for the next month. There was no way her parents could afford that, not with the size of her family. Then there was the small fact that they'd be insulted if they couldn't contribute. She didn't want to start a huge family argument over something that she didn't even want to do. She hadn't ever dreamed of her wedding day like some girls do, daydreaming about their dresses and table arrangements. She didn't want to be a princess for a day with hundreds of people staring at her in a ridiculously expensive meringue dress created by some whippet thin French designer in huge sunglasses. Liv couldn't imagine anything worse. She'd seen her sister Lucia go for the big, overblown wedding. Unlike Liv, Lucia had been the kind of girl to draw pictures of her wedding dress in her schoolbooks instead of doing her homework. She pored over photos of royal weddings in magazines. She could talk about them for hours – "Kate's dress was sophisticated, even though her tits looked slightly pointy, but Meghan's was a bit boring. I mean, a bit of shoulder is sexy but you wouldn't think she had a great body under all that baggy satin. I don't care if it was Givenchy, it was dull. Now, her reception dress is more like it. Slinky and silky. I'd have worn that one instead" – whereas Liv wasn't particularly moved either way. They both looked nice though the second one was a bit more exciting. Who really cares anyway? she wanted to say. A dress is a dress. She never said as much to Lucia though. They didn't have that kind of relationship. They talked, usually about their parents and extended family but never about anything more personal. As the older sister, Lucia never confided in Liv about her relationship, let alone ask for advice, and Liv would never dare to offer any. Where Lucia was all about external things, Liv was definitely all about what went on in people's heads.

"How about Domaine Cassel?" Liv suggested cautiously, trying to steer Benedict away from the monastery. "As it's your place, we can get everything we want. We might not be able to do that somewhere else." She was hoping the control freak part of Benedict would take the bait.

"Hmm," he said between mouthfuls of bread, "I can see that but Italy means more to us as a couple. It's where I decided that I'd ask you to marry me. It feels like the right place to do it." He looked Liv straight in the eye in that intense way that he had. When he locked eyes with her it always made Liv feel like the rest of the world had melted away and it was just them, with this electric connection between them. It cleared her mind of any worries or thoughts that were chasing round her head. Instead her head was filled with the crackle of their connection and the sound of her own breathing, which was suddenly very loud.

"I know," said Liv, looking away to break the spell "but I love your place in France. You built it up from scratch and decided on every last thing. We would be eating food grown on your land and drink wine made from your vineyards. That's something very special too."

"Yeah, that's all true but that's all about me. I want to be somewhere that reflects both of us. Your family lives near the hotel in Italy and you spent all your summers there as a child. And then we went there together." He scooped some more of the oozing cheese onto his bread.

Liv sat for a moment and watched him munch his way through the bread. She'd never seen someone look so sexy eating something so messy (and smelly) before. As he chewed, his jaw moved rhythmically and accentuated the sharpness of his high cheekbones. It created a hollow in his cheeks that showed just how chiselled his face was. The light helped too. The low hanging industrial lights caught him in a pool of light that cast a perfect shadow over him. It highlighted the perfect symmetry of his slanted green eyes and straight aquiline nose. It also emphasized his deep cupid's bow and full lower lip. His mouth was beautiful to watch. The way his soft lips moved instantly made Liv think of them moving over her skin, on her own lips, up the side of her neck. He was always the most hypnotic and erotic person in any room, whether he was listening to you talk at a party or as here, eating a sandwich in his own kitchen. He was just the most mesmerizing man Liv had ever seen. He caught her studying him and put down his bread.

"What are you thinking?" he asked, picking up the wine bottle and refilling their glasses.

Liv felt her cheeks flush. "Erm," she faltered, loathe to admit that she was just like everyone else – in slight awe of Benedict's sheer handsomeness and quiet charisma. "I'm thinking about..." She trailed off, picked up her glass and took a huge gulp. She put her glass down slowly and then looked up at him. "I'm thinking about how gorgeous you are." She knew that he didn't like people fixating on his looks. He didn't really notice how he looked or the effect that it had on people. He liked to wear nice clothes and keep fit but that was it. The rest was all empty vanity to him.

Instead of wincing, as he usually did when someone mentioned his good looks, a small smile played on his lips. It was, Liv thought, a shy, secretly delighted smile not the self-satisfied one of someone cocky being told something that they already know. Liv could imagine Benedict smiling like this when his parents or teachers had praised him as a child. It lit up his face. "That only matters when you say it," he said.

"You are the most gorgeous person I've ever seen," said Liv, embarrassed that she was in awe of her ridiculously handsome boyfriend. "I can't stop looking at you. I know you don't like that but it's true."

"I don't mind it when you do it," he said, reaching across the table to take her hand. "When you do it, I know it's because you feel the same about me as I do about you. It's a weird mix of feeling lucky and unbelievably turned on. When I look at you, I can't believe how beautiful you are. I can't believe I found you and that we're going to get married. It's insane. And then, I look at your face, the shape of your lips, the curl of your eyelashes and I see how your pupils go so wide when you see me. I'm sure mine do too. Every tiny part of you makes every cell in my body spark with excitement. I literally feel like I light up inside. No one's ever done that to me before and I know that you're the only one who ever will."

Now it was Liv's turn to give a small, shy smile.

"That's the most important thing," he said. "We've found each other and the rest – the wedding, who we invite, where we do it – is just details. We don't have to go to Italy or France. How about we find somewhere that we both love? Maybe somewhere here?"

Liv squeezed his hand. Could he possibly get any more perfect? At this precise second she very much doubted it. Benedict had the amazing ability to cut through her worries. Sometimes it was hard to hang onto this when they were fighting. When they were caught up in their own heads, trapped in the loop of their own traumatic histories, the love didn't always break through. When Benedict was convinced that Liv was going to leave him as his mother had or when Liv was scared to letting go and making herself vulnerable as she had with her last boyfriend, then they lost that connection. The past came between them and their old insecurities took over. But now, when Benedict was looking beyond the irritating practicalities to what really mattered - them - he could cut straight through to her.

"I love you," she said simply. "You are amazing." She got up and walked round to the other side of the table. He pushed back his chair to give her space to sit on his lap. She nestled into his body and looped her arms around his neck. He wrapped his arms around her back. She looked up at his face. "How did I get this lucky?" she murmured, nuzzling his lips.

"Keep doing that and you're going to get a whole lot luckier," he murmured back.

It was true. Liv could feel something stiffening in his lap. He pressed his crotch against her. She felt the unmistakeable ridge of his cock and wriggled against it.

"Right, that's it," he declared, standing up with Liv still in his arms. "We're going to bed."

Liv didn't protest.

Chapter Ten

Liv couldn't tell if radio silence was a good thing or not. She hadn't heard from India since they'd dropped Jakob off. Usually radio silence meant that India and Jakob were holed up in her flat shagging each other senseless but Liv couldn't imagine that was the case now. Liv would be surprised if India felt like having sex or if Jakob would feel like having sex with someone who was vomiting more or less every few minutes. Liv had spent enough time gagging as the official sick bowl holder to know that vomit is the best contraception anyone could ever need. Seeing someone hurl into a wheelie bin, as Liv had, is only likely to turn on the most hardcore fetishist.

Luckily her thoughts about people turned on by vomit were interrupted by her phone buzzing on her desk. She picked it up and saw that it was Kate. If anyone knew what the hell was going on with India it would be Kate.

"Have I caught you at a bad time?" Kate asked, not bothering with 'hello'.

"No," said Liv sitting back in her chair. "I'm working from home this morning." To be more precise, Liv was actually working in the little flat Benedict had given her to use as her bolthole. It was in the same building as his own flat but tucked away on the ground floor opposite the concierge's apartment. It gave Liv the breathing space that she needed sometimes. When she wanted a clear head, away from Toby at work or the intensity of her life with Benedict, she would lock herself away in the little flat. The emptiness and silence helped her to think and write.

"Good, good. I'm sure you're wondering what's going on with India."

"I am but I don't want to hassle her by calling or anything." Liv got up and walked over to the window. She didn't want any work distractions while she was talking to Kate.

"Quite," Kate agreed. "However, India has asked me to fill you in. She is, as you can imagine, still trapped between that blasted bowl and the toilet. And the odd bin in between."

Liv laughed. Kate was always able to see the comedy in any drama.

"And?"

"And it would appear that our family is about to expand by two. Not only are we getting a rather glorious son-in-law, we are also going to be getting a grandchild."

Liv heard India squeal in the background.

"Oh my God!" Liv said. "That's so amazing!"

"It is," Kate said. Liv could her the pleasure in Kate's voice. She could just imagine Kate being a slightly mad but fun granny, in fact not that dissimilar from the kind of mother she was, though hopefully with less talk of vibrators and orgasms, for the first ten years at least. "We do not - how shall I put this delicately? - want to piss on your parade. I realise you are planning your wedding and that India is somewhat stealing your limelight."

"I don't care about that, Kate, you know that. I'm not really a big wedding person. I'd be happy for India to steal my limelight. In fact, can she steal it please?"

"Well, that is very generous of you, I must say, though we are very much looking forward to your happy day too. India does want you to come over soon in your capacity as head bridesmaid/matron of honour/general all-round fixer and help her plan this."

There was a burst of rustling as the phone passed hands. "It's me," said India. "I'm getting married! I need you. You are the most organised person I know and I am the least organised person you know. You have to help me find a dress that doesn't make me feel like a whale in a kaftan! I don't even know if I want a dress. What am I saying? I never wear dresses. Oh God, Liv, you've got to help me!"

"Don't worry, I'll help you though I'm not exactly an expert on wedding dresses either. Are you sure you don't want to wear some lovely paint splattered dungarees and DM boots? Maybe white ones for the special occasion?"

"You witch," laughed India. "Get yourself over here when you can and we'll start planning. I'm hoping this bastard vomiting will stop..."

Liv heard some more rustling as the phone was handed back to Kate.

"I'm afraid the bowl beckons again. Please do come over soon. How about this evening? As mother of the bride, there is plenty for us to discuss."

Liv looked at her watch. "I could pop over about six if that's ok."

"Perfect. I will see you then."

Between answering emails and reading some background literature for her own research, the afternoon slipped past. It was only when Liv looked away from her computer screen and realised that the room was dark that she checked the time. It was 5.30. She picked up her phone from her desk and walked over to the window. She called Benedict, who answered on the first ring.

"Liv," he said. Benedict had a way of saying her name that packed all his longing into three short letters.

"Hi," she said, "how are you?"

"Better now you've called. How are you? Have you heard from India?"

"I have. In fact, that's partly why I've called. She wants me to go over and help her plan her wedding. Isn't that fantastic?"

"Yeah, Jakob called me earlier. He wants me to be his best man. I think all the planning I'll need to do is make sure he changes out of his chef whites and very sexy kitchen clogs."

"Funnily enough, I said something very similar to India! I'm sure she'd be happier to wear her old painting dungarees and boots than a dress."

"I'm sure Jakob wouldn't mind."

Liv laughed. "He probably wouldn't. I'm sure Kate would though. She's been itching to plan a wedding for years. I think that's why India's asked me to help, so that Kate doesn't get too carried away."

"Will you have time? We still have to get our wedding sorted out."

Liv sighed and leaned her head against the window frame. It felt cool. "I know. We'll get it sorted out, especially now that we've decided to get married here. The way I look at it is that I'll be doing research for me and India at the same time."

"I've been thinking," said Benedict. "Why don't we get a planner involved? We both work and we don't have much time to source napkins or whatever it is that people do for a wedding."

"A planner?" Liv recoiled slightly. She wasn't used to buying in help. She was still awkward around Benedict's cleaner in England and housekeeper in France. It felt wrong to be paying someone to do things that she didn't particularly want to do but could, in fact, do herself if she could be bothered. It was classic working-class guilt. A wedding planner was a whole different ballgame though. Not only would someone else be doing all the donkey work, they'd also be the kind of person Liv was allergic too. Women who contoured their faces, always wore pretty silk neck scarves and tottered about in a pair of LK Bennett nude heels. Liv didn't want someone like that deciding on colour schemes or buttonholes.

"I can hear from your tone that you're not impressed by the idea."

"When I hear wedding planner, I can't help thinking of the people who must have planned Kim Kardashian or Katie Price's weddings. You know, glitzy, tasteless and overblown. "

Benedict laughed. "I thought you might say that. I've had my PA draw up a list of planners who have never even heard of Katie Price let alone chosen the fabric for her wedding thrones. Will you look at it if I email it to you? The events they've planned look pretty tasteful to me."

Liv couldn't question Benedict's taste. His homes were immaculately designed and minimalist. There wasn't a throne anywhere to be seen. No swagged curtains or golden bidets either. "Ok," she sighed. "I promise I'll have a look." She heard an email ping in her inbox behind her. She was sure that it was the list. "I'm going to see India later. Why don't you come with me? I'm sure they'd love to see you."

"I'll see. I've got meetings till 7. Maybe I can come over after that and then we can grab some dinner?"

"That sounds like a plan. I love you."

"I love you too."
Chapter Eleven

India hadn't stopped vomiting but at least she did look happier, Liv noticed as she walked into Kate and Tim's living room later that evening. Lying with her head on Jakob's lap on the sofa, she looked relaxed. The dreaded bowl was on the coffee table in front of her but at least her forehead wasn't permanently creased from all the worrying and uncertainty.

"I would get up but it would probably make me hurl again so I'm staying down here if you don't mind," India said.

"No worries," said Liv, leaning down to kiss India's cheek and then Jakob's. "Congratulations! That was fast work."

"Can I get you a drink, Liv?" asked Tim, who'd appeared in the doorway behind her. "I think we should toast the happy couple, eh?"

"Much as we should most definitely toast the happy couple," said Kate, following him in, "do not think for one second, Tim, that I am not wise to your wily ways. Your father can turn anything – and I mean anything – into an excuse for a drink."

India sniggered. "Dad has been known to crack open the wine to celebrate the post being delivered."

"Yes," said Kate. "Let us not forget that the post largely consists of catalogues for camping shops and adverts for people to clear your gutters."

"Didn't you once open a bottle of champagne to celebrate the windows being cleaned?" India asked her father.

"And then there was the ceremonial changing of the water filter cartridge," Kate chipped in. "All events to be commemorated with alcohol."

"Jakob," said Tim, turning away from his wife and daughter, "one thing you should learn very early on in your marriage to a Campbell-Blythe woman. They are hypocrites and contrarians. They will complain at length about what an old soak you are and then drink your entire drinks cabinet dry singlehanded."

"That is so not true," said India, throwing a scatter cushion at her father.

"Darling, it is not entirely untrue," said Kate smoothly. "What about the time your father and I decided to make some kirs and we discovered that the bottle of crème de cassis in the cupboard had been emptied and then refilled with Ribena."

"Mum!" said India hotly.

"You see, Jakob?" Tim smiled. "They even turn on each other."

Liv plonked herself down on the sofa opposite India and enjoyed the familiar patter. She loved the way that India and her family could so easily tease each other. Well, everyone except the dreaded Charlotte. Charlotte was not someone who took teasing well. While the others playfully bantered back and forth, Charlotte would pounce on any perceived criticism and hit back with a cold, hard analysis of everyone's flaws and weaknesses. She was a typical lawyer, thought Liv. No, that probably wasn't fair. Not all lawyers could be as horrible as Charlotte surely? She had zero humour or heart. Unlike her lovely family who were full of both.

Jakob seemed to be taking it well considering how things had changed so dramatically for him in the last 24 hours. He'd stepped off the plane as a man with a girlfriend with a stomach bug and here he was sitting the sofa the next day, a fiancé and father- in-waiting. Liv caught his eye and they both smiled as they indulged India and her parents, who were still bickering away. They only stopped when India sat up suddenly with her hand clamped to her mouth. She bolted out of the door and down the corridor with Jakob behind her.

"There she goes," sighed Tim, opening the impressive antique drinks cabinet that took pride of place in the living room, "off to commune with the porcelain. What can I offer you, Liv?" He rummaged about between the bottles, peering at labels.

"He's so devoted," gushed Kate to Liv. "He holds her hair back and rubs her back every single time."

"That won't last," Tim murmured, reaching for an obscure bottle of something in the back of the cabinet. "Wait till she's been doing that day in, day out for the next six months. There's only so much hair holding and back rubbing a man can do."

"Don't be silly, Tim," Kate scolded. "Jakob is very much a modern man."

"What she means," said Tim, straightening up, "is that Jakob is very much a man Kate would love to get her hands on."

Most people would have hotly contradicted Tim but Kate, as usual, surprised Liv with her honesty. "Lord, yes!" she murmured dreamily. "Imagine all that gorgeous young flesh. His buttocks alone are a rhapsody in muscle..."

"You're not perving over Jakob again, are you Mum?" said India, wandering back into the room looking a bit paler. She slumped back down onto the sofa with a groan. Jakob quietly sat down next to her, clearly not knowing where to look.

"Not perving, darling, merely admiring," said Kate.

"Don't worry Jakob, she's perfectly harmless these days," said Tim. "Thirty years ago you'd have been in trouble."

"Dad!" said India.

"No, he's right darling," said Kate, placing some glasses on the coffee table. "Thirty years ago, your father and I were both voracious. Not with extended family members, though."

"Oh that's alright then," said India.

"Yes," said Tim. "We had a fine old time, didn't we darling? Do you remember that plasterer who did the bedrooms on the top floor?"

"Yes!" said Kate, clapping her hands with glee at the memory. "It was July and ridiculously hot, as I remember, especially at the top of the house. I stood in the doorway and watched him skim for hours. He was topless in a pair of marvellously faded jeans. His girlfriend was quite something too, wasn't she darling?"

"Mmm," said Tim wistfully. "Came to pick him up one evening in a slip of a dress, no bra and a tiny thong you could see underneath. A lively young filly. It was fair to say that the plasterer's radio was not the only thing to go home splattered that night."

"For fuck's sake!" yelled India, covering her ears. "I feel sick enough as it is! Now is not the time to discuss your sexual exploits with tradesmen and their girlfriends."

"Au contraire," murmured Tim, pouring some champagne into the glasses. "It is precisely that sort of activity that has brought us all to this point, is it not? You are, are you not, my darling daughter, pregnant?"

"Of course I am," snapped India.

"And it was not a visit from the stork that left you in this condition, was it?"

"Only if a stork has the ability to ram a headboard into a wall with enough force to make commemorative china on the floor above cascade off a shelf like lemmings off a cliff," said Kate with a hint of resentment. "That Prince Andrew and Fergie wedding plate was my favourite. Very hard to replace." She sniffed. "Anyway, I have decided to forgive you on the grounds that Prince Andrew and Fergie were sacrificed to produce a little Campbell-Blythe."

India looked at Jakob, clearly panicking that her family were suddenly putting him off the idea of marrying her. There's nothing like your parents discussing a foursome they once had to scare off the boyfriends. "Don't feel embarrassed for me, India," he said, smoothly, seemingly unruffled by the whole scenario. "I was brought up on a commune. I only found out who was my biological father a couple of years ago."

"Really?" asked India. Clearly, there hadn't been much time for swapping family histories.

"How fascinating," said Kate. "How did you find out?"

"It turned out one of the guys at the commune had some genetic disease. Huntington's, I think. Something fatal, anyway. All the kids had to get DNA tests to see if we were going to inherit it. Turned out Mathias, the guy I thought was my dad, wasn't though my mum had been sleeping with him. But then everyone had been sleeping with everyone." He took a sip of his champagne. "It didn't really matter though as Mathias brought me up so I think of him as my dad."

"What about your real dad?" asked India.

"Torsten. He's another guy from the commune. I think he lives in New Zealand now and has a garlic farm. I never really had much to do with him when I was a kid so I didn't really feel the need to go and build a relationship with him. We swapped a couple of emails and he invited me to go and visit him but I didn't really feel the need to go."

"Fascinating," said Tim. "Are your parents still together?"

"No," said Jakob. "When we left the commune, they lasted a couple more years and then split up. They both remarried and had more kids."  
"How many siblings do you have?" asked Kate.

Jakob put down his glass and started counting on his fingers. "Er, three full siblings and then four more half-siblings. And then my mum and dad's new partners had kids of their own from other relationships. So that adds," he did the mental arithmetic, "another five."

"Blimey, Jakob," said India. "That's loads."

"I suppose so," said Jakob calmly. "It's just normal for me. It does make Christmas a bit hectic though."

"Will you be inviting them all to the wedding?" asked Tim, clearly now worried about just how much this was going to cost him.

Jakob looked at India. "We thought we'd do something here with you guys and then something over there with them. There's so many of them and they live all over the places so I can't imagine them all making it over here."

"And will that be problematic?" asked Kate. "Having your parents and their partners in the same place together?"

"No," said Jakob. "It's all amicable. We have a big family get together every summer. It's like a big birthday party for everyone. My mum bought a massive army tent to put up in the garden to fit us all in. I thought we could maybe do it then, when the whole tribe's there anyway."

"And how about here?" asked Kate.

"Well," India said, looking at Liv, "we were thinking of going to the register office in town and then having a reception at Jakob's restaurant. I was hoping that Liv could help me turn the courtyard garden into something special for the evening?"

The conversation was interrupted by the doorbell. Tim went out to answer it and returned with Benedict. Liv felt her heart swell at the sight of him. Tall, in his slim charcoal suit, with his caramel coloured hair falling onto his face. She loved the way he raked it back off his forehead with his tanned hand, only for it to slip back a second later. It was so silky soft that it never stayed where it was meant to. She loved his hair. It was proper surfer's hair – sun kissed, often tousled, skimming his collar at the back – and totally at odds with his serious face and business suit. He walked round the group, kissing Kate, then India, clapping Jakob on the back and then sitting down next to Liv on the sofa. He took her hand and drew it into his lap.

"Drink?" said Tim, holding up the bottle.

"Please," said Benedict. "We're celebrating, I gather."

"We most certainly are," said Kate. "First you two and now these two. What a wonderful summer we're going to have next year. Weddings galore and then a baby."

"I'll drink to that," said Benedict raising his glass. They all raised their glasses too.

"To India and Jakob," said Tim.

"India and Jakob," echoed the others.

They chattered on for the next hour, talking about weddings and then the restaurant. As Jakob and Benedict got involved in the financial forecasts for the restaurant, India got up and went to sit next to Liv.

"Are you ok?" asked Liv.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Well, not fine, I still hurling but I'm happy with the way things are working out."

"You look happy. You look totally different to how you did yesterday."

"I feel totally different," explained India. "I felt trapped, literally and metaphorically. I was trapped in the house by the vomiting and then cornered into making this massive decision about whether to keep the baby or not. Then Jakob showed up and everything changed. I'm not going to say it was one of those thunderbolts moments but it was one of those thunderbolt moments. He walked over to me and gave this enormous hug. He said 'I'm so happy. I'm happy to see you and I'm so happy that we're having a baby'. He was so calm and like, of course that's what's going to happen. It was such a huge relief. It was like he knew that we were going to be together and it made me stop panicking and just let myself feel what I really wanted. And it turns out that what I really want is him."

"That's so brilliant, Ind," said Liv.

"It's also so bloody nauseating, as if I need something else to feel sick about. I'm so nauseatingly smug right now, the kind of smug that makes me hate people who are all couply and loved up and 'we're getting married and you're not, loser'. I hate that and now I am that. It's shit."

"It's not shit," said Liv, laughing. "It's lovely."

"Yeah, lovely but sickening all the same. Talking of which." India got up suddenly and bolted over to the door. Jakob got up to follow her but India motioned for him to stay where he was. He reluctantly sat down.

"Don't worry, I'll go," said Liv. She followed India down the hall and found her slumped over the loo in the small downstairs cloakroom.

"It's hard to imagine Kate Middleton doing this," said India.

Liv sat down on the floor next to her. "What, throwing up?"

"Yeah. She's so proper, like an aristo version of Barbie. All long limbs and no holes. She's the sort of person you can't imagine farting."

"I bet she doesn't let Wills fart in bed either."

"Christ, no. Poor bastard. Strictly in the garden for him."

"It's strange to think you have something in common with royalty," mused Liv.

"Typical that it's vomiting, though. It couldn't be vast wealth, coltish legs and amazingly shiny hair, no. It had to be this." She wretched again. "Every time I think there can't be more, there is. It's endless. I haven't even had a chance to talk to you about the wedding."

"Talk to me now. It might take your mind of being sick."

"Some chance. Anyway, we decided we don't want a traditional wedding. No surprise there. We're not religious and Jakob's never seen me in a dress and I've never seen him in a suit so it would be weird to do that on our wedding day. So, I've decided I want to wear one of those really cool sequined things we saw at that festival last summer. You know, that woman who was wearing a catsuity thing with massive sequins on. It sort of shimmered like fish scales."

"Kind of," said Liv, not really remembering.

"Here," said India, passing Liv her phone. "I took a photo."

Liv looked at the picture. The woman was wearing a jumpsuit with a V-neck. It had short sleeves and was totally covered in massive sequins ranging from pink to lilac to pale green. The whole thing shimmered and changed colour with the light.

"I googled it and they make a pearl coloured one, kind of white, lavender and minty colours. I rang the company and they reckon they can make me one that'll stretch across my enormous belly."

Liv could just imagine India in the jumpsuit with her pale pink curls knotted up on her head like some disco earth mother. "What did your mum say?"

"Oh, you know Mum. I could say I want to go naked with an aubergine up my bum and she'd say 'lovely, darling'."

Kate was definitely very laissez faire when it came to her children expressing themselves. Unlike Liv's own mother.

"What are you going to wear for yours?" asked India, as if reading Liv's mind.

"Shit, I don't know Ind," said Liv. "My mum is hassling me to wear some awful, shiny, lacy thing with a massive veil and train. I don't want that, you know me. I want something understated that won't catch light if I go too near some candles."

"God, your mum loves a synthetic fabric. Can't you just ignore her and wear what you like?"

"My family's not like yours, Ind. They think they have a right to decide on everything and if I complain, it'll start a fight."

"That's emotional blackmail and you know it." India sat back and sagged against the bathroom wall. "I think it's stopped."  
India was right about her family and Liv knew it. It was an age-old conversation. Liv's family felt they had the right to comment on and criticise every last aspect of their children's lives. If their children tried to defend themselves or ignore the criticism, then that only made things worse. It was a sign that her mother and father were bad parents for having brought up such disrespectful children. 'So, we're bad parents?' Liv's mother would say. 'We must be for you to throw back everything in my face.' Liv's mother had them over a barrel. It was either toe the family line or bear the brunt of guilt for branding her mother a bad parent.

Liv sighed. Bloody weddings.

"Why don't you just elope? Run off to Vegas?"

"Vegas?" said a voice above them. It was Benedict. "Who's running off to Vegas?"

"No," said India. "I was saying that maybe you should. You know, be wild and frivolous. And stop Liv's mum from getting her hands on your wedding."

Liv nudged India with her foot. Trust India to blurt that out. She was trying to help Liv, who was sometimes a bit slow to say what she really felt for fear of hurting someone's feelings. India shot her a look that said 'well, someone had to say something'.

"Right," said Benedict slowly, reaching out his hand to help Liv up. Together they helped India get up from the floor. "Do you want to go to Vegas, Liv?"

"Yes, she does," India chimed in before Liv had a chance to answer.

"No, I don't!" said Liv. She didn't want an Elvis impersonator to make them man and wife. What she really didn't want was a big wedding and her family interfering but she wasn't sure how she could tell Benedict that. After all, his heart was set on a lavish, romantic ceremony. Out of the two of them, he was most definitely Kate Middleton. She laughed suddenly at that thought.

"What's so funny?" Benedict asked as they followed India back into the living room.

"Nothing," Liv lied. "Well, this whole situation. Us getting married and now India getting married. It all seems so bizarre somehow."

"Well, let's make it seem real, then," said Benedict mysteriously. "Grab your coat. I've got a surprise.
Chapter Twelve

Benedict's car pulled over outside a hotel. The driver got out and walked round to open the door for Liv.

"Why are we stopping here?" she asked Benedict. They only lived a stone's throw away. In fact, Liv could see their own living room window from where she was sitting in the car.

"Get out and see," he said, opening his own passenger door and climbing out.

Liv stepped onto the pavement. She hadn't been to this hotel for a long time. The last time had been for afternoon tea when she'd finished her final exams years ago. Her gaggle of friends had descended on the place for tea and scones and quickly moved onto cocktails before heading off on a pub crawl. They'd easily been both the loudest and youngest customers in a lounge filled with smartly dressed ladies in their fifties. It was that kind of place, the kind where someone called Elaine (fan of Michael Bublé, two grown-up children, husband who played golf a lot) got dressed up in a nice Jaeger suit to meet her friend Carol (fan of Celine Dion, two grown-up children, husband who played golf a lot) for a glass of Prosecco and some tiny cucumber sandwiches. Liv couldn't imagine why Benedict had brought her here. She wasn't exactly the target clientele.

Benedict held open the hotel's heavy front door for Liv. She cautiously stepped inside.

"It's a bit late in the day for afternoon tea," she said.

"I wasn't planning on having tea," said Benedict. "Follow me."

He took Liv's hand and led her past the reception desk.

"I don't remember it looking like this," said Liv, looking around at the inky black walls, dark wood and quirky pictures. "It was all cream and chintzy before."

He led her into the lounge, which was painted various shades of deep, matt aubergine. There were long burgundy leather banquettes, plush purple armchairs and mustard yellow velvet cubes dotted around to sit on. The lighting was low and added to the general feeling of being in an upmarket Victoria brothel.

The barman, studiously polishing glasses behind a bar that ran down one side of the room, nodded at Benedict.

"Evening, Mr Cassel," said the barman.

Liv looked at Benedict. How did the barman know him by name?

"Evening, Mark. Can you please bring over a bottle of mineral water, some olives and a bottle of the Omero Pinot Noir in about ten minutes?"

And how did Benedict know the barman by name? There was no time to question him.

"You must be Laura," said Benedict approaching a woman sitting at one of the tables. He held out his hand to shake hers as she rose from her seat. She was, Liv thought, incredibly well put together. She was wearing a pale blue pinstripe blouse tucked into a soft, pleated navy skirt. There was a statement necklace round her neck and her long mane of hair was subtly peppered with expensive Jennifer Aniston highlights.

"Benedict," said Laura, taking his hand. "And you must be Liv." She turned slightly to shake Liv's hand.

Liv looked at Benedict for some explanation. He offered none so she shook Laura's hand anyway.

Laura sat down and reached into the large Louis Vuitton bag on the seat next to her. She extracted an iPad and put it on the table in front of them. "Congratulations, first of all," she said. "You must be very excited."

"Er, yes," said Liv, unsure of who Laura was, how she knew they were engaged and why they were talking to her.

"Yes, we are," said Benedict, squeezing her hand underneath the table. "We are very much looking forward to getting married."

"It can be a very daunting process if you haven't planned a wedding before so I am here to help you realise your ideas," she said, looping a shiny lock of her mane behind one ear. "I usually start off by asking you a few questions so I can find out who you are as people. From your answers we can identify words, emotions and ideas that are important to you and then translate them into a mood. Once we have that, then I can go away and find ways to best represent that mood on your wedding day. Ok?"

Benedict nodded. Liv cringed inwardly. This sounded like the worst way possible to spend an evening, sitting with a woman she'd never met before trying to find a 'mood' for their wedding. The only mood Liv was in right now was pissed off.

"So, shall we start?" said Laura. "I'll start with something easy. If you were given the day off, what would you do?"

Oh God, thought Liv, this is going to be painful. She was interested to see how Benedict would deal with this. He wasn't exactly Mr Cuddly when it came to talking about his emotions with her, let alone with a stranger.

"I would spend the day with Liv. We'd go to my house in France and walk down to the beach. I'd surf and Liv could read on the beach. Then we'd go back to the house and eat on the terrace, like we did the first time we went there." He turned to look at Liv and smiled.

"Right, so I'm getting beach, France, summer, outdoor dining," said Laura, excitedly writing down the word in her notebook. "How about you, Liv?"

Liv's mind was racing with images of them having sex on their way home from the beach, along that dark, sandy path to his house. Benedict was all sexy, dripping from the water in his wetsuit. He'd held her up against a tree, wrapped her legs round his waist and fucked her really hard. She remembered her back pressing into the soft wood of the pine tree, its resiny scent, the sound of the cicadas and waves crashing on the beach. Mmm, that was good, she thought, but hardly stuff to build into your wedding 'mood'.

"Er, definitely the beach in France, those pine groves," she said.  
When Liv didn't add anything else, Laura moved on. The questions were endless. What do you love most about each other? What three words would you use to describe your relationship? How would you describe your taste in home decor? What's the most cherished item you own? When your friends and family look back at your wedding in ten years' time, how would you like them to remember it? Finally, the questions were over.

"You might not have a clear picture of what you want yet so I find it's easier if you to look at these mood boards I've created and tell me what you like and dislike," said Laura. "They feature all kinds of settings, themes and colour schemes. It will help you to communicate your vision to me."

She handed them the iPad. "Take your time and please pick out any of the details, however small, that catch your eye. You might not like the overall theme but often there is a tiny feature that clicks with you."

The waiter arrived with their drinks. Thank God, thought Liv. She left the iPad to Benedict and watched the waiter fill their glasses with wine. As soon as he was done, she grabbed her glass and eagerly took a great big swig. Trust Benedict to thrust this on her, she thought angrily. They hadn't talked about a wedding planner. They had only just decided where to have their wedding. That was yesterday. She wasn't ready for this yet – discussing her favourite ornaments and scrolling through boards labelled 'Bohemian Beachside' and 'Meet me under the Mistletoe'. She took another gulp of wine and then put her glass down a little more force than she'd intended. Benedict looked up.

"Benedict mentioned a spring wedding so you might want to look at the 'Intimate City Rose' board," said Laura, oblivious to Liv's mounting anger. "The 'Moody Nordic Elegance' has been quite popular with my edgier clients in London."

Liv looked as Benedict swiped through to 'Moody Nordic Elegance'. It seemed that moody meant black candles, dark flowers and a bride who looked like she'd prefer to punch you rather than marry you. Liv felt a deep empathy with the sulky bride in her plum coloured silk sheath. At this precise moment she'd like to take a swing at Benedict. Why did he always have to rush her? Why couldn't they enjoy being engaged for a while and take their time? Or copy India and Jakob's approach, keeping it casual and fun?

"What do you think of this colour palette, Liv? Personally, I find it slightly too gothic for my liking." Benedict zoomed in on the 'Moody Nordic Elegance'. "A bit too medieval banquet." He flicked through to the next one. "I like the colour palette on this one." It was pale shades of grey and blue.

"Mmm," murmured Liv, grabbing a handful of olives from the bowl on the table. "Very medieval." She wasn't really concentrating on the boards. She was too pissed off with Benedict. And plus she didn't really care about palettes or themes, or if the ushers were dressed as court jesters or leprous peasants.

"Liv, why don't you take the iPad and have a look," said Laura encouragingly.

Laura might be a wedding expert but she's no expert in mood reading, thought Liv bitterly as she took the iPad and began to swipe through the boards. She raced through them all – God, they were endless, how could anyone spend so much time thinking about the texture of table linen and the finish on cutlery? – and then swiped back through until she found the one she disliked least. By chance it was the blue and grey one, which was pretentiously titled 'Provençal Blue'.

"This one," said Liv, handing back the tablet. "I like this one."

"I can see that you're very decisive, Liv," said Laura, scribbling away in her notebook. "And you've both gone for the cooler palettes. It's a very classic, timeless look."

"Mmm," said Liv, hoping that this would bring their meeting to an end. She needed the loo suddenly so she stood up. It was then that she realised that she'd had quite a lot to drink. Her head spun. "Excuse me for a minute." She pushed back her chair and tried to follow the signs to the toilets as soberly as she could, like a drunk driver walking a straight line for a policeman. She'd reached the door to the ladies when there was a hand on her shoulder.

"Liv, what's the matter?"

She turned unsteadily to find Benedict.

"Nothing," she said sullenly. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I really need to wee." She turned back around and walked into the toilets with as much dignity as she could muster. She took her time in there, trying to decide whether to go back to the lounge and continue their excruciating meeting with Laura or to slip out and go home. The basic decision came down to whether Liv wanted to have an argument now or later. With a sigh of resignation, Liv retied her ponytail in the mirror and resolved to keep the argument for later. It was the adult thing to do though she really felt like being a total child.

Liv pushed the door open expecting to find Benedict standing out there waiting for her. She planned to say nothing and simply stalk back to the lounge. This would give her the higher moral ground for later when they got home. Benedict was out there waiting for her but he wasn't alone. He was talking to a woman. Actually, he wasn't talking, the woman was but that didn't matter. Liv felt an instant stab of deep jealousy and insecurity. Even through her slightly foggy alcoholic haze, the stab was painful, almost physical. He was hers, whatever disagreements or resentments were bubbling. She didn't want anyone else to have him.

It wasn't particularly light out there, thanks to what Liv now thought of as 'Moody Victorian Decadence', but she could see that he looked decidedly uncomfortable. He was frowning and raking his hair back in an exasperated way. Liv couldn't see the woman's face but she could see her long, poker straight blonde hair and ridiculously high, gold-heeled stilettos.

Seeing Benedict's expression change as he spotted Liv, the woman turned around.

"Olivia," said Charlotte, with her usual mix of condescension and malice. No one ever called her 'Olivia' apart from Charlotte who said it with the same distaste you'd reserve for handling a full nappy. "How... unsurprising to meet you here." She gestured limply towards the ladies' toilets, implying that this was about Liv's level.

"Charlotte," said Liv. She would acknowledge Charlotte's presence but not give her the satisfaction of being riled by her comments. Feeling all of her anger towards Benedict draining away quickly in the face of a common enemy, Liv went to stand beside him and took his hand. He squeezed it hard. She knew that seeing Charlotte would trigger all kinds of difficult feelings for him. Charlotte had singlehandedly robbed him of the chance to be a father. She'd aborted his baby without telling him that she was even pregnant and given him chlamydia, which had left him infertile. She'd shared this news in front of her fiancé, her parents, Liv and Benedict and their reaction hadn't seemed to bother her at all. She wanted to exact cold, hard revenge on Benedict and she didn't care who was ringside for the event. She got her wish as the revelation had floored Benedict. Liv wasn't about to give Charlotte a chance to do any more damage. "We're in the middle of a meeting so we can't stop and chat."

"A meeting?" Charlotte asked, arching her eyebrows as she prepared to hear the ammunition for her next verbal assault. She had a way of taking whatever Liv said and turning it into a caustic comeback.

"Yes, we're planning our wedding as a matter of fact," said Benedict, regaining some composure. "And the planner is waiting so if you'll excuse us..." He trailed off and turned to go.

"It's a small world, isn't it, Benedict," said Charlotte, ignoring Liv. "Of all the hotels in all of Bristol, you walk in here. You could almost say it's fate."

"It's hardly surprising that I'm here, Charlotte. I live in Bristol and I own this hotel. The question is why are you here."

"I'm on gardening leave while I wait to start a new job," said Charlotte.

"Oh yes, your mother did mention that 'circumstances' had forced you to find a new job. And somewhere new to live."

Charlotte looked momentarily uncomfortable. She knew that they knew about her affair at work and the end of her engagement to Miles. The cloud of discomfort passed quickly across her face and was replaced with her usual poker face.

"Time for a change," she said smoothly. "I thoroughly recommend it, Benedict." She cast a disdainful glance over Liv. "You would do well to take my advice."

Liv saw Benedict's face tighten with barely contained anger. His jaw clenched hard. "And I suggest you take my advice. As this is my hotel, I can categorically say that you are not welcome here. The concierge will help find you another hotel and arrange a taxi to take you there."

Charlotte smirked. She lowered one hip in a very studied pose of defiance and prodded him in the chest. "Not so fast, Benedict. I have some information you might find interesting."

So that was it, Liv thought. Charlotte had orchestrated this whole meeting. From her timing to her outfit. Who wears a designer black fitted dress with a blazer over their shoulders for a casual drink? And who wears a blazer but doesn't put their arms in the sleeves apart from Vogue editors going to awards ceremonies? She'd known Benedict would be here at some point. She had booked herself in to the hotel and waited for her moment to corner him. She hadn't factored in Liv being there with him, judging from her expression when she'd seen her, so whatever plan she'd had had been temporarily scuppered. It was the sort of calculating move she'd make, just like getting engaged to the sweet but, most importantly, hideously wealthy Miles. Anyone could see that Miles adored Charlotte but Charlotte clearly adored Miles' inheritance and elevated social circle. She tolerated him at best, treating him like a best friend's child who was an inconvenience but came as part of the package. Liv could see that she herself was the inconvenience in this particular scenario. She always had been. In the past Charlotte had tried to ruin the relationship that Liv had with Kate and Tim. And after her revelation this summer, it looked like she was on a campaign to ruin Liv's relationship with Benedict too. In Charlotte's eyes, he was the ultimate catch but he'd dropped her all those years ago and then, to add insult to injury, planned to marry Liv, the person who had, in her mind, replaced her in her family's affection. Having imploded her own engagement and chances of marrying into a well-connected, wealthy family, it looked like she was on a mission to ruin Liv's chances too. Ruin her chances and bag her man in the process. It was win win. She had a strange way of going about it – belittling Liv and threatening Benedict – but Liv was in no doubt that Charlotte was after Benedict and she wouldn't give up easily.

Luckily, Benedict gave as good as he got. "You can either take up my offer of alternative accommodation or find yourself on the pavement outside in an hour." He turned to peer out of the window onto the street. "It's a wet November evening. The choice is yours." He turned to Liv. "Let's go back now."

Charlotte didn't see fazed by his parting shot. In fact she seemed amused if anything. A sly smile crept across her face. "You might come to regret that, Benedict."

"I very much doubt it," Benedict snapped back. "Goodbye, Charlotte."

"For now," Charlotte called to their departing backs. "You may be seeing me sooner than you think."

"She really does have to have the last word, doesn't she?" said Liv as they walked back into the lounge. "What do you think she means, about information."

"I'm sure it's bullshit, Liv," said Benedict. "Let's wrap up our meeting with Laura and talk about it later."
Chapter Thirteen

Liv had trouble focusing on the rest of their meeting. Laura chatted away about visions and atmospheres and to his credit, Benedict looked like he was listening. Liv sat brooding about Charlotte. Ten minutes before she'd been brooding about Benedict rushing her into the wedding and now, here she was brooding about Charlotte. Their little run-in with Charlotte had had one positive effect, though: Liv had let go of her anger towards Benedict the second she'd seen Charlotte and had felt a rush of pure, unfettered love for him. She felt territorial and protective. He was hers now, however bloody irritating he could be, and Charlotte wasn't going to hurt him anymore. Liv wasn't sure how she would do that but she'd certainly have a go.

Liv was snapped out of her revenge fantasies by Laura.

"What do you think, Liv?" Laura asked.

"I, erm," she looked at Benedict for some help, "I agree with Benedict." She said it as more of a question than an answer but Laura looked satisfied.

"Right, well, I'll see you next week, then. Same time, same place. I'll have put together some mood boards for you and we can go over them and progress from there."

"Yes," said Benedict, rising from his armchair. He held out his hand. "It was a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for coming all this way at such short notice. I know your diary must be very full."

Laura slid her things back into her huge bag and rose to shake his hand. "It was my pleasure. Not every client sends a driver to London to pick me up and take me home."

"It's the least I could do after you squeezed us in," Benedict said. "I know your book is closed for this year. Let me walk you out."

He waited by the table for Laura to collect her things and then steered her out of the lounge towards the reception.

Liv waited at the table and poured herself another big glass of the wine. She loved Benedict but life with him threw hand grenades at them at every turn. She'd started the year promising herself that this year, unlike the last two, would be disaster-free. She would avoid all emotional potholes and keep a straight and steady path back towards some sort of normal. To her own surprise, she'd managed that for the first six months. And then she'd met Benedict and all her plans for an easy, or perhaps easier, life had gone out of the window. There was no question that some aspects of her life were easier thanks to Benedict's wealth – she didn't have to worry about finding the rent or taking a second job to keep going with her research as she had for the past few years – but being emotionally involved with someone just as complex and damaged as she was proved to be exhausting and relentless. Ghosts from his past materialised with a frightening regularity at a time when Liv was trying very hard to look forwards, not backwards. When she was feeling overwhelmed, she wondered if she should really be in a relationship at all. Surely that was just inviting in more drama? But then her rational thoughts would be drowned out by how she felt about Benedict. When she woke up in the morning and saw his fingers curled round hers on her pillow. When she saw his face light up at the sight of her. When he looked deep into her eyes when he was inside her. At those times she knew without question that this was right. This was where she was meant to be and she'd have to learn to roll with whatever life threw at them.

She was lost in thought, twirling her engagement ring round her finger, when Benedict came back and plonked himself down opposite her in the chair Laura had been sitting in.

"She seems like she knows what she's doing," he said, reaching for his glass.

"I'm glad she does because at this precise point I have no idea what's going on," said Liv, with a huge sigh. "When were you going to tell me that you had bought this place?"

"Ah, yes, I was planning to tell you tonight," said Benedict sheepishly. "The deal was going through when we met in the summer and the refurbishment only finished last week. I wanted to show you when it was all done."

"Right," said Liv slowly, trying not to sound resentful. "So, you weren't keeping anything from me?"

"God, no," he said. "I thought we could take a look around together and decide whether we'd want to get married here. I had Laura send me a list of all the possible venues locally and this place far outstrips anywhere else. The place looks great and the food is amazing."

Liv felt a bristle of irritation at his secret planning. She could either see it as sweet or as the work of a control freak who was railroading her towards yet another 'decision' that he'd already taken but wanted her to agree on. She decided to put that to one side for now as there was a bigger, far more worrying elephant in the room.

"So," she said carefully, "Charlotte."

It was Benedict's turn to sigh heavily. "Yes, Charlotte," he said with palpable annoyance. "Fucking Charlotte."

"Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water..." said Liv, trying to make a feeble joke to lighten the mood.

"I know," he said. "She reappears like a bloody murderous shark, ready to devour us. Or me, at any rate."

"Oh, don't kid yourself," scoffed Liv. "She wants to get rid of me so that she can get to you. I'm just roadkill. You're the main prize."

"You are not roadkill! You are most definitely the main prize to me. And don't worry about this 'information' she mentioned. I'm sure that's bollocks."

Liv clearly didn't look convinced as Benedict rose from the table and took out his phone. "Look, I'll make a quick call to the head of my legal team and see if there's anything going on. Then you can stop worrying. I thought we could have dinner here and have a look round afterwards. You finish your drink and I'll meet you in the restaurant."

"There's nothing going on with Charlotte," said Benedict, slipping his phone into his jacket pocket as he sat down at the table again. "Have you looked at the menu?" He picked his up off the table and opened it.

Liv nodded. "Yes." This wasn't strictly true but she wanted to hear about Charlotte. "What did they say?"

"As I expected, the legal team had no idea who she was. Never heard of her, let alone had any correspondence from her so you don't need to worry anymore." He put his menu down. "I think I'll go for the scallops and the duck shepherd's pie. What are you having?" He looked around and signalled for a waiter.

"Phew," said Liv, falling back into her chair. She hadn't realised just how rigid with anxiety she was until she let herself relax. "I'm really relieved. I could just imagine Charlotte causing all kinds of trouble for you."

"Madame?" said the waiter, who appeared at their table.

Liv looked up at him, surprised that he could appear so quickly and silently, and then down at the menu. Despite staring at it while Benedict was talking to Charlotte's boss, she hadn't actually taken in one word. She had been blankly rereading the same words over and over again without them registering in her brain. "Er, the prawns and the gnocchi, please," she said, picking the first things that jumped out at her.

Benedict murmured something about wine to the waiter. Liv let it wash over her as she tried to digest the last half an hour. As usual, life with Benedict was like sitting on a rollercoaster that chugged ominously along the tracks heading for the inevitable big drop. Unlike most rollercoasters, though, Liv had no idea where the big drop was. She knew it might come at any moment but she had no control over it. And it floored her every time. Her emotions took all kinds of twists and turns, leaving her drained and confused. This evening alone – and it was still only 9.30 – she'd been angry with Benedict about the wedding, then sickened by Charlotte and now cautiously relieved that Charlotte's threat was empty. For now, at least, she thought. Charlotte had a horrible habit of popping up when you least expected her.

"What did you think about the wedding planner?" asked Benedict, pouring water for her.

Liv had all but forgotten about Laura but now, after Charlotte's unwanted appearance, Liv felt a sudden and unexpected urgency about getting married. Charlotte had made her feel territorial about Benedict. She was on the prowl – there was no doubt after that whole femme fatale display – and much as Liv hated herself for the knee-jerk jealous reaction, there was no way she was going to let Charlotte wrestle Benedict away from her. In the rational part of her brain, she knew that Benedict despised Charlotte as much as she did but the irrational part of her brain said otherwise. Loudly and repeatedly. And it wasn't just irrationality that made her wary. After what had happened with Matt, Liv knew that happiness and life itself were precious, fragile things that could be crushed at any moment. She was gripped by a desperate urge to grab it all while she could. She wanted to put a bloody ring on it now and not just an engagement ring, lovely as that was. She looked at her hand and slowly turned the ring so that it caught the light. It was a beautiful, elegant ring and the light it cast was dazzling on the ceiling but Liv felt that an engagement was just that – a temporary trick of the light that you couldn't predict, let alone catch and hold onto. People got engaged on a whim and called it off just as quickly. A wedding ring was everything that an engagement ring wasn't – it was solid and permanent. You knew that it would lose its shine eventually but that didn't matter. If anything, that made a scuffed wedding ring better. You knew by looking at it that you were lasting the course. If an engagement ring was the flash in the pan, with its sparkly diamond and high excitement, a wedding ring dulled by age was a symbol that your relationship was steady and strong. Liv wanted steady and strong, well, at least the version of it she could get with Benedict. Steady wasn't exactly their forte – so far they seemed to be good at passionate but volatile - but she knew that they were strong despite that.

"She seemed fine," said Liv, finally. In fact, she didn't really have an opinion on Laura. She'd been far too busy seething about being ambushed by Benedict to focus properly on the woman in front of her. It didn't really matter, though, she decided. Laura was as good as anyone else as long as she got the job done. "I think we should look over all the stuff she gave us and let her get on with it."

"Really?" said Benedict, his forehead pinched in surprise. "I wasn't sure that you liked anything she was saying. You did a lot of heavy sighing and eye rolling."

It was true that Liv had been sighing and eye rolling but that had been about Benedict, not Laura. "I'm just tired," she fibbed, trying to downplay her irritation with Benedict. She rooted through her handbag and pulled out her iPad. "Shall we look at those mood board things now?"

Benedict laughed. "You constantly surprise me! I thought you were pissed off with me about Laura and now you want to start planning the wedding straight away. I'm not complaining though. Let's do it."

The waiter arrived with the wine and went through the usual pantomime of extravagant pouring and nodding while Benedict took a sip. Liv, meanwhile, searched her email until she found the link to Laura's hallowed mood boards. It was total bollocks as far as Liv was concerned but she had to admit that it did help to narrow down your choices. She was drawn, like the first time, to the blue and grey one.

"I think we should go for the Provençal Blue," she said confidently, handing the tablet over to Benedict. "It's not girly or showy. And plus, it feels like it's equally you and me instead of just being about me. I've been to so many weddings whether the groom and the ushers are wearing pink ties to match the table settings. You know there's absolutely no way that the groom wanted to colour coordinate with the napkins."

"I'd wear pink for you," said Benedict, gazing at her with the intense, wistful look he wore just after they'd had sex.

"How about gold, then?" said Liv, teasing him. "My sister chose gold and orange for her wedding. Fancy a gold tie with an orange waistcoat?"

Benedict laughed. "I draw the line at gold and orange, even for you. I definitely like the blue and grey, though."

"Great," said Liv. "I'll email Laura now so that she can come up with something solid for our meeting next week." She took the tablet back and tapped out a quick email. Then she slipped the tablet back into her bag and took a big swig of the wine, relieved that the wheels were in motion.

Benedict was looking at her with a strange smile on his face.

"What are you smiling about?"

"You," he said. "You're so many things, sometimes all at once."  
"What do you mean?"

"Well, just now, you were so focused and determined when you were typing that email. You had this serious frown, the kind I imagine you give your students when they're answering a question. Then I could see that you were a little bit nervous when you reread the email. Your eyebrows and shoulders hunched up and you pressed your hands against your cheeks. It was so sweet. I pictured you doing that when you were at school, when you'd just handed in a test and didn't know how you'd done."

Liv felt embarrassed. She hadn't realised that he'd been scrutinising her so closely. Or that she did all of those things with her face and hands. It made her feel suddenly very self-conscious. She tried to arrange herself in her seat to appear more composed. She drew her knees together and tucked her feet to one side under her chair as she'd seen elegant French models do in magazines. Then she dropped her hands into her lap but that felt wrong so she propped her forearms onto the arms of the chair instead and clasped her hands across her stomach.

"I didn't mean to make you feel awkward," said Benedict, sitting forward and reaching out his hand for hers. "It was meant to be a compliment. I love watching you. I discover new little things about you all the time."

Liv reluctantly gave him her hand. She wasn't sure that she liked being studied so closely. She'd never been a 'look at me' person. In fact, she was just the opposite. She'd always been a 'please look at someone else and ignore me' kind of person. At work she at least had her intellect to hide behind. She knew that she was being judged on her ideas, not her looks, her clothes or her ability to charm or flirt. She had the qualifications to prove that she had a right to be there. With Benedict she was plagued by the idea that she had no right to be here with him at all. He was so utterly gorgeous. It didn't matter where they were - sitting under brutal overhead lighting or with his face full in the sun – he always looked amazing. Sometimes Liv looked at him and couldn't quite believe that he was real. He was almost too perfect. It was more than just symmetry too. There was an unmistakeable glow to him. Liv didn't know if it was his slanted, slightly hooded green eyes, his lightly tanned skin, killer cheekbones or tousled caramel hair. Maybe it was all of it together. It made you do a double take. She saw other people doing it all the time. In the street people glanced at him and then immediately took another look in the way that you look at someone, thinking you know them, and then realise they're famous. Liv wondered what they'd do if they ever saw him, as she did, with his wetsuit pulled down to his waist, fresh out of the sea with wet hair and his tanned washboard abs pearled with water. The sight gave new meaning to undressing someone with your eyes. If she'd ever wanted Uri Geller's spoon bending powers, it would have been then. She wanted the kinetic powers to force the zip down all the way past his belly button and have the wetsuit peel away to reveal his big cock and hard, muscular thighs. It was her own little fantasy as she sat on the beach and watched him striding towards her, imagining the suit falling away and leaving him ready to fuck her there and then on the sand. Judging by the looks he got, she wasn't the only one to fantasize about fucking him. Charlotte had proved that all too recently. Liv was plagued by the idea that people would look at him and then at her and think that he was dating down. Liv felt in no way equal to him physically. Whatever he said, she could help thinking that he didn't get that white-hot laser beam of desire from looking at her, the way she did with him. That unbearable need to touch him, devour him and merge with him. The way Charlotte treated her didn't help either. It was as if Charlotte was playing out Liv's insecurities, showing that someone more attractive and accomplished could come along and take Benedict's attention away.

He was looking at her intently now. She forced herself to look away, worried that he could read her mind and see just how pathetic she was.

"Are you ok?" he asked, concern quickly turning his smile into a frown. "What's the matter?"

Liv felt a hot tear on her cheek and tried to brush it away before he noticed.

"Are you crying?"

She shook her head and tried her hardest to stop any more tears coming. "I'm fine," Liv croaked in a weird warbling voice, trying to swallow down this sudden rush of emotion. Where was it coming from? And why now, when they were sitting here, sorting out the details for the wedding? Surely she should be happy and secure not a tearful wreck wondering if her fiancé fancied her as much as she fancied him? "I'm sure it's just all the wedding stuff, India's baby, you know..." She trailed off and picked up her napkin to wipe her eyes.

"Those don't look like happy tears to me," he said, getting up and striding over to the waiter. They exchanged a few words and then Benedict came back. He held out his hand to her. "Come on, let's go somewhere more private. We can eat in one of the penthouses."

Liv stood up and meekly followed him out to the lobby, lagging behind slightly like someone being taken to see the head teacher. She didn't want to talk to him about this. It made her feel stupid and petty and insecure. She wanted to have dinner and chat about their wedding.

They waited by the lift with another couple, who were chatting and laughing in that post-dinner wine haze when everything is a happy preamble to a woozy shag. Liv looked on enviously. We couldn't be more different, she thought bitterly, watching them loll against the wall and kiss. I'm trying not to cry and Benedict wants to have a serious talk about something I really don't want to talk about.

The lift arrived and the other couple stumbled in, giggling, and went over to nuzzle in one corner. Liv and Benedict followed them in, Liv's hand still firmly in his but with none of that carefree looseness that comes with being in love and slightly pissed. The other couple tripped out of the lift on the second floor. When the doors closed, Benedict turned to her.

"Can you tell me what the matter is because I'm really freaking out here? I'm thinking all kinds of things. That you don't want to get married." He let go of her hand to rake his hand through his hair. He only did that when he was stressed, Liv knew.

"I do want to marry you, you know that. I emailed Laura right in front of you."

"Then why are you upset? I don't understand."

Liv felt her lip tremble as she tried to say something. "I just feel..." she paused, unsure what to say exactly. That you're better than me, that I fancy you more than you'll ever fancy me? "I feel, after that thing with Charlotte tonight..." She trailed away again.

"What?" he asked. Liv could hear that he was frustrated by her inability to answer his question.

"That there's always going to be someone trying to tempt you away and..."

"Charlotte is never going to tempt me away!" he cut in angrily.  
"Not just Charlotte. I've seen the way everyone looks at you. For fuck's sake, even the way I look at you."

He pressed his palm against his forehead in frustration. "I don't care how they look at me. I don't even notice it, Liv. I really don't."

She knew he didn't. He was oblivious to it. She did though and while it made her feel like she'd won some sort of big prize, it also made her feel vulnerable. Like a lottery winner who was going to blow it all and end up penniless.

"You were saying something before and I cut you off. What were you going to say?"

The lift slowed to a smooth stop and the doors opened at the top floor. Benedict stepped to one side and let Liv get out first. He followed her into the hallway of the penthouse suite. She stopped unsure if she wanted to go in any further. Benedict turned towards her and took both of her hands in his.

"Liv, you know the worst things about me. The terrible things that have happened and the awful things I did. Everything. All the horrible shitty stuff that makes me who I am. If we're going to be married, you need to be able to talk to me about whatever is in your head, good or bad."

She nodded mutely. She knew this but it was hard to do all the same. She looked down at their hands. "I love you so much but I'm scared you're going to be taken away. I know that we're unequal..." He tried to butt in but she looked up and stopped him. "Let me finish. We are unequal, Benedict. You are so unbelievably gorgeous. I've never seen anyone as stunning and handsome as you. And I know that people must look at us and think that I've done well for myself." She paused to gather herself to say the next thing. "But that's not the main thing. The main thing is that," and here she faltered, finding it difficult to hear the words she was going to say, "I can't believe that you feel the same way about me as I feel about you. When I look at you, I feel this amazing, electric connection. Everything else falls away and I only see you. It's like having tunnel vision. And I want you so badly." She felt big, hot tears falling down her cheeks. She angrily brushed them away. "I hate myself for saying this, for feeling like this."

Benedict looked at her. His expression was blank. "Come with me," he said, with no emotion in his voice.

It was the neutral tone he probably used when he was about to sack an employee or close a massive business deal, Liv thought, following him through some double doors into a huge sumptuous sitting area. He sat down on a dark purple velvet sofa in the middle of the room. Liv sat down next to him, not daring to look at him.

"Look at me, Liv."

She reluctantly turned her blotchy face to look at him. I bet I look great, she thought, swollen eyes, snotty nose and mascara down my cheeks.

"Listen to me," he wiped away some tears with his thumb. "I feel exactly the same about you. When I see you or even hear your voice, my chest tightens, my heart beats faster and I get this unbearable urge to kiss you, to touch you, to be inside you. I can't control it. It doesn't matter where I am or what I'm doing, I have to get to you. Like yesterday."

Liv nodded, remembering their visit to the empty house and the frantic, heated sex.

He stroked her face and pushed a loose strand of her behind her ear. "Don't ever say you're not equal to me. You're so beautiful. You just don't realise it. I see men checking you out all the time."

Liv shook her head, sure he wasn't telling the truth.

"They do, Liv," he insisted. "You're too modest and self-conscious to notice. They see your long, elegant neck," he leaned forward to trail a gentle line of kisses from her ear down her neck, "your shoulders," he gently pushed down the strap of her dress and kissed along the ridge of her shoulders. He pushed down the other strap, letting the dress fall to her waist. "Your breasts."

He cupped them gently in his hands, rubbing her nipples with his thumbs through the delicate fabric of her bra. Liv gave a little shudder of pleasure as her nipples hardened.

He pushed down the straps of her bra and it fell away to expose her breasts. He cupped them again.

"They are so perfect. Just like you."

He leaned down and took one nipple in his mouth, drawing it in with a slow suck.

"Your stomach is a thing of beauty. It's so smooth and flat," he trailed more kisses down her stomach to her belly button. "And your hips." The tip of his tongue followed the curve of her hip bone. He slid off the sofa to his knees and shrugged off his suit jacket. "Sit back," he said.

Liv leaned back into the sofa. It was soft and she let it engulf her.

Benedict pulled her dress past her knees and let it drop to the floor.

"And your legs," he said, trailing his nails down the inside of her legs. "They're so long and lean." He massaged them gently, up and down. His hands stopped at her knickers.

"And your cunt, my God, Liv. Your cunt is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

He hooked his fingers round the waist band of her knickers and slowly pulled them down. Liv lifted her hips to help him. He threw them to the floor and then pushed her legs apart gently.

"This is where I lose myself." He leaned forward and dipped his head between her legs. Liv heard him breath in deeply. "I can't get enough of your scent." He nuzzled her lips with his nose. "I love that scent on my face, my hands and my cock." He eased her lips apart and licked the delicate, swollen flesh inside. "And your taste. It's so good." Liv squirmed against his face. "I want to lick your cunt so badly. Your beautiful, pink cunt." He flicked her clit with his tongue. "It's always so wet, before I've even touched you."

He did make her wet, wetter than she'd ever been. The second he touched her it made her insides clench in exquisite anticipation. By the time his fingers, mouth or cock got anywhere near her, she was soaked. It was just as well as his cock was so huge. Had he been anyone else, it would have hurt her but he turned her on so much she could take him. He also made sure that she was ready to take him first, stretching her with his fingers and tongue.

"I don't want to be anywhere else but here." He slid two fingers inside her, coating them with her wetness and then drew them out to rub her clit. He rubbed it slowly, using her wetness to circle around the delicate nub. Liv pressed down into the sofa, gripping the edge with her fingers. She gave little low moans as he kept rubbing her clit and nibbling the sensitive inside of her thigh, running his tongue along the crease of her thigh, his edge of his tongue brushing past her pubes, sending little shockwaves through her. He hooked her leg over his shoulder so his tongue could explore further. She felt it slide gently along the smooth skin between her cunt and her asshole. She shuddered as his tongue lightly stroked the area. His tongue slid further back, finding the puckered opening and licking round and round it. Liv's breath caught in her throat. His fingers were still steadily rubbing her clit, bringing her closer to the edge and now he was probing her with his tongue, dipping the tip inside her ass. She relaxed and let him get deeper. His tongue probed inside her, as far as it would go. Liv spread her legs as wide as she could to give him as much as she could. When she was wet enough, he drew his mouth away and slid a finger into her ass instead. She squirmed against it, enjoying the unusual sensation. She'd not had much experience of this before she'd met him and had always thought she wouldn't like it but Benedict made everything feel good. Plus, she wanted him there, she wanted him in each and every place she had to offer, fucking her every way he could. She felt another finger slid in and savoured the feeling of being full.

"Turn over," he said, letting her leg fall from his shoulder.

Liv turned onto her front on the sofa, dropping her knees to the floor so that he was kneeling behind her. She buried her face in the warm velvet and waited for what was going to happen next. She heard him roughly pull his shirt up over his head and shrug his trousers down.

"Ready?" he asked.

She nodded mutely, clutching at the velvet, primed for whatever he was going to do next. She was wet and open and desperate for him. His hand reached round and found her clit again. He rubbed at it in furiously circles.

"Is that good?"

Liv moaned in reply. The pressure was building up and she wasn't sure how much further it could go before she wouldn't be able to take it anymore. It felt so good that she was sure that she'd come but then the pleasure kept growing and spreading, making her breathless and dizzy.

"Do you want to come?"

She nodded again, unable to talk as the pleasure became unbearable.

"Ok." He slipped his hard cock inside her slowly. The swollen fat tip, then the smooth, rigid shaft all the way down as far as it would go. "Aaah," he exhaled as he sank deeper into her. "Your cunt feels so good. So tight." He slowly withdrew till only the tip was inside her and then sank it in again, this time a little faster and harder. Liv felt her cunt tightening around his cock as he began to fuck her steadily. His fingers were still working away and Liv felt that unmistakeable sensation. She'd tipped over the edge and her orgasm was moments away, like a jet of water rising to the surface, ready to break and ripple out to the very limits of her consciousness. She sank into that place that she could only describe as falling through a kaleidoscope. Everything fell away and she was only aware of the pleasure mounting until it finally peaked and her cunt spasmed hard around Benedict's cock. She cried out and dug her nails into the sofa, bracing herself against the onslaught of pleasure. Benedict was feeling it too. Each wave of her orgasm gripped him so that he was moaning.

"You're going to make me come," he whispered, pressing his cock as far into her as he could and keeping perfectly still to stop himself from coming too.

When her last spasm had died away, he drew his fingers away from her clit. With his cock still inside her, he slid two fingers into her asshole and began to fuck her very gently. His fingers moved in time with his cock, getting ever deeper and harder till he was really pounding her.

"This looks so fucking hot," he said. "I wish you could see."

Liv couldn't see but she could feel how good it was. His cock, getting even harder and thicker, was stretching her sensitive cunt while his fingers were working her ass. She felt full of him and, even better, his cock and fingers were both rubbing against the same delicate spot from different sides. She'd never really believed in a G-spot – or at least she'd never had an orgasm from it – but now the double stimulation from his cock and his fingers were making her writhe. The pleasure that was only starting to fade was building up again and this time it was different. It was more intense. Having Benedict somewhere so intimate was liberating. She wanted more of it.

"Fuck me in the ass instead," she said, over her shoulder.

"Are you sure?" he gasped.

"Please," she begged, scrabbling for her handbag and pulling out the tin of Vaseline she used as lip balm. "Use this."

She felt him slide out of her and then heard the familiar 'ting' of the lid coming off the Vaseline. Next, she felt his slippery fingers round her asshole and then he slipped them into her ass. They felt warm. She turned her head to see him lubing up his huge cock, taking a fist full of Vaseline and rubbing it up and down the thick shaft. Then his fingers disappeared and she felt the warm tip of his cock against her. He pushed against her gently and she pushed back to help the thick ridge disappear inside her. She felt the muscles in her ass clench the tip and after a few shallow thrusts he pushed beyond the thick ring of muscles and deep into her.

She gasped.

"Does it hurt?" he asked, stopping.

"No, it feels so good," she whispered back. "Don't stop."

Liv slipped two of her own fingers inside her cunt and started moving them in time with Benedict. She quickly found the sweet spot again, pressing hard against it with her fingers while Benedict's cock pounded it in her ass. He gripped her hips and rammed her hard. Liv pushed into him to take more of him in. The more she took in, the more she wanted to go further, to see how deep into her he could get, if it could possibly feel any better than it did already. Her worries about vulnerability were gone – you couldn't let anyone this deep inside you unless you trusted them. She trusted Benedict, trusted him to be faithful to her and to never hurt her. This realisation turned her on even more and she felt herself quickly surging to the peak of another unbearable orgasm. As she tumbled over into a juddering orgasm, she felt Benedict reach his. His fingers curled into her hips and his breathing became shallow, his thrusts lighter as her muscles clenched around his cock.

"Fuck, fuck," he whispered. "You feel so good."

With one final deep thrust, Liv felt him pump his hot cum into her. He shuddered and moaned until he finally relaxed his grip and leaned forward so that his chest was against her back. He rubbed his head against hers and nuzzled her neck.

"No one else could ever make me feel this. Only you. You are the only person who turns me on this much, who gives me such a rock-hard cock every time I see you. Who I want to fuck all the time. Who I can't bear to be without."

In her haze, Liv smiled. She knew this was true. He was as desperate about her as she was about him. She just had to let herself believe it.
Chapter Fourteen

Liv could see why Laura was in such demand in London. The morning after their first meeting, Laura had already emailed back her initial mood boards for the wedding and Liv had to grudgingly admit that the woman knew what she was doing. With only Liv's grumpy answers and the Provençal Blue theme to go on, Laura had come back with some beautiful 'visions' (a word that Liv grouped together with other irritating words like 'blessed' and 'journey'). She'd manage to balance out their very different ideas – Benedict's desire for something grand and Liv's desire for something low key and minimal – and create something elegant that they both liked.

From her office at work, Liv emailed Benedict.

What do you think? I really like it though I want to say I hate it as you sorted this all out behind my back! Damn you, Cassel! X

An email pinged straight back.

That's one-nil to me, the man you love to hate. And yes, I do like it. Shall we tell her that we'll be doing it at the hotel? X

He's got me again, Liv sighed. Wedding planner, venue. Next, he'll be bringing out a wedding folder with all the pictures he's cut out from magazines over the years. She sighed. She should be grateful he was so keen and organised, she supposed.

Sure x

"Why the sigh?" came the voice from behind her. "Trouble in paradise? Boyfriend refusing to get you a Chanel store card?"

Liv bristled but didn't respond immediately. She forced herself to stop and give her brain a second to find something intelligent and cutting to come back with. Really, she wanted to tell him to fuck off but she knew she had to maintain a professional relationship with Toby even if Toby was hell bent on begin as unprofessional as possible with her. If he was trying to psyche her out so that she would fall apart and he would get the department job instead of her, then she wasn't going to play ball. She'd been through too much shit to let Toby screw things up for her.

"Actually, I've been asked to speak at a conference in Australia but I have to turn them down as I'm already contributing to an evidence session for a select committee in Westminster that day." One-nil to me, Liv thought drily. She didn't want to have to resort to point scoring with Toby but he was constantly playing dirty so she felt she had no choice. It was true that she was contributing to a select committee session and it was a big honour for her but she wasn't the kind of person brag about it. Until now.

Toby said nothing. A second later he stalked out of the room and was about to shut the door behind him like a diva when he met Callum coming the other way.

"Morning," Callum said to Toby's departing back. He shut the door and turned to Liv. "What's wrong with him? Got his crotchless knickers in a twist again?"

They sniggered. News of Toby's indiscretion in front of Professor Whitfield hadn't taken long to reach the whole department. Callum used every opportunity to crowbar in a gag about sexy underwear.

"He was trying to wind me up but I out manoeuvred him," said Liv, leaning back in her chair.

"Nice work," said Callum. He held out a battered old biscuit tin. This could only mean one thing: Bethany had been baking again. "Coffee?"

Liv hopped up, logged out of her computer (you never knew what you'd find if you left Toby alone with access to your email) and picked up her phone. "Yes, definitely coffee time. Do you think the canteen does Irish coffee? I could do with a shot of something this morning."

They sat and dissect Bethany's latest creation – salted caramel cookies – and then Toby's latest dig.

"It's none of my business but are you writing down everything he says to you that's inappropriate?" Callum asked, not for the first time.

Liv wanted to roll her eyes – what was it with the men in her life and writing it all down? – but she stopped herself. She should be writing it all down but she wanted to handle this herself, in a more low key, less public way. There was no way she was going to make a formal complaint and bring attention to herself again. The best way to handle this, she reasoned, was to deflect as much shit from Toby as she could and carry on with her work until he gave up, which he would. Eventually. He'd get fed up and move on to someone else. She couldn't possibly be interesting for long.

"Mmm," Liv replied, not confirming or denying that she was keeping a diary of Toby's behaviour.

"There might be light at the end of the tunnel soon, anyway," Callum carried on. "I've heard that you're definitely the favourite to get the job and then you'd be moving offices. So it would be bye bye Toby."

"Really? Who did you hear that from?" Liv was partly delighted and partly petrified by the idea that people were talking about her.

"God, everyone. You're the most obvious candidate for the job."

"Don't you want to go for it too?" Liv wanted to check that Callum was getting a fair chance to go for it too.

"Nah, I like research. I want to stay in the background beavering away on my own stuff. Students and admin suck up too much time and I'd never get any decent research done."

He had a point, Liv knew. Lecturing wasn't ideal if you really just wanted to do research but having a permanent job wasn't to be sniffed at either. She'd have to think about it carefully, along with all the other stuff she was mentally juggling at the moment.

"Anyway, what's happening with the wedding?" Callum asked.

Liv was glad he'd asked. She'd been meaning to get in touch with Bethany but kept forgetting. "Do you think Bethany would be interested in making the cake for me? I mean, she doesn't have to say yes. I don't want her to feel pressure..."

"I think she'd absolutely love too!" Callum broke in. He seemed genuinely pleased that she'd asked. "She's hoping to give up her day job and start her own cake business so this would be a perfect leg-up."

After a bit of feverish texting with Bethany, they finished the last of the biscuits and headed back to their offices.

They stopped outside Callum's office door. "Don't let him get away with anything, Liv. You don't need to handle this on your own, you know."

Liv was touched. Callum was a good friend to have. "Thanks and I won't. It's all under control." Liv hoped that was true.

Toby was back at this desk but didn't acknowledge Liv's return. She sat down at hers and got on with her work, relieved that Toby seemed to be doing the same thing too. She had bigger things to worry about in any case. She needed to pull together all the evidence she'd gathered so far to take to the select committee session. She was flattered that she'd been asked to go along and give her opinion. When she was sitting at her computer, typing away, it didn't always feel like she was doing something that had any wider meaning for anyone else. It was her research and she would present it one day and maybe it would be published in a journal or as a book. Now, at the start of her three-year project, that all seemed very far away but this invitation made her see that her work was very real to other people too. It had weight and it mattered. It definitely mattered to her, even if Matt hadn't been depressed when he'd committed suicide, suicide had affected her, Matt's family and everyone who knew him. Male suicide was a big issue that people were only just starting to talk about and she hoped her research would help people to understand it more and find better ways to prevent it. Every time she read the papers or listened to the radio, someone, whether it was a student or a celebrity, had killed themselves. It made the already depressing act of keeping up with news even more depressing. When Benedict had told her that his father had tried to kill himself after his wife had left him, it made her even more committed to the project. It also confirmed what she already knew: Benedict's mother was not a shitty person. Much as Liv disliked condemning other women, particularly mothers, for their actions, knowing the consequences of Benedict's mother's decision to run off to New York with another man and never see her children again had reinforced the idea that Genevieve was cold hearted, that's if she did have a heart at all.

Saddened by the idea of little Benedict being abandoned by his mother, Liv couldn't help but pick up her phone and text him. She felt the need to connect with him.

Thinking about you xxx

A message pinged straight back.

Thinking about you too. How about lunch? xxx

Liv looked at the time. She could squeeze in a quick sandwich if that's all it was – a sandwich, no three-course lunch, no quick trip to any empty house or hotel room.

If it's just lunch, then yes please xxx.

Spoil sport. I'll pick you up in 15 xxx

Benedict's car was idling in a side street by the university when Liv left to meet him. His driver, Trevor, hopped out to open the passenger door for her as soon as he saw her. She slipped onto the backseat next to Benedict.

"A sandwich. That's all I've got time for." She leaned to kiss him.

"Yes, lovely to see you too," he smirked. "And yes, just a sandwich, nothing more. I just wanted to see you." He picked up her hand and squeezed it. "Trevor, let's go to the hotel." He turned back to Liv. "I've ordered us a quick, tapas style lunch."

It was, as it turned out, just lunch. In a private dining room decorated in yet more of the Victorian brothel chic Liv had seen last night, they'd found a waiter carefully unpacking small boxes and round baskets with lids from a large brown paper bag. It turned out not to be boxes full of patatas bravas and jamon as Liv had expected but her favourite things from her favourite restaurant in London.

"Is this from Flesh and Bone?" Liv asked, peering into the boxes with excitement.

"It certainly is," said Benedict.

"You're so thoughtful. And this is so yummy."

The waiter left and they settled down at the table and started spooning things onto their plates. Liv took a bit of everything – the grilled broccoli with orange and miso, some miso aubergines to layer into the bao buns and the smoked beef. It was all so good that she wasn't sure where to start first.

Benedict watched her with obvious pleasure as he ate his own food. "I love ordering food for you."

Liv picked up the aubergine bun she'd constructed and examined it. "And I love you ordering it. This is my absolute favourite thing ever." She took a bite. "God, this is so good," she mumbled through a mouthful of delicious sweet, silky aubergine and the light-as-air bun. "Can we have this at our wedding? I want this at our wedding!"

"Sure. But what about your family? You said they only ever eat pasta."

"Good point," said Liv, disappointed. "I suppose that wouldn't work. Can't expect them to eat miso aubergine when they want parmigiana." She took another, this time slightly dejected bite of the bun.

"How about we give them a choice? If they don't want this stuff, we can give them an à la carte Italian menu? Get your mum to help set the menu so she feels involved too?"

"You're a genius! She'll love that and I won't go down in family history as the person who made them eat Korean wings and raw fish at a wedding! Talking of wedding food, I asked Bethany if she'd make our cake. I hope that's ok."

Benedict smiled. "Of course. She's amazing." Liv could tell that he was pleased that she was getting into the wedding planning thing.

"We can decide on the flavours and all that later. I thought maybe we could have a different flavour for each layer. You know, chocolate for one, salted caramel for another, lemon for..."

She was interrupted by a knock at the door. They looked over to see Elizabeth, Benedict's PA poking her head round the door.

"Sorry to interrupt," she said, nodding a hello to Liv. "Something's cropped up and I think you'll want to hear about it right away."

Benedict's face creased with disappointment. "Can't it wait? I've almost finished."

"As I say, I think you'll want to see this right away." She held out a thick wad of printed paper. "From your lawyer's office. They want to speak to you once you've read it."

Benedict threw his napkin onto the table and pushed his chair back roughly. He grabbed the wad of papers from Liz and stood reading it quickly. He scanned through the first page and flicked angrily onto the next. Liv could see his expression darken the further he read.

"This has got to be a joke," he said to Liz. "Have they checked that it's real?"

"Yes, it's real, I'm afraid. It's all been thoroughly checked."

"What's wrong?" asked Liv, looking from Benedict to Liz.

Liz looked at Benedict. He took a deep, exasperated breath. "It's my mother. She's suing me for half of the company."
Chapter Fifteen

Genevieve, it turned out, wasn't just cold hearted, she was greedy and shameless too. Despite having left Benedict's father for another man twenty years ago and broken all contact, she was now demanding what she considered to be her share of the family business.

"This is ludicrous," Benedict seethed, pacing around the room. "How can she do this? She got a hefty pay-off at the time, even though she was the one who left. I need to speak to the lawyers and sort this nonsense out."

"I've scheduled a meeting with the lawyers at your office for 2pm," said Elizabeth quietly.

"Right, good," said Benedict, obviously relieved that there was still a bit of sanity and efficiency to be had. "Thanks, Liz." He turned to Liv. "I've got to go and sort this out. Sorry."

Liv stood up and walked over to hand him his jacket. "That's fine. Don't worry. Do you want me to come with you?"

"No, no, that's fine but thanks for offering. I'll let you know what's happening once I've had this meeting." He kissed her quickly and left with Elizabeth.

Liv looked back at the table and suddenly didn't feel hungry anymore. She felt worried for Benedict and outraged that his mother could not only breeze back in after all this time but also breeze back in demanding that Benedict hand over half of the company he'd built up. Kate had been right to be suspicious of Genevieve. The woman cared for no one but herself.

On her walk back to her office, Liv went back and forth over the same question. Why was Genevieve back now? Why now and not when Benedict's father was still in charge of the company? Surely that would have been easier to explain. Her claim over the company would have been more obvious 10 years ago than now, when Benedict was in control. Liv knew there was a reason but she couldn't pinpoint it. It wasn't until she reached her office and went to sit back down at her desk that it struck her.

"Burning holes in your boyfriend's bank card again?" Toby asked, as Liv jiggled the mouse on her desk.

"What?" said Liv, too distracted to have ignored the question.

"You. Out lunching at some fancy place? Or maybe planning your fancy wedding?"

Wedding! Yes, that was it. It had to be the wedding. That was why Genevieve had come out of the woodwork now. Her potential share of the company was about to be diluted by Benedict's marriage to Liv. Benedict had mentioned something about making her a shareholder in an awkward conversation he'd had about prenups. Contrary to what Liv had been expecting, the prenup wasn't about protecting his fortune but making sure that Liv had a decent share of it should anything go wrong. He wanted her to be safe and provided for whatever happened. That couldn't have been good news for Genevieve. But how could she have known about the wedding? They weren't exactly on her Christmas card list. As far as Liv knew, neither Benedict nor his brother Olivier had seen or spoken to their mother for twenty years or more. Kate certainly didn't stay in touch and Benedict had always said that his mother had cut off all ties to Bristol so how had she found out?

"Wedding? Hmm," said Liv standing up again and grabbing her phone from her bag. "That might be it." She walked out, leaving Toby confused that his latest little attack hadn't quite had the desired effect. He'd expected her to bristle and maybe snap back at him but instead it sounded like she'd had a Eureka moment.

Liv walked through the maze of corridors until she reached the door to a quiet inner courtyard. She pushed it open and went to sit on a bench. She called Benedict's number and it went straight through to voicemail.  
"It's me. I've just had an idea. I think..."

She was cut off by her phone ringing. It was him.

"Sorry, I was on another call. Is it something urgent? The lawyers due in five minutes."

"It's the wedding, us getting married. That's why she's doing this."

"Yes, I think so too. Bloody vulture." She could hear in the distaste in his voice.

"Look, you don't have to give me any shares in the company," she said. "I don't want them and I certainly don't want to cause any more trouble between you and your mother."

"Liv, you never asked for any. I offered them to you to make us equal. I wanted us to be partners in everything. It's got nothing to do with my mum."

"But it has now. Us getting married has stirred things up."

"That's down to her, not you."

"But still, if it helps."

"Look, I have to go but no, you don't have to give anything up. It's very sweet of you to offer but my mother is entirely responsible for this. She wants something she can't have and she's not going to get it if I have anything to do with it."

"Ok."

"I love you, Liv. We'll get this sorted."

"I love you, too."

Liv did love him but she was worried that his mother was going to add a whole other layer of drama and stress to their lives. Their lives were already full to bursting with drama and stress. Liv hoped that they could survive this new onslaught.

India, meanwhile, was doing more than just surviving. The sickness was finally beginning to fade and India was like some kind of religious convert.

"It's brilliant, Liv," she said when Liv called her as she walked home that evening. "I can eat, not as much as I usually do but more than last week. I ate a slice of toast this morning. The smell didn't make me hurl, it tasted good and I wasn't sick afterwards for three hours. It feels so serene. It's like my body is at peace with the universe or some other bollocks. Who knew toast could be an almost spiritual experience?"

"I know and that's just a slice of toast. Wait till you have something you really love like green curry."

"God, Liv, I don't think I'm ready for that just yet. Toast is a big leap forward so I think it'll be a few days before I'm knocking back a Nando's."

"Well, when you are, give me a shout and we'll go to Nando's and celebrate. They must wonder what's happened to you. You're usually in there at least three times a week."

"I know, they're almost like family. I might have to invite them to the wedding."

"Or get them to cater it."

"I'm not sure Jakob would approve. He is a chef, after all."

"Good point," Liv said. "Talking of family, I saw Charlotte last night."

"Really?" India was clearly surprised that her sister was in town.

"Yup."

"Where?"

"At The Inn on the Gorge."

"What was she doing there? And come to that, what the fuck were you doing there? Isn't it, like, some old fogeys hang out?"

"She was waiting to see Benedict. She ambushed him and told him that she had some 'information'."

India laughed. "That sounds like Charlotte. Full of shit."

"She made me feel really insecure, though." It was ok for India to laugh at her sister but Liv was seriously intimidated by Charlotte and her special brand of condescension.

"That's her USP. She's spent her life trying to intimidate the shit out of people. It's no surprise she's a lawyer."

"She'd really gone to town on her effort though. It was full-on 'high-class bitch on the prowl'. She's seriously set her sights on Benedict."

"Liv, I really wouldn't worry about Charlotte. Benedict totally loves you and totally despises Charlotte. I know she's my sister but she's the least likeable person I know. Even mum and dad won't talk to her."

India had a point. Charlotte wasn't exactly popular at the moment, least of all with her own family who knew her better than anyone else. If they couldn't stand her, Benedict wasn't likely to fall for her, especially after everything she'd done, or was he? Liv prayed that he wasn't. India could sense the anxious silence from Liv's end.

"Liv, do not let Charlotte get to you. That's exactly what she wants and exactly what you shouldn't do. Get on with your shit and forget about her."

"Ok," said Liv, not entirely convinced that it would be that easy.

Chapter Sixteen

Liv's anxiety levels only got higher as she waited for Benedict to come home. She'd stopped to get some groceries on the way and kept herself busy making dinner when she got back. She poured herself a glass of wine, put on some music and focused on trying to recreate the Korean food that Benedict hadn't been able to finish at lunchtime. Following the complicated recipe kept her mind from wandering as she searched around Benedict's minimal kitchen for the right pans and knives. Everything was hidden behind huge, handless doors that ran floor to ceiling along one wall. Although she'd been living here for three months, she still found the kitchen daunting, with its industrial range and fridge and concrete surfaces. It felt more like cooking in a laboratory than in someone's kitchen.

When nine o'clock rolled around and he still wasn't back, Liv texted him on the pretext that dinner was ready.

Her phone rang.

"Sorry, I know it's late. Go ahead and eat."

"No I'll wait if you're not going to be long."

Benedict sighed. "I'm not sure how long I'm going to be. Realistically it might be half an hour, it might be three hours."

"Oh," said Liv, disappointed that he wouldn't be home soon. She was also disappointed that she'd have to wait even longer to find out what was happening with his mum. "How's it going?"

"Not great. Look, I'll try and get away soon and tell you all about it when I get home."

"Ok. Love you."

"Love you too."

Liv couldn't face eating alone so she put the food in the fridge, grabbed some popcorn out of the cupboard and went to watch TV. She needed some noise and distraction. It wasn't a good sign that Benedict was still at work, sorting out the situation with his mother. Surely if she didn't have a leg to stand on, the lawyers would have told him that hours ago? The thoughts swirled around her head as she flicked through her favourite shows on Netfilx without being able to settle on anything. In the end, she found something low commitment - a property programme about crazy people trying to build a crazy house and going massively over budget – and locked in. The next thing she knew, she was being carried to bed.

"Mmm," she murmured against Benedict's shoulder. "Nice to see you." She looked up at him drowsily.

"Sssh, go back to sleep. It's really late. We can talk in the morning."

"Only if you come to bed too."

"Deal."

He carried her into their bedroom and put her down gently on their big bed. He pulled her shoes off, helped her unbutton her dress and then drew the sumptuous, soft covers over her. She was too tired to clean her face and teeth. She hated going to bed without taking her make-up off but she glanced at the bedside clock. 3am. There was no way she was going to hot cloth and serum now. It could wait. Before long, she was drifting back asleep to the muted sounds of Benedict brushing his teeth and then padding round the flat turning off all the lights.

She woke up some time later, how much later she didn't know. It was dark outside but then it was November. It was basically dark all the time. She felt the gentle rise and fall of Benedict's chest against her back. She snuggled into him and slipped her fingers between his, drawing his arm closer round her. At times like this, when it was just them, in bed, Liv felt safe, happy and loved. No Matt, no Toby, no Charlotte, no Genevieve, just them. Liv knew if she could keep hold of this feeling, she'd be ok. She and Benedict would be fine whatever anyone threw at them.

Liv stayed perfectly still, trying to savour the moment, until he started to stir. He kissed the back of her neck.

"Hello."

"Go back to sleep," she said, hoping she could draw this out for as long as possible.

"I'd love to but I need to get up. My alarm's going to go off soon."

"Just five more minutes?" she pleaded.

"Ok, five and then I really need to go."

They lay together, not talking. Liv loved the feel of his body against hers. His hard, muscular leg draped over her hip as he spooned her, his smooth chest against her back. She fitted perfectly in his embrace just as he fitted perfectly inside her when they were fucking. She liked the weight and size of him, his body pressing down on hers when he entered her, the way their sweat mingled so that she slid over his silky skin and the ridges of his hard muscles. The way he felt under her fingers, his back smooth and broad, his rock-hard ass flexing as he thrust into her. She loved to grip it and feel the muscles working. When he was fucking her from behind, she loved the sound of his thighs against the back of hers, the way his balls slapped against her ass. She liked to cup them as they got harder, squeezing them to make him moan in pleasure. Her greedy fingers would follow the crest of puckered skin on his balls, over the stretch of virgin skin behind, until they reached the tight ring of flesh that surrendered willingly to her probing fingertips. She would feel him relax to allow her fingers to push beyond the ring of muscle to the soft mound. The slightest pressure on this and Liv knew that she had the power to take him higher, to ramp up his pleasure. She loved all this, every centimetre of skin and sensitive flesh, the way it yielded to her touch and was always desperate for more.

Benedict was clearly thinking about the same thing too as Liv felt the unmistakeable prod against her lower back. Benedict pressed it harder against her so she could feel the full girth and length of his lovely rigid cock. It was impossible to ignore. Liv knew the pleasure it promised for both of them and she couldn't deny herself. She had the urge to take his glorious cock in her mouth, to have it fill her mouth, so she slid down the bed under the covers, running her hands along his taut chest and stomach and turned to face him. Benedict threw back the covers to expose his massive erection. Liv admired it for a second and then settled between his legs and grasped his cock.

Benedict let his legs flop down onto the bed.

"Christ, Liv," he whispered. "That was amazing."

"My pleasure," she murmured, pleased that he'd enjoyed it as much as she had. She loved sucking him off.

"I don't know what you do but it's always mind blowing."

"I thought I was blowing something else."

"Very funny."

"That's me, blow jobs and dick gags," she joked.

"You're so much more than that. Come here."

He reached down to pull her towards him. She lay her head on the pillow next to his and he pulled the blankets back over them.

"You are something else, do you know that?"

"So are you. I would kiss you but I've got cock face." "

"Don't be silly. Kiss me. If you can suck my cock, you can kiss my mouth."

She kissed him lightly. He leant his forehead against hers. They were so close that her eyes couldn't focus. He was a gorgeous blur of green eyes, golden skin and tousled hair. Even out of focus he outstripped any man she'd ever seen.

"You do something to me, Liv. Everything feels so good in a way I've never felt before. It's like everything else has been a warm-up for this."

"I know. I feel the same."

Sex was instinctive between them. Liv never had to think about what she was going to do to him or ask him to do something to her. They were both driven by an animal desire that bypassed any thought. When she touched him, her hands and mouth knew what to do. And she loved doing it all, the kissing, the licking, the sucking, the clawing, the probing. She loved sitting astride him and riding him, she loved being on her hands and knees with him thrusting hard into her. She loved fisting his hair when he was going down on her, flicking and swirling his tongue over every millimetre of sensitive flesh between her legs. When they touched each other, it was as if a circuit was completed. They flowed into and out of each other effortlessly.

"You're all I want."

"You are too."

His alarm broke the spell with its loud insistent beeping.

"Shit." He reached over to find the clock and stop the alarm. "I'd better get up, I'm afraid."

"Can you tell me what's going on with your mother?"

He groaned and rubbed a hand over his stubbly chin. "Let's get ready and I'll tell you over breakfast."

Liv was genuinely worried about what he was going to say. He'd purposefully avoided telling her anything last night and this morning. That couldn't be a good sign. What was he keeping from her? As she took the coffee from the fridge and spooned it into the espresso machine on counter, she ran through the possible scenarios, each worse than the next. When he finally joined her in the kitchen, she was so lost in thought that she didn't hear him. She jumped when he came up behind her and kissed her neck.

"You're jumpy," he laughed.

"I didn't hear you come in." She reached into one of the tall cupboards and took down some cups and saucers. Benedict fished the milk from the fridge and took it to the table.

"Come and sit down. Don't look so scared."

He pulled out a chair and she carried the cups over and sat down. "So, my mother," he started. "She wants the business."

"All of it?"

"Yup."

"Surely she can't have it? That's insane. She divorced your dad 20 years ago."

"She did but, and it's a big but, my dad fucked up the divorce settlement."

"How?"

"The lawyers are trying to unravel it all but for some reason the final papers they signed didn't definitively cut her out of the business. He gave her a huge pay-off but he was vague about what she might be able to claim in the future. I spoke to dad's old lawyer last night. That's why I was so late. He retired to California and I had to wait for him to get home from a dinner." "What did he say?"

Benedict shifted in his seat. "It wasn't great news. Apparently, dad was so besotted with my mother that he kind of left the door open for her to come back. Just in case she came back, he wanted her to have what he thought she was due, as his wife."

"But she wasn't his wife anymore."

"I know. Ken, dad's lawyer, tried to talk him out of it but Dad wasn't having it. He insisted that Ken leave that clause in so Ken made sure he worded it as vaguely as he could so that a court would find it difficult to call it either way."

"So can your lawyers argue that she shouldn't get anything?"

"They're trying. We need to find a precedent, where someone facing a similar case has successfully managed to reject it."

"Have they found anything yet?"

"Not yet but they've had everyone they could muster trawling through case law overnight. We'll keep going till we find something."

Liv paused for a moment, not sure that she wanted the answer to this question. "Why has she done this now?"

Benedict looked like he didn't want to answer the question as much as she hadn't wanted to ask it. "You were right. It's because we're getting married.

Once I'm married, the terms of divorce no longer apply. Dad thought if I was getting married then the family line would be continued and the business should pass down to the next generation."

"Plus, by then I suppose he'd know if she was coming back."

"I suppose so."

"What about your brother? Doesn't he get a stake in the business?"

"He's got a trust fund. Olivier's never had any interest in the business so Dad made sure he gets some profit from it for life but never has to work there."

Liv thought this sounded like an arrangement that benefited Olivier most of all. Benedict did the work but Olivier reaped the rewards. Liv didn't say as much. Families were complex and there was enough going on with Genevieve without pointing out that Benedict was working night and day while his brother swanned around enjoying himself.

"Why does Genevieve need the money? I'm guessing she got a hefty pay-off and then she married another rich guy."

"Ah, well it looks like the rich guy decided to renounce being rich. He's donated all his money to a climate change campaign and he's gone to live off grid in a cabin in Canada."

Liv laughed and then stopped herself. "Sorry."

"Don't worry," he said. "You can laugh, it's funny. Her greed got the better of her in the end. She's been left with nothing and she's used to living in a penthouse overlooking Central Park. I can only imagine how quickly her society friends dropped her."

"So she dreamt up an evil plan to bleed her sons dry instead. God, she's a one-woman tsunami."

"Not quite. There's one more thing." He paused and took her hand. "She's not doing this alone. She's teamed up with someone."

"Really? Who? Anyone you know?" Liv could feel her heart pounding so hard in her chest that she thought that Benedict would be able to hear it.

"Unfortunately, yes. I know her. And so do you."

Liv was on tenterhooks, trying to think who could possibly know her as well as Benedict and his mother.

"Who is it?" asked Liv in a raspy voice, her mouth dry from panic and expectation.

"Charlotte. It's Charlotte."

Chapter Seventeen

Liv left for work fuelled by a mix of rage and insecurity. Charlotte! Of course it was bloody Charlotte! Why would it be anyone else? The woman was practically on a mission to make Liv's life hell at every turn. It wasn't enough to constantly bait and belittle Liv, as she had for the last 10 years, but now Charlotte was trying to ruin the life she was building with Benedict. He didn't want Charlotte and Charlotte's response was to try and destroy his livelihood. Charlotte was also trying to destroy Liv's relationship with India and her family, she was sure. Charlotte was banking on the assumption that Kate and Tim would ultimately side with their own daughter in any battle between them. Kate and Tim weren't currently talking to Charlotte for her terrible behaviour in the summer but knowing Charlotte, she probably dismissed this as a temporary blip. They'd come round eventually, just as Miles would come round too. Charlotte wasn't used to people not bending to her will. Miles had let her walk all over him in her spike heeled Louboutins while they were together. He'd probably take her back in a heartbeat, even now.

Liv stabbed at the button at the pedestrian crossing, furious that Charlotte had chosen to target Benedict where it would hurt most. His mother. The woman who'd left suddenly and never come back. She'd never explained or apologised. As far as Liv knew, she'd not seen her sons since the day she'd gone to New York with husband number two. She knew that Benedict's distraught father had secretly gone to see her a few years later, unable to accept that it was over between them. He'd waited outside her apartment block and when she appeared, she'd brushed him off, like someone shaking off a persistent chugger. He'd come home broken and, deep in despair, had tried to hang himself in the garage. Benedict, only 13 at the time, had found him just in time. Liv knew that this had to compounded Benedict's dislike of his mother. That she could drive someone as loving and decent as his dad to the brink could only mean that she was worth avoiding at all costs. And he'd managed it so far.

Liv was itching to call India but she wasn't sure if she should. Charlotte was her sister after all. There was no love lost between them but all the same, it was one thing for India to moan about Charlotte but another for Liv to tear into Charlotte. She was saved from this quandary when her phone rang.

"Hey, it's me," said India, "and I know why Charlotte's here."

"Do you?" Liv was surprised that bad news could travel quite so fast.

"Yeah, she went to Jakob's restaurant for lunch yesterday and she spotted me when I dropped in to see him."

"Shit."

"Yeah, she was the last person I want to see. Jakob was making me lunch now that I can eat a bit but seeing Charlotte put me right off my food."

"I can imagine. How did it go?"

"She made the usual comments about what I was wearing and my hair, blah blah blah." India's paint splattered dungarees, pink hair and DMs always raised Charlotte's hackles.

"So far so normal."

"Yep and then she introduced me to the woman she was having lunch with. You'll never guess who it was."

"Benedict's mum by any chance?"

"How did you know?"

"They delivered their lovely calling card yesterday," said Liv drily. "The pair of them have hooked up to try to get Benedict's company away from him. They served their papers yesterday."

"They said they were celebrating something. I didn't know it was that. Jesus, you think Charlotte can't get any worse and then she finds a whole other level of shit to mine."

Liv would have marvelled at Charlotte's ability to stoop ever lower if she hadn't been on the receiving end of her latest despicable attack. "What did Benedict's mum look like?"

"You can see where Benedict gets his supermodel cheek bones from though she's had so much work done it's hard to tell what she really looks like. Her skin is pulled so tight and her cheeks are all puffy and weird. If my years of reading Hello! have taught me anything, then I can safely say that Genevieve's face is 90 percent fillers and 10 percent bitch."

Liv could just imagine Genevieve in her mind's eye. A waxy face injected into a permanent disdainful scowl.

"The funny thing is she was dressed just like Charlotte. A neat little black suit and fuck-off heels. They were like Reese Witherspoon clones without the talent or facial movement."

There was a strong chance that Genevieve and Charlotte didn't only look the same. They both probably had a gaping black hole where their hearts should be.

"God, they sound scary."

"I know, they were. They looked like they were getting on really well. The idea of those two pairing up is truly fucking terrible."

"Did Genevieve say anything to you?"

"No, she just sniffed and totally dismantled me with her eyes while I was talking to Charlotte. You could see her dissecting every last thing."

"Lovely."

"Yeah, I was grateful when Jakob came out to rescue me."  
"What were they like to him?"

"Liv, it was totally insane. The second he introduced himself at the chef, they totally changed. Totally Jekyll and Hyde. Shit to me and then practically falling all over Jakob. It made me feel really sick."

"I'm not surprised. They're totally turned on by money and status."

"Totally. Anyway, Jakob gave me an escape so I grabbed it and legged it to the kitchen. Even being around all the food was better than being trapped with those two bitches."

Liv had now reached the café nearest to work where she usually picked up her latte. She stood to one side of the entrance, keeping out of the steady flow of customers.

"How are you feeling now?"

"I'm ok thanks but more importantly what's going to happen with Benedict?"

Liv sighed, genuinely unsure what was going to play out with Genevieve's attempt to get her hands on the company. "I really don't know. I do know that Benedict is trying as hard as he can to stop it from happening but, ultimately, I suppose there's only so much his lawyers can do."

"Well, I hope he crushes them both. Charlotte deserves what's coming to her and I don't know Genevieve but she's obviously no Mother Theresa. She'll get what's coming to her too. Tell Benedict we're right behind him."

"Thanks," said Liv. Knowing what little she did about Genevieve now, Liv was right behind him too.

Chapter Eighteen

Liv walked through the long corridors to her office, dodging the knots of students blocking the way as they waited for outside the lecture halls for their classes to begin. They were loud and seemingly oblivious to anyone else. Liv found herself practically shouting 'excuse me' to get past them and their protruding backpacks. When she got to her office, she closed the door behind her and savoured the relative quiet for a second. Toby was there but luckily he was absorbed in something, typing away furiously. She sat down and started to get out her things from her bag.

"There's a letter for you," he said, without saying 'hello' or turning round.

Liv looked around her desk and saw an official looking letter propped against her computer screen. There was no stamp so she guessed it was an internal letter or if not, hand delivered. Could it be from Genevieve? She took the envelope warily and opened it. Inside was a copy of the job advert for the post in her department with a post-it note stuck to it. 'Please feel free to apply, Prof Whitfield.'

"Don't get too excited," said Toby smugly, "I got one too."

"Right," said Liv, careful to keep her comments to a minimum. She was pleased to have been asked, flattered that Prof Whitfield had sent her a personal note, but it was hard to think about applying for a job when she had her own work to do, a wedding to plan and now the court case with Genevieve. She was already juggling too many plates and only just managing to keep them in the air. Throw another one in and she'd have her own Greek wedding right there and then, smashed plates everywhere. Liv folded the piece of paper and put it back in the envelope. She'd deal with that later if she was going to deal with it at all. Then she took her laptop from her bag and opened it on her desk.

"I'm not going to bother applying," said Toby airily. "It's a bit beneath me, teaching undergraduates."

Liv rolled her eyes as she plugged in the laptop cable. Of course he was going to apply for it. She wasn't an idiot. All the other postdocs would probably apply for it. He was just trying to put her off.

"You should go for it though. Probably just right for you."

Liv bristled in her seat but chose to ignore him. He was such a condescending dick. The sooner she could get out of this office the better. At this rate she'd apply for the job just to move offices. Sarah, who was in the post at the moment and going off on maternity leave next term, had her own office. It might be worth the hassle of applying and going through a panel interview for that alone. Imagine a world where you could sit down and work without a constant stream of digs. Bliss, she thought bitterly.

Liv wasn't surprised when Callum knocked on the door a little while later. He popped his head round the door.

"Coffee?" he asked, holding out Bethany's biscuit tin.

"God, yes," said Liv. She was careful to lock her computer screen and put her laptop away before she got up and left. Toby couldn't be trusted even less than usual. She closed the door behind her and they wandered down the corridor towards the canteen.

"You seem keen for coffee."

"Toby dropped another one of his little snide bombs," she complained. "He pointed out the letter from Prof Whitfield and then said he wouldn't apply as it was beneath it but I should as it was my kind of level."

Callum whistled through his teeth. "Christ, he's always ready with a putdown. Plus it's not true. It's not beneath him. He'd be bloody lucky to get that job. It's going to be a feeding frenzy – all the postdocs here will go for it and loads of other people from other universities. There are so few jobs around at the moment that everyone will jump at a chance to get it."

"I know. It's all bollocks. He'll go for it. Why wouldn't he? He's trying to mess with me and make sure I don't apply."

"Who wastes their time plotting something like that, apart from Toby?"

"Other arseholes like Toby, I suppose. What's in the tin today?" she asked.

They stood in the queue and Callum opened the tin. "It looks like rhubarb crumble biscuits. Yum."

"I love Bethany's biscuit tin of mystery."

"Me too. Anyway, are you going to apply for it? I really think you should, by the way."

"I'm not sure," said Liv truthfully. "I've got a lot going on and it's just another thing to worry about."

"You've worked really hard to get this far though Liv and it would be a shame to pass over the chance to take the next big step up."

"I know. I'll think about it."

Trust Callum to encourage her. He was a true friend. She knew he really wanted a permanent post but here he was persuading her to go for it instead.

"How about you? You should definitely apply. You're perfect for it."

"I've already submitted my application! I'm not perfect for it, though thank you for saying so, but it's a job and I want one. We really want to settle down and buy a house but we can't do that until I have a long-term contract, especially now that Bethany wants to give up her day job and start her cake business. It's a numbers game with jobs. If I keep applying, then I'll eventually get one."

This was undeniably true. Not for the first time did Liv feel lucky that she didn't have to worry about money anymore. It wasn't her money – she was clear about that in her mind and paid for things from her own bank account – but she knew that she had a buffer as long as she was with Benedict. It didn't sit comfortably with her but she was slowly coming round to the idea. She'd initially rejected the idea when India had made a passing comment about 'money being no object' not long after she and Benedict had got engaged. Liv was looking at shoes online and India had pointed out that Liv could literally buy anything she wanted now. Why not upgrade from Asos to The Outnet? Liv baulked but it was true. Benedict had set up a joint account for them and she had the bank card in her purse but she hadn't touched it. It seemed wrong somehow to spend his money on a pair of shoes. When Benedict noticed that the account was untouched, he was quick to ask why Liv wasn't using the money.

"It doesn't feel right," she explained, uncomfortable with the question.

"But it's our money," Benedict had said. "Not my money, our money."

"I know."

"Then why don't you use the card?"

Liv stopped short of saying that she didn't want to be a seen as a freeloader. Instead she tried to explain that she'd always paid her way and it was a big thing for her to be dependent on anyone else.

"But I'm dependent on you! Without you I wouldn't be able to run this company. I wouldn't have the drive to expand it so that we can have a secure future."

Liv wasn't entirely convinced by this. After all, he'd been pretty driven before he'd met her. It wasn't as if he'd suddenly set up the company in the last three months. He'd been working for 10 years and had grown it from a local property business to owning hotels all over the world and media interests in other countries. They'd gone backwards and forwards over the same issue for a while and in the end Liv had reluctantly agreed to use her bank card for things that she needed. This was her compromise. If she genuinely needed something, then it felt less like she was becoming a lady who lunched. It wasn't her life's work to spend Benedict's money. Apart from her fierce independence and feminist principles, she didn't want money to separate her from the people and things that were important to her, like Callum or her career. She hated the idea that their friendship would change as a result of her sudden wealth or that she wouldn't have to try so hard at work anymore as she didn't really need to.

"Well, I think you've got a pretty good chance whatever you say," she said, taking the tray of drinks and walking over to a free table. "And they'd be mad not to take you."

"Thanks, Liv. Anyway, how's your research going?"

They chatted about their work for a while and once they'd descended like a plague of locusts on Bethany's delicious biscuits, they put the lid back on the empty tin and wandered back to the department.

"Whatever happens with the job, I think you should ask to be moved to another office," said Callum, as he held the door to the department open for her.

"Maybe," said Liv. "I'll see how things are by the Christmas holidays and then decide what to do."

"I'm going to hold you to that, Liv," said Callum, "and if you don't make a complaint, I'm going to wheel you out of that office myself. I'll push your chair down the hall and park you by the first door I see."

"But I'm right next to the loos."

"It's your call."

Liv laughed. "Okay, I promise I'll do something about this by Christmas."

"Good," said Callum. He looked at his watch. "Seminar time. I've got some foreign students to confuse so I'll see you later."

The rest of the day flew past. First, Liv finessed the questionnaire she was planning to send to doctors. Given that many people contemplating suicide go to their GP in the year before they make an attempt, Liv's research was trying to pinpoint any potential warning signs that might have been missed. Then, after lunch, she started preparing information to give to the other professionals attending the select committee evidence session. When she sketched out the aim of her research and then her findings so far, she realised just how much she had invested in her work. It mattered to her in the way she presumed that work mattered to doctors, nurses and firemen – or in fact to anyone with a vocation to help. It wasn't simply that the work was important in itself to the people it might potentially help but that she herself was driven to help people in distress. It was her small way of repaying the debt for all the people who'd helped her when Matt had died. The policemen and women who'd looked after her and had gone after Matt that night. The doctor who'd sensitively examined her, the endless bereavement counsellors, therapists, psychiatrists, people who worked for rape charities, even the lovely receptionist at the GP's who offered Liv chocolate biscuits when she'd seen Liv's weight plummet over the months that followed the 'incident'. They all mattered to Liv in a way that she hadn't been able to express at the time and now, with hindsight, she wanted to say thank you in the best way she could.

By the time her phone rang it was dark outside.

"Hi, my love," said Benedict. "How are you?"

"Ok, thanks," she said, trying to pull her focus out of her work and into this conversation. "How about you? Any news on the case?"

"Nothing concrete yet but I think this is going to rumble on for a while so I'm not getting my hopes up for a quick resolution anytime soon. Anyway, let's forget about that for a while. I have a plan. Why don't I pick you up from work?"

"Sure," said Liv, suddenly excited that she would be seeing him very soon. "I'll get my stuff together now."

Chapter Nineteen

Liv knew from experience that Benedict's plans were rarely lowkey. While most boyfriends would congratulate themselves for arranging a quick drink and a romantic dinner in a local restaurant, Benedict's idea of a plan was always far more elaborate. When they'd first met, Liv was shocked by just how big his plans could be. His suggestion of a weekend away surfing turned out not to be a quick trip to Newquay but a flight on his jet to Biarritz and then a couple of days at his beachside villa. The villa had been as impressive as his flat – minimalist design with lots of glass and contemporary art. Even more impressive had been his hotel and vineyard further inland. The whole place had a much more traditional feel, with its sun-bleached wooden shutters and honey coloured stone buildings, but it was still painfully chic. After that Liv had slowly adjusted to her new circumstances. A weekend away didn't involve Easyjet and an Airbnb; it was all private jet and a substantial second or third home somewhere. As she stood on the street outside the university and waited for Benedict's car to pull up, Liv wondered where they'd be going this time.

Her little reverie was broken by Toby, who appeared next to her out of the gloom. He'd been smoking a cigarette by the door outside.

"Waiting for your car?" he said with his usual sneer.

"Yup," said Liv.

She heard him suck on his cigarette and then smelt the burnt tobacco as he breathed out. She turned away slightly, repelled by the fumes.

"What does your boyfriend do?"

"He runs his own company." Liv moved away a fraction, wishing that Benedict would hurry up. She didn't want the excitement of a mystery weekend to be punctured by Toby.

"Doing what?" Toby persisted.

Liv scanned the traffic for Benedict's car. "Property mainly."

"Judging by that colossal rock on your hand, he must be doing pretty well. Well enough for you not to need to work."

Liv knew where this was going. He was trying to put her off applying for the job. Plant the seed of doubt in her mind. She didn't need the money so why bother? He was so transparent and yet he thought he was being so clever, manoeuvring her into doing what he wanted. She said nothing, not wanting to give anything away or get into a conversation about this with him.

"I wouldn't be wasting my time here if I were you."

"Wouldn't you?" came a voice from behind them. They both turned to see Benedict.

Benedict leaned in to kiss Liv. "Couldn't find anywhere to stop so the car's round the corner," he said quietly. He turned to Toby, who looked slightly scared. Benedict was a lot taller and more imposing than him. Even in his suit, you could tell that Benedict was lean and muscular whereas there was no mistaking that under his tweedy jacket and expensive jeans, Toby was more than a little doughy. Liv watched in silent delight as Toby, who was now blinking very fast, waited for Benedict to speak.

"I think we've met before," Benedict said slowly scrutinising Toby's face.

Liv saw Toby square his shoulders and regain a bit of his usual swagger.

"Have we? I don't remember." He slowly took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and slid one out. They watched as he put it between his lips and lit it. It was all a deliberate show of nonchalance.

"You certainly seem to know enough about me to suggest that Liv is 'wasting her time here' " he said, his fingers putting the quotes round Toby's words.

Toby gave a false laugh. "Just idle chitchat, mate. Work banter."

Liv grabbed Benedict's arm, sensing tension between the two men and not wanting it to escalate. "We'd better go. Your car's waiting."

Benedict didn't take his eyes off of Toby. "I don't want to pull you away from such scintillating 'work banter'," he said, again inserting the speech marks, "but you're right, we've got a plane to catch." He finally turned to Liv and took her hand, leading her away and round the corner.

Liv could feel Benedict's barely suppressed rage. He was clutching her hand very hard.

"Obnoxious little shit," he muttered as they neared the black car idling by the kerb.

Liv wanted to agree with him but equally didn't want to stoke his anger any more than necessary. He opened the car door for her and she slid into the back seat. Benedict got in and closed the door behind him.

"Airport please, Trevor," he said tersely to his driver.

Trevor nodded and pulled out into the evening traffic.

Liv noticed that Benedict's jaw was clenched tight as she leaned over to kiss him. His mouth was pulled tight into a scowl.

"It's lovely to see you," she said, lightly kissing his tense cheek.

She heard him breath out heavily, as if he were releasing pressure from within.

"It's lovely to see you too." He kissed her. "I can't say the same about Toby."

"No," she said. "I can never say the same about Toby."

"I really think you should ask to change offices, Liv. You shouldn't have to put up with that every day."

"I know."

"So will you?" he pushed.

Liv desperately didn't want to make a fuss at work. She wanted to quietly go about her work and get on without drawing attention to herself in the department. She felt like she was already two years behind in her career and she didn't want anything else to slow her down. Once she started a complaint, the whole procedure would throw a spanner in the works. Sure, Toby deserved to pay the price for his unacceptable behaviour but she didn't want to be seen as a 'problem', someone who stumbled from one disaster to another, bringing bad publicity to the department. But how was she going to balance those two things out?

"Well," she said, latching onto the conversation she'd been having with Toby, "I might not have to. If I get Sarah's job, then I'll get my own office."

"Sarah's job?" he asked.

"Yeah, Prof Whitfield sent me the ad this morning and said I should apply for it."

"That's brilliant. You should be really flattered."

"He sent it to all the other postdocs too but yeah, I am flattered."

"What, Toby too?"

"Yeah, that's what he was talking about when you arrived just now. He obviously wants the job and doesn't want me to get it. He's suggesting that I don't need to work, you know, as you're...." She struggled to find the right work to finish the sentence.

"Rich?" he asked.

"Yeah, rich." She hated to admit it but yes, Benedict was rich.

"And this matters because...?"

"I have no idea," she admitted, "but it seems to be his main argument. I'm ignoring it though."

"You shouldn't have to."

"I know. Callum says that everyone in the department thinks I'll get it so there's no point stressing about this whole Toby thing. It might all be over in a few weeks."

"I hope so, Liv."

"Me too." She did truthfully hope so. She didn't want to be bouncing between the stress of Genevieve, the wedding and Toby for months on end. One area of her life had to be stable and simple, for God's sake. Just one. It wasn't much to ask. "Where are we going?" she asked, trying to think of nicer things altogether.

"Hmm?" Benedict was staring out of the window with a dark expression on his face that Liv couldn't read.

"This weekend?" she asked again. "Where are we going?"

He seemed to snap out of whatever brooding thoughts he had and a slow smile spread across his face. Seeing his whole beautiful face lift and relax made Liv smile too.

"I thought we'd get a bit of sun and I might sneak in a bit of windsurfing too."

"Won't it be too cold in France?" Liv couldn't imagine she'd enjoy sitting on the beach watching him surfing in November. Even in a wetsuit, he'd be ridiculously cold.

"Totally. That's why we're going to Tenerife instead. It's much warmer down there."

Liv could picture herself sitting in the sunshine somewhere, sipping the lovely milky coffee that you got in Spain, while Benedict hit the waves. She settled back into the comfortable leather seats and relaxed.

"Is that ok?" he asked.

"That's more than ok. It's just what I need after this week. Sunshine, great coffee and you in a wetsuit." No one looked better in a wetsuit that he did.

"I thought you might say that."

"In fact I think you should wear a wetsuit for the wedding. It's black, after all."

He laughed. "Not sure if qualifies as formal dress, though."

"I don't care. I'm not sure I'll make it through the ceremony if you're wearing one. I'll be too turned on." Liv squeezed his hard quads through his trousers. "I'll want to peel it off you."

"Maybe I should wear one all the time."

"Then we'd never leave the house. You're sexy enough as it is with your proper clothes on. If I knew that all I had to do was undo one zip to get you naked, it would be game over."

"I'm happy to be your sex slave."

"You can't run your empire from bed."

"I'm willing to try if you are."

"Ok, let's try it this weekend and see how it goes."

"Deal."

They shook hands and laughed.

"You can wind surf too, though. It wouldn't be fair if we went all that way and you didn't get to go out at all."

"You're a very kind and generous mistress."

"I am."

He leant in to nuzzle her neck.

"How can I repay your kindness and generosity?"

She shivered as he nibbled on her earlobe. His breath was warm in her ear and his teeth nipped her just the right amount. He was so damned sexy and he knew how to turn her on. "I think you're doing a pretty good job already. I don't think you need any hints from me." She dropped her head back against the warm, soft leather of the seat and let him lick, nip and kiss her neck. "Mmm," she murmured, "that's so good."

She heard the smooth whirr of the screen going up between the back of the car and the driver. Things, she knew, were going to get hotter once no one could see them. She opened her legs slightly in anticipation and soon enough Benedict's hand was skimming beneath her skirt, gliding over her smooth skin. He raked his nails up and down the sensitive skin inside her thigh as he carried on caressing her ear and neck with his tongue and lips. His tongue dipped into her ear, lightly grazing the little hairs and giving her goose bumps.

"You are the sexiest woman I've ever seen," he breathed into her ear between the slowest, gentlest swirls of his tongue. "I love watching you when you get turned on, the way you get lost in yourself and let go. It's hot as fuck."

She moaned and pushed back into the seat.

"I love the way you're always so wet for me."

His fingertips found the edge of her knickers. He slipped them under and between her legs. She could the wetness even before he'd parted her lips.

He slid his fingers inside her and then drew them out so that he could slowly slide them into his mouth.

"And your cunt taste so good."

He took his wet fingers and slid them back inside her.

"You fit my cock perfectly" he whispered into her ear. "It's like you were made for me. When my cock pushes past your swollen lips into the warm, wetness inside you, it's like it's meant to be there."

She nodded. It did feel like that. When he was fucking her, there was only the thinnest skin separating them. They were like one, their bodies merging together. She could feel every throb, swell and spurt of his cock and she was sure that he could feel every single squeeze and ripple as she came around him. She gasped as she thought of his cock inside her.

"No one makes me come like you," he whispered. "Only you. It feels so good that it almost hurts."

She knew what he meant. Before she came, she was sure that the build-up couldn't last any longer or get any better. It was too exquisite as it was. But she was wrong. The peak was always still a long way off and getting there caused her so much pleasure that she was often writhing and fighting against it.

"And then when I come, it's the most intense surge of pleasure. I can feel the cum rising through my cock and into you."

Liv loved this too, feeling the hot jets of cum inside her as he gripped her hard, his face contorted with ecstasy. His thumb found her clit now and began to circle round the sweet spot.

"Do you like that?" he whispered in her ear, his breath hot against her.

Liv nodded.

"When I've come, I want to fuck you all over again. Knowing that I'll sliding my cock through my own cum inside you gets me hard."

It was true. No sooner had he come than Benedict was ready to go again, thrusting slow and deep into her so that there was no end or beginning, just an endless loop of pleasure. Just thinking about this while Benedict was finger fucking her made Liv squirm in her seat. The warmth of his breath, the pictures he was conjuring in her mind, the feel of his fingers inside her made Liv ache for release. She grabbed the back of his neck as he whispered into her ear, bracing herself against the oncoming wave of ecstasy that was about to break.

"No one makes me hard like you."

No one made Liv as wet either. She was so wet now. She pushed against his fingers as he rammed them into her, hearing her moistness on his skin. The pad of his thumb switched to rubbing back and forth across her clit, bringing her a different, more intense kind of pleasure.

"Are you going to come for me?"

She nodded.

"Faster, harder," she gasped.

"No," he whispered. "I'm going to make you come soon, baby, but not yet. Just let go."

She felt out of control now. Benedict was in charge and his pace was steady but relentless. Liv frantically wanted to come. She wanted him to rub and thrust faster but he wouldn't. She couldn't bear the sensation between her legs. She writhed as each rub and thrust felt like another slow, deliberate wind of a clockwork toy. She didn't want slow; she wanted to fast. She wanted to release the build-up of energy that was rising through her core.

"This weekend, I'm going to make you come a thousand times. I'm going to lick, suck and probe every part of your cunt with my tongue. I'm going to fuck you from behind. I'm going to fuck your mouth. Do you want that?"

She nodded. She did. She wanted it all.

"And every time, you're going to come. Come hard. Do you want that?"

Liv wanted nothing else. She was breathless with desire, almost fainting from the heady pleasure.

"Come now," he growled into her ear. "Come. I want to feel you gripping my fingers hard."

He began to rub her clit faster and harder. Liv writhed and panted. It was all too much. Her hips lifted off the seat as she neared the point of no return. Her hold on his neck tightened. It was coming. The peak was near. The wave of exquisite pleasure was about to break and pulse through her. She tensed in anticipation. It was going to feel so good. Her nails dug into his neck. Suddenly pleasure started to cascade within her. From the tiny point between her legs ripples of bliss pulsed outwards. She bucked against his fingers, feeling how hard each ripple pulled on them. She was drawing his fingers deep inside her just the way she drew his cum deep into her when they were fucking. Her body wanted to consume him. It wanted to pull him in and fuse with him. She felt joined to him now. His fingers were one with her body, each subtle movement of his hand directing the flow of pleasure. It was heady, this feeling that he could be in control and yet part of her. She carried on clenching around his fingers until, eventually, the ripples inside her began to subside. Liv relaxed, letting her hips fall back onto the seat and releasing her hard grip on his neck.

"Was that good?" Benedict murmured into her ear, kissing the lobe gently.

Liv nodded. She opened her eyes. "It was more than good. It was fucking fantastic."

"Good," he said. "There's more where that came from."

"I can hardly wait."
Chapter Twenty

By the time the plane was taxiing for take-off, Liv was starving. Sitting in the sumptuous cream leather seats at the table in the main cabin, Liv watched out of the little window as the plane began to gather speed. They passed the brightly lit terminal building and the control tower and then the only lights outside were those along the side of the runway. Her stomach rumbled loudly.

"Hungry?" Benedict asked, from the seat opposite hers.

"I am," said Liv, clutching her noisy stomach. "Sorry."

"Once we're cruising, we can eat."

Liv sipped the Old Fashioned that the steward had brought them. On an empty stomach, the alcohol was going straight to her head. "Either this drink is really strong or I am seriously lightweight." She looked at the glass, as if it could tell her the answer. "What's in this anyway?"

"It's whisky, bitters, sugar and some orange peel," said Benedict, swirling his around in his glass.

"Whisky? No wonder I feel pissed already." She took another cautious sip. "It tastes good though. I've never liked whisky before."

"I never used to like it either," he said. "It was always the thing I used to steal from my dad's drinks cabinet to get drunk with. It tasted like a punishment but it got the job done. When I started drinking it slowly, instead of necking it, and mixed with other things, I began to like it."

The door at the back of the cabin opened and a steward approached them carrying a tray laden with boxes. Liv recognised them straight away. The delicious bao buns from her favourite restaurant in London. As usual Benedict had thought of everything.

"We didn't get to finish our lunch the other day so I thought we'd try again," he said, as the steward carefully unloaded the boxes onto the elegantly laid table. He also put down two little stone cups and then filled them from the small stone bottle of warm sake on his tray.

Liv waited till the steward had retreated and closed the door behind him. "Is there some sort of boyfriend Olympics? Because if there is, then you are winning gold in every category."

Benedict smiled. "I think you'll find it's the fiancé Olympics and thank you." He held out his drink and they clinked glasses. "To you. You make everything better."

"To you too. You're not only the hottest man alive you're also the most thoughtful. Now, amazing as you are, I need to eat."

He laughed as she hurriedly took a swig from her glass and then put it down so that she could start opening the boxes.

The flight passed quickly. They ate and chatted, eventually moving over to the more comfortable cream leather sofa that ran down the opposite side of the cabin. Liv lay with her head in Benedict's lap, enjoying the way he was gently playing with her hair. He released it from its ponytail and ran his fingers through it, winding the soft, dark brown locks around his fingers and then letting it slide through them. It was so relaxing that Liv felt like she could easily drift off to sleep if she wasn't careful. She didn't want to, though. She wanted to savour this quiet moment between them when they were simply there together, no conversation, just easy, contented silence. She fought the buzz of the alcohol and hum of the plane to concentrate on the feel of his fingers sifting through her hair, the warmth of his lap and the rise and fall of his chest. It was hypnotic. She'd never experienced such peace before, not when she'd tried meditating or smoking weed. Her mind usually raced despite her best efforts, leapfrogging from one thing to the next without pausing for breath. Now, though, here she was in the most confusing and often messy relationship, and she was almost serene. She took this as a sign that they were meant to be. Their relationship spanned it all – passion, rage, despondence and crushing insecurity through to this feeling of serenity she'd never had before. She didn't know how it was possible for one person to make her feel all these things, sometimes all at once, but she was glad that he did. Moments like these, when she could feel a connection running between them, as steady as the hum of the plane's engines, made Liv certain that all the pain and readjustment of their first few months together had been worth it.

Liv realised that she must have eventually dozed off when she heard Benedict calling her name. She surfaced from the sleepy haze just in time to see the departing back of the steward.

"Time to strap in for landing, lovely," he said quietly, stroking her cheek.

Liv sat up unsteadily and tried to wake herself up. In reality she wanted to sleep and sleep. It had been a long, tricky week with lots of competing stresses to contend with. Instead of pulling a duvet over herself, she was having to face landing, getting out of the airport and the trip to wherever they were staying. Sleep was still a long way off.

They sat back down at the table and clipped themselves in. Liv could feel the distinctive clunk as the flaps on the plane's wings kicked in. She looked out of the window and saw an untidy cluster of orange lights below them in the inky darkness.

"That's where we're going," said Benedict. "It's not far from the airport so you'll soon be in bed."

She rested her head on his shoulder as the plane steadily descended, thinking of the warm bed that awaited her.

Benedict was right. The airport was only ten minutes away from where they were staying. A low-slung black Mercedes, just like the one at home, was purring at the exit of the arrival's hall. It took them along a brightly lit road through the dark of the countryside. The darkness quickly gave way to pools of streetlights illuminating residential streets and then taller, bigger buildings as they got further towards the sea. At the seafront, they turned right and drove away from what looked like a town centre. The houses began to thin out again as they followed a curve of a wide bay. When Liv could see no further streetlights or houses in front of them, the car slowed and turned right. It stopped in front of a long wall with a tall gate. They waited as the gate slid back. Behind the gate, at the end of a neat, straight driveway punctuated with subtle ground level lights, was the outline of a two-storey building. There was only one light on above what Liv assumed was the front door. She peered out of the car window trying to check out her surroundings as the car slowly crunched along the drive. When they came to a stop, the driver came out and opened the door for her. Liv wearily eased herself out and immediately felt the familiar wave of balmy air hit her. It was 1am and yet still deliciously warm, with the tang of salt and pine trees in the gentle breeze. Liv's tired limbs were instantly overcome by a looseness that she only felt on holidays. She didn't know if it was the air itself that had this effect or the knowledge that she was here to relax. The hunch from her shoulders disappeared and the warm air chased away her goosepimples from the car's air con. Suddenly aware of her thick wool coat, she slipped it off to let the air reach her skin.

Not for the first time, Liv wondered why she lived in England. It was dark and cold for almost half the year. You woke up, it was dark, you got home, it was dark. In December it was dark by the time you stepped out from a late lunch. She might as well be living in the Arctic for all the sunshine she got in the middle of winter. At least in places set up for the cold, you had proper full-on heating and clothes designed to keep you warm. In England, it was all draughts, rattling windows and shivering in your coat. In a lot of ways, it was hardly #livingyourbestlife and she was reminded of this every time she got a whiff of the beach and the pink and white oleander flowers that seemed to grow on every road side in the Mediterranean.

"Shall we go in?" Benedict asked.

A security light snapped on over the front door as they approached. Benedict took a key from his pocket and unlocked the tall, slatted wooden door. He stood back to let Liv go in first. The driver followed her, dropping their bags just inside the door and then disappearing. Once they were alone, Benedict shut the door and fiddled with the screen next to it, turning on all the lights. They revealed a hallway that ran the whole height of the house. Liv looked up and took in the expanses of glass everywhere - glass staircase, glass balustrades, glass where the roof above the hall should have been.

"It's not really my style", said Benedict. "I bought it for the location."

It was true that, from the hallway and stairs in any case, this place was very different to Benedict's flat back home and his house in France. It was much less industrial in its style. The other places had what Liv thought of as museum chic - huge open spaces, pieces of art on the otherwise bare walls and concrete where most people would have had wood or even soft furnishings. Sometimes Liv felt like she was sitting in a gallery rather than someone's living room. This place had lots of colourful, elaborate lights hanging from the ceiling and there was even a rug on the floor.

"Shall we go up? I can show you the rest in the morning."

She nodded, suddenly very tired.

He led her up the slightly disconcerting stairs – Liv never got the point of having glass under your feet so that you could see just how far you could fall - and along to a room at the far end of the corridor. Inside stood a tall four-poster bed draped with gauzy white fabric, which dominated the room.

"As I said, it's not my style," he said apologetically. "I'll get round to changing soon. Maybe it's something we can do together."

"It's fine as it is," said Liv, looking around at the room at the whitewashed wooden wardrobe and dressing table and the turquoise rug on the floor. It had a proper beachy feel to it, though without bits of driftwood artistically nailed to the wall. "In fact, I like it." She liked the bed the most at this precise second – it looked so inviting, with its pristine white sheets, puffy pillows and a turquoise velvety throw. Liv dropped her coat onto a nearby chair, slipped her shoes off and lay down on the bed. Just as she'd imagined, it felt amazing, like she was resting on a cloud. She let out a deep contented sigh. Benedict laughed and went over to open the doors to the terrace. A lovely warm breeze flooded the room. Liv nestled onto her side to face the open door and let the breeze wash over her. It ruffled the gauzy drapes over the bed, brushing very lightly over her bare skin.

"God, Benedict, come and feel this bed," she said. "It's so soft and snuggly."

"In a minute," he answered. "I'll just check that we're stocked up for breakfast in the morning and be right back."

Liv heard him pad back down the stairs. His footsteps echoed in the high hallway and then receded as he disappeared towards the back of the house. Liv lay and listened to the swish of the gauzy curtains round the bed. It matched by the lapping of the waves outside. Waiting for Benedict to reappear, Liv closed her eyes, just for a second, she told herself, and let the sensations wash over her.

She awoke with a start sometime later. She was initially disoriented, not sure where she was. The room was dark but the sounds coming in through the open terrace doors – the steady swish and lap of the waves hitting and retreating from the beach, the popping scooter exhaust, the voices of drunk people walking past - slowly filtered through the layers of sleep. She sat up and realised she was alone. The throw had been pulled over her. She kicked it back and slid off the bed. The tiled floor was cold under her feet, giving her a sudden chill in the warm night air. The door had been left ajar so she opened it wider. Out in the corridor she could hear Benedict's voice coming from downstairs somewhere. She walked towards the top of the stairs, fully intending to go straight down but then stopped when she heard what he was saying.

"So basically, there's no time limit on her making a grab for the company, even though they got divorced 20 years ago?" He sounded exasperated, as Liv thought, anyone would if they were told this unbelievable news.

There was a pause as Benedict listened to whoever was talking on the other end of the phone.

"Well, that's just shit," he countered. "There must be something we can do."

A pause again.

"Keep looking. I don't care how much it costs or how long it takes, I don't want to hand over the company to that woman."

Liv heard a resounding crack echo through the house, followed by Benedict saying "fuck" very loudly. She silently padded down a couple of steps and saw that he'd brought his phone down onto a glass coffee table in frustration. A network of cracks had rippled out from the spot where the phone had hit the glass and Benedict was half out of his seat on a sofa, struggling to free the phone from where it had gone through the glass.

"Shit," she heard him say as he wrestled with his phone. He got up to get a better grip it.

Liv quickly ran down the rest of the stairs and into the open plan living room.

"Let me help you," she said. "It's probably better if you push the thing through the glass rather than try to get it back out. Is there any newspaper lying around?"

She looked around, searching for something to lay on the ground under the table to catch the glass that was bound to fall once the phone had been dislodged.

"Why are you up? Did I wake you?"

"I could ask you the same question. It's 3am. Don't you ever sleep?"

Liv spotted a paper on a long glass dining table and darted over to get it. "Someone really liked glass, didn't they?" Even the chairs round the table were made of thick glass as was the kitchen counter, the cupboard doors and the weird multicoloured glass pendant lights hanging from the centre of the ceiling like deflated water balloons.

"They certainly did. And it's so bloody tacky."

Liv knelt down and carefully laid the open newspaper under the coffee table.

"Why don't you go back to bed?" he said. "We can do this in the morning."

Liv looked up at him. He looked strained. His face, usually so effortlessly handsome, looked pinched. Dark purple circles were visible through his olive skin.

"Apart from the fact that it'll be morning in a couple of hours, I don't want to be woken up by your phone ringing. Imagine just how much echo there'll be in this place."

Benedict looked round. It was true that the noise would bounce off every single hard surface in the room.

He sighed and then gave the protruding end of phone a hard shove. The phone shot through and tumbled onto the paper underneath, taking most of the glass with it.

"Well, that's one bit of furniture gone," he said. "That was really satisfying. I'm quite tempted to take the rest outside and do the same."

Liv folded up the newspaper, careful to wrap up as many of the shards as she could without cutting herself. "Aren't there places where you can go and do that? Anger rooms or something? You can smash all the stuff in there to pieces."

"That sounds like my kind of place at the moment." He slumped back down on the sofa and let his head fall back over the edge. He closed his eyes in what looked like relaxation but Liv could see the stress radiating off him.

Liv sat down next to him. "What's happening with Genevieve?" She was wary of saying 'your mum' as Genevieve was proving to be anything other than motherly.

"She wants it all and it doesn't look like there's a hell of a lot I can do to stop her."

"Nothing at all?"

"Legally very little as yet."

"What about arguing that your dad wasn't in his right mind when he settled the divorce?"

Benedict brought his head back up and stared ahead as he spoke. "We wondered about that but most of the people who could testify about that, like my grandparents, are dead."

"Right. And what about your dad's lawyer at the time, the guy you've been talking to?"

"Unfortunately, he's in the early stages of dementia so he can't really be of any use either."

"Is there any way at all that you could give her some of the company? I know it's not ideal but that way you could keep what you've built up."

"I can't bear to give her anything, Liv. She doesn't deserve the company. And I can't bear to trash it all so that she doesn't get it either. I've worked so hard to get here and now it looks like I'm buggered either way."

Liv frantically tried to think of any other options that might help him get out of this mess. There was only one she could think of. "What happens if we don't get married? Isn't that the thing that started all of this?"

Benedict snapped his head round to look at her. "I am not calling off the wedding because of this."

"I don't want to either but it might be the only way to sort this out. If I'm not legally entitled to anything, then she has less of a case, doesn't she?"

Benedict's pale face was quickly flooded with colour. "She is not going to come between us. She's fucked up enough of my life already. I will not let her do this." Liv saw a vein on his temple throb with anger.

She felt a little conflicted by his response - a little scared by the force of his feelings but also a little thrilled that she meant so much to him.

"It was just an idea," she said soothingly. "I'm only trying to help." She reached out to hug him but he got there first. He wrapped her up very tightly in his arms and lay his head on her shoulder.

"I don't want anything to come between us, Liv. Not that woman or Charlotte or anyone else. Or my business for that matter. If I have to let it go, then I'll have to accept it."

"I'm sure it won't come to that but promise me that you'll keep that option open. We can still have a ceremony and everything, just not the paperwork."

"No, I want to do it properly."

"Ok," she said, wanting to cool things down. He was so tense and he needed to rest. Everyone, even ridiculously hot, successful men, had to get at least a few hours every night. "Let's switch your phone off and go upstairs."

He kissed her neck. "Ok," he said quietly. "I love you, Liv."

"I love you too. Now, let's go."
Chapter Twenty-One

For once, Liv was the first to get up. She gently eased herself out of bed, inching out from under Benedict's arm and closing the terrace doors slowly enough not to wake him. It was rare for him to sleep, let alone sleep in, at the weekends and she wanted to make sure that he got as much as he could. She stopped by the bed to look at him. He looked so utterly gorgeous even when he was asleep. His long, caramel hair fell across his forehead and onto the pillow. His golden skin, tight against hard, muscled ridges of his chest and stomach, looked even more exotic against the pure white sheets. She was almost tempted to peel back the thin sheet and check out the rest of him – his sculpted buttocks and legs and, of course, his magnificent cock – but she knew he needed to rest. With a plan to come back up in a while and wake him up with a slow, languorous blowjob, she went downstairs.

Unlike the kitchen in Benedict's apartment, where everything was hidden behind tall, handless doors indistinguishable from the walls, this kitchen was a piece of cake. It was all on show. The glass had its benefits after all. She opened the huge double fridge and found all kinds of food inside. She hunted around for some coffee, milk, cheese, butter and fruit and then laid it all out on a tray and took it outside to the back terrace. The terrace, decked in pale grey wood, gave way to a pool. Beyond that there was a glass balustrade that sectioned off the garden from the beach. The view to the sea, only a 100 or so metres away, was unbroken and Liv could see that people were already out there windsurfing. She settled into a chair at a long wooden table and watched the surfers as she drank her coffee and ate fresh chewy bread slathered with thick salty butter. She could see the attraction of windsurfing – just you, your board, the breeze and the sea, working together. It wasn't hard to see why Benedict loved it. He always wanted to be in control, bend things to his will but he also enjoyed the simple challenge of using his body to achieve something as simple as gliding on water. She'd seen him do it in France and the look of exhilaration and satisfaction on his face said it all. It made him happy in a pure way that people hadn't.

Careful not to wake Benedict, Liv had come downstairs in her bra and knickers. She was glad that she had next to nothing on now. With her legs pulled up onto her chair, she nursed her coffee and closed her eyes. The sun was warming her bare skin in a way that she hadn't felt for months. It was hot enough to seep through to her very bones, warming her from the inside. She let the sun beam down onto her face and savoured the peace. It felt a long way from home and her usual life, where she was constantly clock watching. There was hardly any time to sit and do nothing. There was always a meeting to go to, a class to give, papers to mark, applications to submit. The stopwatch was always running. Could she get this done before she went on to the next thing? Would she be late? She was always overstretching herself to stay on time and it had become so natural to her that it was only here, when she was sitting and doing nothing but drinking coffee in the sun, that she realised that she was stuck in the hamster wheel. It was so easy to get caught up in timetables that they ended up ruling your life. First it was school, then it was university, then it was work. Each thing brought with it a new and increasingly complicated and demanding timetable. No wonder people suddenly dropped dead when they retired. They'd been going for so long that the second they stopped, they fell apart.

"What are you thinking about?" said Benedict, coming up behind her from the house. He lay his hands on her shoulders. His hands felt cool on her warm skin.

She looked up at him, squinting against the bright sunlight. "That we're all hamsters."

"Is that good or bad?"

"Mainly bad, I think."

"I've always preferred guinea pigs. Less like mice and with much better hair."

Liv laughed.

Benedict had also come downstairs in just his underwear too, a pair of snug grey trunks. He sat down next to her at the table, yawned and then stretched his arms up over his head. Liv watched as his golden skin pulled tight over his sculpted arms and washboard torso, highlighting every lean muscle.

He poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot on the table.

"I was going to come and see you up in a minute," she said, her body now tingling from him being so near to her. "I'd planned to crawl under the sheet and give you a long, slow blowjob to wake you up."

"Shall I go back upstairs and we can pretend I'm asleep," he laughed, "because that sounds too good to miss. Damn, you're making my cock hard already."

Liv looked and saw that there was a distinct ridge in his tight trunks. "I love the way you snap to attention."

"Always ready for action with you. Only you."

"Good," she said leaning closer to nuzzle his neck and give his cock a squeeze. It swelled a little more in her hand. "Mmm, rock hard. My favourite."

"You're going to have to stop that because I plan to fuck you really hard but I haven't eaten since yesterday evening. I need some food and coffee and then we are going back to bed."

She sat back and watched him fill his plate with food from the table. Everything he did, every movement, was a turn-on. The way his biceps and forearms tensed when he cut some bread, the way his jaw moved as he chewed. He even looked good when he pulled apart a ripe peach and then bit into it, the juice running down his hand, his forearm and then dripping onto his bare leg.

He laughed when he caught her staring. "Can you pass me a napkin? I'm making a total mess of this."

Instead of passing him one, Liv leaned over to lick the juice from smooth, hard thigh. It was perfectly sweet and slightly sticky. She lapped it off with long, clean strokes. Then she moved to his forearm, cleaning the trail of juice from his wrist to his elbow, catching all the little golden hairs on his arm. She watched them stand on end as her tongue brushed over them. Her hand instinctively reached for his trunks where she knew that his cock would now be straining to get out. It was. She massaged it through the fabric as she moved her tongue to lap the juice from his hand. She licked along the soft edge of his wide hand, over his knuckles and then back between each finger. He let go of the peach and let her turn his hand over and run her tongue over the sensitive palm, circling round the centre. Then she moved to his face, licking up under his chin, over his stubbly jaw to the corner of his mouth. She licked along the line of his lower lip and as he opened his mouth a fraction to gasp at the sensation, she dipped her tongue inside, feeling the silky, delicate skin in there. He tasted sweet, like the peach, and he smelled amazing – the sun and salty breeze on his skin, the tiniest hint of sweat and his woody cologne. He smelt of the best kind of holiday sex. Of waking up from a siesta with your boyfriend, naked under a thin white cotton sheet, and quickly finding yourself pulled into an unexpected fuck. Slow, instinctive sex, no talking, just sliding, pushing and gentle moaning. Rolling onto your back and letting him settle between your legs. Wrapping your legs around his thrusting arse, clutching the sheet with your fingers and burying your face in your soft pillow as he bangs relentlessly into you.

Liv tore her face away and stood up, roughly pushing his chair away from the table. She ripped down her knickers and kicked them off and then quickly freed his massive cock from his pants. It was thick and long and the tip was dark red and full. She straddled his lap but didn't sit straight down. She lowered herself enough to brush against the tip of his willing cock with her own lips and pubic hair. He shuddered and gripped her by the waist. She brushed over the fat tip again and then ground against it lightly, feeling her lips part and his hot, swollen flesh on her own. She moved her hips in a circle, keeping the tip of his cock between her wet lips but not letting him inside yet. She ground a little harder, his cock sliding round and between her lips.

"Christ, Liv, I want to get inside you."

"Wait," she said.

He pushed one bra strap down to free her breast and began to suckle on her hard nipple, roughly pulling it into his mouth and rolling it around between his teeth. She moaned and ground a little harder. She reached round her back with one hand to find his cock. It was slippery with her own wetness. She moistened her fingers with it and then began to gently massage his cock. She gripped the base of his cock in a fist, pulling his foreskin down further to expose more of the sensitive tip to her grinding. She moved her hand slowly up the shaft, wanking him as she went till she reached the point where his foreskin met the back of the thick tip. With her thumb she began to massage the underside of the head. Benedict groaned.

"More?" she asked.

He nodded.

She massaged up to the slit and down again, this time letting the very tip of his cock slip inside her. He bucked up to ram his full length inside her but she stopped him with a hand on his chest.

"Not yet," she breathed, just as desperate to slam down onto his cock as he was but wanting to savour every second. "Just imagine how good it will feel when you're finally deep inside me, all the way to the hilt. How wet and tight it will be. How tight it will feel."

She dipped the tip inside her again, going a little lower this time, feeling the thick crest of his cock stretching her as it went it. She swirled her hips round in a circle as she slid up and down, massaging all-round the tip. She moved her hand down to his balls and cupped them. They were tight and high, ready to shoot their load.

"Liv, I want to fuck you so much," he moaned.

She slid down a little further onto his cock so that it was half inside her. He was so big that she felt she was stretched as far as she could go. It surprised her every time. She swirled her hips as she drew herself back up, working all round his cock. Leaning back, she squeezed her core tight to give the sensitive spot under the tip of his cock deep stimulation.

Benedict's head dropped back and he closed his eyes. She felt his fingernails dig into her waist as he fought the urge to thrust in and keep on thrusting until he came. Liv waited until his hands relaxed slightly and then rose to the very tip of his cock before taking the whole of him in one hard, quick thrust. She gyrated again, this time round the base of his cock.

"You're playing with me," he moaned.

Liv smiled. She was enjoying herself. She loved that she could drive him so wild with the slightest circle of her lips or rubs of her thumb. She watched his face crease in pleasure as she tortured him with her slow fuck. She raised herself up slow again, till the tip of his cock was almost out of her.

"Do you want it fast?"

He nodded.

"Hard?"

He nodded again. He moved his hands to cup her buttocks. He wanted her to ride him hard and there was nothing she wanted to do more. She wanted to bring him to the edge of sanity. Liv gripped his shoulders and then slammed down hard onto his cock. She didn't let up this time and he used his hands to keep the hard, fast rhythm going, pushing her buttocks up and then down in time.

"I'm going to make you come," Liv whispered. "I'm going to make you come hard inside me."

Her thighs were burning but there was no way she was stopping now; the pleasure was too exquisite. It blocked out everything – the sun, the sounds from the beach. It was just the two of them. She dropped her forehead to rest against his. She could smell his sun-warmed skin mixed with the unmistakeable scent of their sex. It was unique. The way the wetness between her legs smelled when it coated his cock, when it was on his lips, his face and his fingers. His cum created its own special fragrance on her skin that she was reluctant to wash off afterwards. It was the essence of them, the result of them merging. It turned her on more than she could say.

Benedict began to thrust hard up into her, raising his hips off the chair to meet her. They crashed into each other, frantically trying to get off. Liv's thighs began to slide against damp Benedict's thighs that were now wet from effort. He took control of the pace, pulling her on to his cock in time with his savage rhythm. She saw his face contort with the sweet agony of his fast approaching orgasm. His hands on her ass became rigid and his breathing jagged as he thrust up into her one last time, pushing as hard as he could as his cock spasmed. She felt every pulse as he came as deep as he could possibly be inside her, every spurt making him cry out. Liv savoured the feeling of fullness, sitting astride him filled by the entire length of his huge, thick cock. They were quiet and still for a moment and then he rested his forehead against her chest and released his grip on her.

"That gets more intense every time," he said, kissing her stomach that was now covered in both of their sweat. "Do you think it will always be like this?" He looked up at her in pure adoration. His long, tousled hair, damp with effort, fell away from his face and Liv could see every filament of colour in his green eyes. They weren't just green. In this bright, clear light, she could see touches of grey, washed-out blue and brown. His pupils were large and dark, despite the sun, as they usually were when he looked at her. If he always looked at her like this and she felt this primal connection between them, then the sex was never going to get old.

She nodded.

"Me too," he said, not breaking his stare. "I love you, Liv."

"I love you too," she answered, rubbing her nose against his. It was true. She did love him and she knew that he loved her. She prayed that this would never change whatever life threw at them.
Chapter Twenty-Two

Liv hadn't felt so relaxed in months. Once she'd showered, she spent the rest of the morning at the table on the terrace, reading a book she'd been toting around in her bag for ages and intermittently going inside to get more coffee and fruit to nibble on. She'd put on a bikini top and some shorts, thrown her freshly washed hair into a messy top knot and popped on some sunglasses. That was as far as she was going to get ready today. She had nothing else to do but sit here with her book while Benedict went out on his surfboard. She could make him out every so often, planing past on a distant wave. Sometimes he was leaning back so far that he practically horizontal, low over the water, holding onto his sail and powering forward. Other times, when the wind was up momentarily, he'd pitch into the air for a few seconds, hanging there above the water. It looked so effortless but Liv knew from exploring every single honed muscle and sinew on his body, that it was anything but.

Just as Liv was starting to think about lunch, she saw him walking back up the path back to the house. He was holding the board over his head and his wetsuit was turned down. As he got closer, his outline got clearer. He was muscular but lean, not a gram of body fat to obscure the beautiful symmetry of his chiselled form. He still had the trademark V shape of a gym freak but he wasn't bulky. He was athletic and, Liv thought, incredibly hot. His biceps and shoulders were solid from carrying the board. A curl of muscle ran over his hips and down into the top of his wetsuit, which was pulled far enough down his stomach for Liv to imagine what was just out of sight. She pushed her sunglasses back on to the top of her head as he walked up the steps to the terrace.

"Good session?" she asked.

"Yep," he said, propping his board against the back wall of the house. "The right amount of wind to really get some lift." He walked over to the outdoor shower that was sectioned off by a wooden screen. He turned it on and peeled off the rest of the suit till he was standing naked under the jet of water. Liv watched as he rinsed off the salty water from his hair and skin. It was lucky that the shower wasn't visible from the beach otherwise he'd have an audience. As it was, Liv felt privileged to be the only one to be able to watch. How lucky was she to have bagged someone who was as hot as he was incredibly kind and loving? She wondered at the randomness of life. He'd been living a stone's throw from her flat back in England, moving around the same streets, eating in the same restaurants for years and yet they'd only met this summer. Their meeting wasn't random – he'd engineered that after glimpsing her on her way to work one morning. He waited in the same spot for a week, waiting for her to turn up again so that he could talk to her. Imagine if she'd gone to a different café for her morning coffee the day he'd seen her or was late or had walked a different way? There were a million different little events that had to line up for him to see her for the first time and miraculously they had. Each little event, from waking up at the right time to the pedestrian lights turning green at the right second to the barista steaming the milk for just the right amount of time, had been perfect. Fate, or whatever it was that determined these things, had made all the dominos fall in the correct sequence to bring them together for one life-changing moment. Liv didn't believe in God or any religion but she reluctantly had to admit that the chances of them meeting were so slim that something had to be behind it all. And the way they felt about each other had something almost mystical about it. It felt so right with Benedict. They were right together in a way that Liv had never expected to happen to her. If she was being honest, she didn't really think it happened to anyone. The thunderbolt, electric, unavoidable moment of connection was something that'd been dreamed up to sell books and films. The dream they were selling was just that – a dream that no one could ever live up to in real life. She'd seen the daily grind of life when she was growing up. Her parents, though they loved each other, were mainly getting through the day, getting the children to school, paying bills, emptying bins and generally living alongside each other rather than for each other. Liv felt that was normal. Couples met, fell in love and then, once the novelty had worn off and the reality of domestic life had kicked in, life became about details and logistics. The odd date night hardly kept the Hollywood fantasy alive. And yet, Liv couldn't imagine that ever happening with Benedict. Of course, his money meant that there would always be other people to do the boring domestic jobs that made most people's lives so repetitive and dull. Beyond that, Liv knew instinctively that their connection singled them out. They wouldn't be living a fantasy – they'd had enough arguments and issues to prove that life together wasn't easy – but she knew deep down that they were destined to be together.

She watched him wrap a towel around his waist. He looked up and caught her staring.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked, padding over to her.

"That you might just make me believe in the existence of God."

He laughed as he sat down at the table opposite her. His golden skin looked even more flawless against the pure white of the towel.

"I'm serious, well not about the God bit but about meeting you. Think about the millions of variables on the day you saw me. For us to meet, lots of things had to align."

"I suppose so," he said, taking an apricot from the bowl on the table, "though I did help a bit by hanging around for a week in the café opposite where you worked. That wasn't the hand of God, that was me being a stalker."

She smiled. "I mean, when you saw me and then felt what you felt. You felt something so out of the ordinary that you had to try to speak to me. Isn't that amazing?"

He took a bite from the apricot and chewed. "It was. It is. My dad was an old romantic and always said that the stars aligned when he met his second wife. He used to talk about the 'coup de foudre' – the lightning bolt moment when he saw her. I thought it was a load of bullshit, to be honest. He was sixty at the time and she was in her twenties. It wasn't so much a lightning bolt as utter disbelief that a perky young blonde would be interested in sleeping with him. And then I met you and knew he was right all along. There is a big finger of fate and it pointed straight at you."

Liv smiled and took his hand across the table. "I hope it wasn't a middle finger," she giggled.

"Very funny."

"I thought so."

He raised his eyebrows and smiled. "Right, killjoy, now that you've laughed at me, I think it's time to eat. Let's have lunch."

After lunch Liv took her book upstairs and lay down on the bed to read, while Benedict went back out to surf. Predictably, despite her best efforts to get into the book, she fell asleep a few pages in and woke up just as it was starting to get dark outside. To her surprise, Benedict was lying next to her, dozing. She'd never known him to lie down during the day other than when they were having sex. Usually, he was constantly moving like a shark. It was hard enough to get him to go to bed at night let alone for a siesta. He seemed to have limitless energy but Liv thought he didn't give himself a break, ever. Now that he had, he looked much younger, more like someone his own age rather than a serious businessman in a suit. There was no doubt that he looked perfect in a wetsuit. He had the right body and even, Liv noted with some envy, the right hair that the saltwater and sun turned into perfectly tousled surfer locks. He was made to live by the beach and judging by how happy and relaxed it made him, it was where he should be. Liv resolved to get him out here more often. Maybe redesigning the house together could be the excuse she needed. She made a mental note to pick up a stack of interior design magazines at the airport.
Chapter Twenty-Three

Leaving the next afternoon was hard. After a couple of days of being alone, Liv was reluctant to head back into the chaos at home. She loved their simple routine here. Their days started off with a lazy breakfast followed by an equally lazy morning of reading and general lounging while Benedict went surfing. They either had lunch at home or walked along the beach into town to find somewhere interesting to eat. Their afternoons were spent in bed, Liv's favourite place, where they roamed each other's bodies until they feel asleep, exhausted and satisfied. After a quick trip to the beach in the evening, they sat on the terrace with a dinner thrown together from whatever was in the fridge, talking and watching the lights of the passing ships reflected on the inky water. It was idyllic.

As she zipped up her case in the bedroom, Liv caught sight of herself in the mirror on the wall. She looked like someone else, someone casual and carefree with sun kissed skin, no make-up and her thick dark hair loosely piled into a messy knot on her head. Her light tan had given her a glow that she didn't recognise. She stared in the mirror and realised that she'd changed and not just physically because of being in the sun for a couple of days. She looked real and present. She wasn't the ghost of a person she'd been for the past two years, constantly haunted by memories of Matt. In fact, she realised with a jolt, she hadn't thought about Matt today. That made her feel guilty but also ridiculously light. She hadn't realised how weighed down she'd been until now. She was always thinking about Matt, whether consciously or unconsciously. He was there in her mind, either hovering alongside other thoughts or blocking them out completely. She'd carried him round with her everywhere. Liv was loathed to admit that he cast a grey filter over everything. It wasn't his fault – Matt had essentially been a good person who'd been deeply unlucky – but trauma and guilt had kept him there. And yet, here she was. Matt hadn't gone but the filter had lifted enough for her to think and feel things differently, the way she used to before. She felt the full ferocity of her love for Benedict and his for her. She felt simple joy at sitting in the sun reading a book. The thought made her smile.

"What are you smiling at?" asked Benedict, walking up behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist.

"You. This. Us."

"I'm glad I make you smile."

She turned around inside his embrace to face him. "You do. You make me more than smile. You make me so happy."

"So do you. I can't wait to marry you."

"Can we come here for our honeymoon?"

Benedict wrinkled his nose. "Here?"

"Yes, here. I love it here. I love us here."

"So do I but don't you want to go somewhere new and maybe a bit more exciting that Tenerife?"

She brought her hand up to his face and cupped his jaw. She looked into his eyes. "This weekend has been perfect because I've been here with you. I don't think that being in Bali or the Seychelles or wherever will make it any better. It can't get any better. I want a whole week like this."

"A week? I was thinking we'd go away for a month."

"Ok, a month. I want a whole month of this."

He looked unsure. "Ok, if it makes you this happy, then let's come here."

She kissed him. "Thank you."

"I want to get it redecorated first though."

"I thought you might. Let's get on it as soon as we get back."

"Deal."

Liv got into the car for the airport feeling more positive about going home. They'd made plans to come back here and make the house their own. Benedict had already contacted the interior designer he used for his hotels in Spain to get the ball rolling. She knew that she'd have to work on him to tone down his love of minimalism to make the house a bit cosier. There was enough tiling and high ceilings here already to make the place a bit chilly without him throwing in some concrete and rusting industrial lights as he had done at home. She settled back into her seat and got out her notebook from her bag to make a list. 'No more glass, no concrete, no rusty metal lights', she wrote. 'Wood! Rugs! Cushions!' Then she got out her phone and switched it on.

There were three texts from India, one from Callum and another from her older sister Lucia warning her that their mother was getting agitated about the wedding.

"Shit," she said. She'd been putting off talking to her mum as she didn't want to get into any difficult conversations about who was paying for what.

"What's up?" asked Benedict, looking up from his own phone.

"It's my mum. She wants to talk about the wedding apparently."

"And that's good or bad?"

"I don't know for sure but I'm guessing bad. It's usually bad."

"Tell her that we'll call her later in the week. We can do it together."

"Really?" Liv felt a surge of relief that she wouldn't have to face her mum's persistent questions about the wedding by herself. Her parents were still at the polite stage of their relationship with Benedict and while he was polite to them too, he was able to be firm with them in a way that Liv never was. He had a particular way of being respectful but taking no shit at the same time.

Her mum wasn't the only one with weddings on her mind. Laura the wedding planner was back in touch first thing the next morning with more suggestions and mood boards. Liv scanned them quickly at her desk at work and wondered how much this was all going to cost. Laura couldn't come cheap. Liv Googled Laura's website and looked for prices. It was telling that there were none listed. Liv knew that this meant Laura, like a handbag in a Chanel boutique, cost a ridiculous amount of money. Liv cringed inwardly. This wedding was turning into a more tasteful version of the wedding her mum would want to organise - fussy and expensive – exactly the kind of wedding Liv didn't want, even if she was trying to meet Benedict halfway. Liv's shoulders sagged at the thought of her mum's and Benedict's expectations. Couldn't they run off to Vegas like other sane people? Or even better, could they run off to Tenerife and get married there without all the stupid fuss? Liv's fantasy ran away with her and she got lost in an ever more complex rabbit hole as she clicked her way from wedding venues to bridal shops to restaurants, randomly ending up on a job site for Tenerife. The idea of moving there was quickly gathering momentum in her panicky mind. Suddenly the idea of being an English teacher on an island off the coast of Africa was very attractive.

"Thinking of leaving us?" came a voice from behind her. Toby was standing up by his desk, putting on his jacket.

Liv quickly clicked on the little cross on the window and closed it.

"Nice weather all year round, though you don't get a good class of tourist there," he sniffed. "Bit chavvy."

This instantly set Liv on edge. She hated people being snotty, particularly about working class people. Toby reminded her of all the little smug shits at her private secondary school. They loved to make snide comments about her being on a scholarship. After every bank holiday or half term, they were quick to say where they'd been – to their holiday home in Cornwall or on a skiing trip or on safari somewhere exotic – and then ask Liv where she'd been. They knew full well that Liv hadn't been anywhere. The only place she ever went on holiday was back to visit her family in Italy, where the most exciting thing she did was get an ice cream on their evening stroll round the village. Otherwise she did what she would have done at home – played in the street, when it wasn't too hot, and watched crappy cartoons on TV dubbed into Italian. It was hardly watching the leopards frolicking on the Serengeti at sunset from the balcony of your lodge. If she wasn't in Italy, her parents would take her and her brother and sister to their café to work every day, getting them to clear tables or, if you were incredibly clumsy like her brother Bruno, to fold paper napkins for hours on end. There was no park, no trips to the swimming pool, no visits to the zoo. Liv found her escape by bringing her school books along and reading on a stool in a corner of the kitchen out the back. That way her parents wouldn't bother her.

Liv spun round on her chair, suddenly struck by how similar Toby was to the rich little bullies at school. "Where did you go to school?" she asked.

"Why?" he replied, clearly thrown that Liv was engaging him in conversation for once.

"Let me guess," she looked at him curiously, weighing up his appearance, trying to imagine Toby as a teenager.

"Public school?" she probed.

"Where are you going with this?" he asked, eyes narrowing.

"Not one of the big ones, like Eton or Harrow, I'm guessing." She leaned forward to assess him more closely, seeing that her question had unsettled him.

"No, as a matter of fact," he said, looking away from her and pretending to search for something in his pocket.

"Hmm, minor public school, then?"

"It depends what you mean by minor..." he started to bluster.

"Definitely minor then," said Liv, sitting back and folding her arms, satisfied that she had riled him. She had a measure of him now. He wasn't any more mature or sophisticated that the little shits at school. Haughty from their privileged lifestyle but chippy about not going to Harrow or Oxford. They, and their parents, were big fish in a tiny, upper middle class, provincial pond. They didn't like anyone undermining their status, particularly people who'd manage to infiltrate their natural habitat through hard work and intelligence rather than the number of 4x4s on their driveway. Liv had irritated the kids at school by being clever and not having to pay to be there and here was Toby, manoeuvring to make sure that she didn't get the departmental job because he believed that he deserved to get it. He had the right education and the right background and he was entitled to it. He was buggered if Liv, who'd steadily slogged her guts out from the days when she devoured her biology texts books in the café kitchen while her brother folded napkins, was going to win in this particular battle. Liv smiled, knowing now that Toby was vile but also a bit pathetic. He felt threatened by her intelligence and determination. She didn't have to feel scared of him anymore. If she'd managed to get this far on her own merits, then she'd get the job on her own merits too whatever Toby did or didn't do.

She turned back round in her chair and got to work.

"Is that it?" Toby asked, confused that their conversation was over and he hadn't been the one to end it on some cryptic and slightly patronising note.

"Yep," said Liv airily over her shoulder.

"Right," he said, with less confidence than usual.

Liv heard the door close behind him and she sat back in her chair smiling broadly to herself. Toby, she now knew, wasn't going to be such a problem anymore. She could easily chip away at his smug, misplaced confidence. He felt threatened by her and even more threatened by Benedict's money. Armed with that knowledge, she didn't have to worry about coming to work anymore. Buoyed by the idea that she finally had the upper hand in this scenario, she opened her email and got to work.
Chapter Twenty-Four

"You look happy," said Benedict, as she climbed into the back of his car after work. The black car was, as usual, idling quietly on a side street by the university. Until today, she'd felt self-conscious about a car waiting to collect her from work, worried that her colleagues would think she was showy. Mainly, she worried that it gave Toby more to bait her with. Now she knew that her sudden rise in status aggravated Toby so much, she relaxed. If it irritated him and made her life easier, then she was going to enjoy it.

"I am," she beamed and kissed him. He folded away his laptop and looked at her. The driver slid the car into gear and they pulled out into the rush hour traffic.

"What's brought this on?"

Liv was careful not to mention Toby. She might have started to turn the toxic tide in her relationship with him today, or at least her attitude towards it, but Benedict was a whole different matter. The mere mention of Toby had Benedict's back up. Liv could see that Toby made him feel insecure, jealous and also furious because of the inappropriate things that Toby said to her. She decided it was best not to mention him. "My new questionnaire is done and ready to go and I've made headway with my presentation for the select committee."

"That's great. We should celebrate."

"That's jumping the gun a bit," she laughed. "I've still got reading to do tonight and then committee session isn't for another couple of weeks. We can celebrate then. Anyway, how's your day been?"

"Frustrating. We're still digging around trying to find a way to block the company being taken over by 'her'". He couldn't even bring himself to say her name.

Liv squeezed his hand. "I'm sure you'll find a way. You always do."

Benedict said nothing but turned to look out of the window. Liv knew this was eating away at him, the idea that he'd have to share or even give over his company to his mother. She knew that his childhood had been shattered by his mother leaving. Liv could see the fault lines that ran through Benedict because of all of this. He was outwardly confident and independent in his work but with her he could be very different. He would shut down the second he felt insecure or rejected. He was quick to assume that she was less committed to their relationship even if there was no reason to. Liv found she had to tiptoe around him sometimes, like with Toby now.

Benedict undoubtedly loved her with a ferocity she'd never experienced before but his love was also incredibly fragile; it could turn to cold indifference in a split second when their issues brought them into conflict or just simply led them to misunderstand each other. Liv had felt the crackling, burning connection between them suddenly snap and a chilly gulf form in its place. It hurt her deeply when this happened and it took all of her resolve to look beyond it and see where it was really coming from. It was rarely from her but from the dark shadow that Genevieve cast over every emotional response. This wasn't lost on Liv but she found it difficult to accommodate his issues alongside her own in her already crowded brain. It wasn't as if she had the emotional space for someone else's shit, really. She was overflowing with the endless fallout from Matt and it was only now, two years on, she'd broken the back of the uphill struggle back to some sort of normality. Slowly, almost imperceptibly over the last few months, each day had ceased to be yet another block of daylight hours to get through before she could swallow some sleeping tablets and fall into that lovely blankness where she didn't have to think or feel. She knew that Benedict struggled too. He barely slept, as if he couldn't let his guard down for a second. Genevieve's sudden reappearance had made this worse. She could tell that even when he was talking to her, he was ruminating about Genevieve. Buoyed by her revelation about Toby and the sudden sense of power it gave her, Liv felt that maybe she could find a solution to this problem too. If there was no legal answer to this, there might be a straightforward human one. If she could speak to Genevieve, she might be able to make her see sense. Looking at him now, Liv convinced herself that if she could spare Benedict this anguish, then she had to try.

In the meantime, while she worked out how to approach Genevieve, she tried to distract Benedict.

"Let's get some takeaway and look at the latest wedding stuff from Laura," she suggested, knowing that the wedding cheered him up. "What would you like to eat?"

"Hmm?" he answered, turning back to look at her as if he'd totally forgotten she was there.

"Dinner?"

"Whatever you like. I don't mind." He turned back to stare out of the window, leaving Liv in no doubt that she had to try and sort out this mess.

Their food arrived a little later as Liv was working at the kitchen table. She'd changed into a white vest, men's pyjama bottoms and a big pair of walking socks and then set the table for dinner. She was beginning to feel properly at home here now. It was a huge, airy cavernous space – three bedrooms, a study and a garden on the roof \- with massive original sash windows and wooden shutters and ornate ceilings. He'd kept it all painted white so that the high ceilings felt even higher than they actually were. Benedict had also kept the apartment pared down to the absolute minimum so that there were no photographs, ornaments or random piles of stuff to make the place feel lived in. It was such a stark contrast to her own flat with India, where there was stuff everywhere. Their furniture was all hand-me-downs from Kate and Tim and the walls were plastered with India's canvases. You had to squeeze past the bulging coat stand and the pile of shoes and DM boots by the front door. Walking into Benedict's apartment for the first time, Liv had been overawed. It felt like being in a shoot for an interior design magazine and she was worried about touching or sitting on anything. The clean, quiet and rigorously designed space made her feel like a clumsy oaf. Where the girls often had decorator's sheets down on the floor between India's room and the kitchen to protect whatever was left of the threadbare carpet from another splattering with paint, the carpet runner than stretched the length of Benedict's entrance hall was a subtle shade of off white. And it was spotless. Liv took her shoes off and left them by the front door that first day and had done the same since, never losing the fear that she'd leave massive dirty footprints. Now, she took the bags of food from the delivery guy and held them closely to her chest, not trusting the handles of the paper bags. She careful deposited them on the kitchen table and went to find Benedict. He was in his office at the end of the long hallway. As she got closer, she heard his raised voice. The door to his office was shut so she couldn't make out what he was saying but she could hear the anger in the way he spat out every word. She waited a second by the door, unsure whether to disturb him or not. The conversation he was having carried on so she went back to the kitchen, took some wine from the fridge and filled the glasses on the table and sat down. She idly clicked through the day's news on her laptop until she finally heard the office door slam.

"Food's here," she said brightly, as he walked into the kitchen. "Would you like some?"

Benedict's face was flushed and set into a hard frown. He'd taken off his jacket and pulled out his shirt so that it hung, unkempt, over his trousers. His hair, always a little wild, was totally untamed. Liv knew this was from the way he constantly raked his hand through his hair when he was worried or angry. He went over to the table, picked up the glass of wine Liv had poured him and finished it in three gulps.

"Christ, I needed that," he said, his face softening as he sat down.

"That bad?" Liv asked.

He nodded. "And then some. It's not looking good, Liv. I'm not sure what to do."

Liv knew he was talking about this mother. "What do your advisors suggest?" She knew he had a team of trusted business managers and lawyers he relied on.

"Either ride it out or get out now."

"Which would you prefer?"

He laughed bitterly. "I don't 'prefer' either of them but right now, I want out. The sooner I'm out, the sooner I can cut all connections with her and never have to deal with her again."

Liv reached out to hold his hand. He snatched it away irritably, surprising Liv, who pulled her hand back.

"Sorry," he said, reaching out across the table to hold her hand instead. "I'm sorry I'm so grouchy. Tell me something nice. Let's talk about something nice."

"Ok," she said, still slightly shaken by his sharp reaction. "If you start unpacking the food, I'll open Laura's emails and we can look at them together."

They pored over Laura's suggestions. Liv saw how quickly it defused Benedict's black mood. Talking about the wedding made him genuinely happy so she decided to let herself be swept along by his enthusiasm. Since she wasn't ultimately going to get the low-key wedding she wanted, she might as well make life easier for herself and agree to Laura's ideas which were, she grudgingly admitted to herself, tasteful. It was all pretty much bearable - the grey/pale blue palette they'd chosen was fairly restrained and Laura had kept the lid on anything overblown. The one thing Liv had insisted on was the flowers. No massive wall of roses or arch of flowers. It was such a total waste. She wanted old fashioned, English roses for her bouquet, the kind packed with ruffled petals in lovely washed-out pastels, and that was it. She didn't want to see some cascading arrangement in the centre of each table made of exotic flowers with more air miles than Richard Branson.

When talk turned to food, Benedict grasped the nettle. "Let's FaceTime your parents and get it over and done with."

"Are you sure? I'm sure the last thing you want is more tricky conversation with unreasonable people."

"Don't worry, compared to the conversations I've been having today, this should be a piece of cake. Anyway, they're not tricky with me like they are with you."

Liv walked round to sit next to Benedict and placed the laptop so it faced them both.

Bruno, Liv's brother, answered.

His tanned face filled the screen. He looked, Liv noted, even more groomed than usual. His jet-black hair was swept into a perfect quiff and a new goatee looked like it had been trimmed with the help of a ruler. If she wasn't mistaken, he looked like he had foundation on and possibly a bit of bronzer.

"Oh hi, I'm off to work so I can't chat," he said briskly. "Do you want to talk to mum and dad?"

This was new. "To work?"

Bruno wasn't known for his love of working. Lounging yes, working most definitely not.

"Yep," he says, picking up the laptop and walking into another room. The picture, only showing a close-up of Bruno's chest, wobbled until he set the laptop on the kitchen table. Liv could see the back of her mum, who was standing at the kitchen sink washing up.

"Ma, it's Liv."

Her mother turned around and wiped her hands on her apron.

She yelled into the next room. "It's Liv".

Liv heard the familiar sounds of doors slamming, chairs scrapping on the hard, tiled floor and a soap opera blaring from the TV in the next room.

It took a while for her parents to sit down and work out how to get their faces into shot. They moved the laptop around before realising they were the ones who needed to move.

"Shoot me if I'm like this when I'm old," Liv muttered to Benedict.

"What's that?" her mum yelled. They didn't understand that the laptop, like the phone, could carry their voices.

"Nothing," Liv muttered.

"You look thin," her mother said. "Are you eating? Is she eating, Benedetto?"

"Mum," Liv wailed. Everyone in her family always asked her the same thing.

Benedict smiled and said: "Yes, Mrs Russo, Liv is eating. We've just finished dinner."

"Good," her mother said, apparently satisfied with his answer in a way that she was never satisfied with Liv's.

Liv mumbled something under her breath like a disgruntled teenager. Benedict elbowed her gently.

"Oh yeah, we want to talk about the wedding plans."

Liv saw her mother's jaw set as she crossed her arms tightly over her chest. This was classic mum pose – apron on, arms crossed, jaw clenched.

She heard her dad say "Now, remember it's their wedding, Carmela."

"I'm well aware of that, Vittorio," said her mother very pointedly.

Liv glanced and Benedict and swallowed. This wasn't going to go well.

Benedict sensed the shift in atmosphere and slid the laptop a little closer to him. He was going to handle this, Liv thought, and I can relax.

"We're very grateful that you can contribute to the wedding," he started. Liv's mum's face didn't move. She was going to be a hard nut to crack, even for Benedict. He ploughed on. "We thought we could hold the wedding at my new hotel here. It would really help me out as it would be a great trial run for the business."

Liv's mother went to say something but her father muttered "Carmela, let him finish."

"I realise this isn't the traditional way of doing things but you'd be doing me a massive favour if you agree. I hope you don't mind."

Of course they bloody minded, thought Liv, but they wouldn't say that directly to his face. They'd say it to mine in a shot though.

"I was hoping that you could take care of the most important part – the food. I realise how important food is at Italian weddings and, as I'm marrying into an Italian family, it's important to me to honour that."

He was laying it on thick, thought Liv, but knowing her parents, this tactic would work. Italians loved grand gestures and even more, they loved the younger generation showing them respect.

"Would you'd like to put together a menu?"

Liv's mum didn't need to be asked twice. A broad smile spread across her face.

"As you know the best places to source the ingredients, would you mind drawing up a list of suppliers and I'll make sure we transport it all over to the hotel? I know how much you love the cakes from that pasticceria."

Benedict had brought some of her mum's favourite pastries from the best cake shop in Naples when he'd gone to meet them for the first time. This had earned him instantly brownie points before he'd even crossed the threshold at their house.

Liv's mother was beaming at this point. Her husband turned to her to finally let her speak. "We do have a few things we can suggest," said her mum, coyly. She took a notepad out of her apron pocket. Liv braced herself as she knew that it wasn't a few things, it was going to be a massive list. Italian, particularly Neapolitan weddings, were known for their 12 course meals, with all sorts of aperitivos and palate-cleansing sorbets between the fish course and the pasta. Her sister Lucia's wedding dinner had lasted six hours and Liv could vaguely remember eating baby squid, fennel with orange and langoustine risotto. Liv could only imagine what complicated dishes her mother had up her sleeve for her second daughter's wedding. Luckily, as Liv's mum put on her reading glasses and flipped over the cover of her reporter's notepad, a dark figure appeared behind them. The laptop was sitting on the table, at waist level, so they couldn't see who it was but Liv didn't need to see a face to know that Nonna was about to raise the stress levels of the conversation. Always dressed in black since her husband had died years before, her grandmother wasn't the more subtle or tactful people even by straight-talking Neapolitan standards.

"You know who he's bringing?" she boomed in Neapolitan.

Liv's parents turned to look at Nonna.

"Not this again, old woman," hissed her mother, cocking her head towards the laptop. "Not with him listening." She meant Benedict. She wanted to keep the family's dirty laundry hidden deep in their own private laundry basket.

Benedict looked at Liv. He didn't understand Italian, let alone Neapolitan.

"It's Nonna." He nodded. Nonna was the hand grenade of the family. She loved to pull the pin out at family dinners and then retreat to watch the emotional fallout.

"He's going to know soon enough," boomed Nonna.

"He doesn't have to know now though," Liv's mother countered.

Liv saw her dad lay a hand on his mother's arm. "Mamma," he said in his usual placating tone, "let's talk about this afterwards. I'll make a nice espresso and we'll get out the biscuits that you like."

Nonna was having none of it. She shook off his hand. "He's bringing a man! What would your beloved grandfather say?" Liv heard her make the sign of the cross.

Liv doubted her beloved grandfather would have said anything. He'd been such a quiet man that Liv had thought he was actually mute. Then Nonna had to stay in hospital after an operation – for something 'down there' her mother mouthed, pointing to her vague stomach area – and Nonno, as he was known, went from silent to chatty. When Nonna came home, he went back to his usual nodding and smiling, leaving Nonna to hold forth while he gazed into the distance.

"What's she saying?" Benedict asked.

"He's bringing a man, apparently," said Liv, as the exchanges between her mum and Nonna got more heated. They saw Liv's mum stand up suddenly, push back her chair and disappear out of shot.

"Who's 'he'?" asked Benedict.

"Maybe they mean Bruno but I don't know," she said, shrugging. "And I presume to the wedding. This is the first I heard of it."

"Come back," her father called after his wife. Then he turned to Nonna. "Mamma, isn't your favourite programme starting now?" He was the master of pacifying his mother.

Nonna sniffed.

"You don't want to miss it," Liv's dad persisted.

They watched Nonna disappear from shot too.

"I'm sorry about this Benedetto," he said in English. "My wife and my mother, they don't always find it easy to get along."

Liv snorted. They never got along. "What was she talking about, Dad?" Liv asked.

"Ah, now that is a delicate question," her father answered, his cheeks lighting up as he looked away from the screen, clearly uncomfortable with the subject. "I think you should ask Bruno."

"Right," said Liv, none the wiser. She picked up her phone and texted Bruno. "WTF is going on? Nonna said you're bringing a man." A text shot straight back. "Bloody Nonna! I'll call you later. B."

Her dad plastered on a big fake smile and swiftly wrapped up the conversation. "Well, Benedetto, that was lovely. Thank you for your offer. It sounds like it's going to be a great wedding. I'm sorry but I have to go now and see where my wife is."

They said their goodbyes and then watched as her dad fumbled with the laptop, trying to work out how to end the call.

"Don't worry, Dad," said Liv, "just close the lid."

He flipped it shut and the screen went dark. The microphone, however, was still very much on. They heard the muffled shouts of Liv's mother and her dad's attempts to calm her down.

"Should we be listening to this?" asked Benedict.

"Shh," said Liv. "I want to hear what they're saying."

The shouting got clearer as her mum and dad walked back into the kitchen.

"Your mother is the devil!"

"Now, Carmela."

"Don't you 'Carmela' me. You know she is and you never say anything to back me up!"

"I'm trying to keep the peace."

"The peace! What peace? Your mother is constantly causing arguments and spilling the beans about things that should stay private."

"I know, I know. Why don't I make you a nice camomile tea? You sit down and I'll put the kettle on."

"Don't fob me off with a hot drink!" Liv's mum yelled. "That bloody woman has told them now. What are we going to do?"

"Maybe you're worrying about nothing. Maybe he won't bring him after all."

They heard the familiar scrape of wood against tile as the kitchen door was thrown open. "Of course he's bringing him!" they heard Nonna shout. "He's a poof! And he's bringing another one with him! What will the priest say?"

"He'll be thrilled," Liv's mum shouted back. "Have you not seen his vestments? He's had the women of the parish embroider rainbows onto his new surplice."

"Don't be stupid, Carmela," yelled Nonna. "Padre Luigi is not a poof! May God strike you down for saying such a sinful thing."

"I wish God would strike me down so that I don't have to listen to you anymore, old woman," Liv's mum continued. "And you know what? I hope Bruno does bring his boyfriend to the wedding."

"You will kill me. Your wife will kill me, Vittorio, if the cancer doesn't get me first."

"You don't have cancer, Mamma. The doctor said."

"What does he know? I can feel it." Liv heard the familiar theatrical wobble in Nonna's voice. "Anyway, where that coffee and the biscuits? The ads will be finished in a second and Melinda's about the find out that Alejandro has an evil twin. I don't want to miss the big reveal."

With that parting shot, they heard the scrape and then slam of the kitchen door as Nonna went back into the living room to catch the next thrilling instalment of her telenovela.

Liv leaned forward to press 'end call' on their screen. "Well, that's that explained."

"Feel free to enlighten me," said Benedict. "I didn't get a word of that."

"It seems that my brother has a boyfriend and his boyfriend is going to be his plus-one at our wedding."

"Is that an issue?"

Liv laughed. "Let me put it this way. My Nonna's generation won't be watching Drag Race anytime soon. They don't believe in people being gay like some people don't believe in the moon landings. They think it's something someone made up and only idiots believe it. It's like Queen Victoria and lesbians."

"Surely there must be some gay people the same age as them?"

"There are but people explain it away by saying 'oh, he never found the right woman' or 'she devoted herself to looking after her parents'." Liv stood up and went over to the wine fridge. "I need more wine," she said, rummaging around to find another bottle of her favourite. She came back to the table and poured them some. "You know that marrying into a Neapolitan family is going to be a nightmare, right? You've watched The Sopranos and Good Fellas?"

Benedict laughed. "Your family isn't that bad. They can't be as bad as mine."

"Oh they can," Liv said, taking a big swig of wine, "and they will be." She held up her glass. "Make sure we order plenty of this for the wedding because we're going to need it."

Chapter Twenty-Five

On the walk to work the next morning, Liv rang India.

"I need Charlotte's number."

"Yeah and hello to you too. Plus, why the fuck do you want Charlotte's number?"

"Sorry," Liv apologised, realising that she'd forgotten all the usual niceties. "I psyched myself up to ask you and wanted to get it over and done with. How are you? How's the bump?"

"Well, there's no bump yet and I'm still throwing up a bit but less than before. So, why do you want to speak to Charlotte? I thought she was enemy number one."

"I want to speak to Genevieve really and Charlotte is the only way I can think of to contact her."

"Right, so why do you want to speak to Genevieve?"

Liv hesitated. She knew that India would call her out if she was planning to do anything stupid. Speaking to Genevieve was, quite possibly, very stupid but she had to give it a go. "I want to find out if there's any chance at all that she'll drop this thing against Benedict."

"You know that's insane?" It was more of a statement than a question. "She's not going to listen to you and go 'Oh yeah, I was wrong to do this'. This is a woman who fucked off and never saw her children again and now wants to take all their money away from them."

"When you put it like that..."

"When anyone puts it like that. It's totally nuts. I don't think you should do it."

"So you won't give me her number?"

"Nope."

"I'm still going to do this, you know. You're just making it more difficult for me to find her."

"That's your call Liv but I'm not going to help you to fuck this up more than it already is. I know Benedict's really cut up about this - he went to talk to Jakob about it yesterday – but you need to let him handle it. It's his mother and if anyone's going to sort it out, then it's going to be his lawyers. Save yourself the stress."

Liv knew that India was right. Speaking to Genevieve wasn't the most logical or possibly effective thing to do but it was the only thing she could do. She didn't have anything else to offer Benedict in this situation other than support and that wasn't enough anymore.

"Ok, you're right," she lied. "I'll leave it." She went back to something India had just said. "Do you know what Benedict said to Jakob?" Benedict hadn't mentioned it to her.

"I think it was mainly about whether to let his mum have a share of the business or to give it all to her and start again. Something along those lines."

"What did Jakob say?"

"That Benedict should try to pay her off instead of giving her a share."

This struck Liv as a great idea. "What did Benedict say?"

"I don't think he wants to give her anything apparently. He's hardcore, isn't he? If that were me, I'd say 'take this wodge of cash and fuck off'."

"I know, he's very black and white when it comes to his mum. It's all or nothing."

"I need to go and vomit now. Will you come round so we can talk about the hen do? I was thinking we could have one together."

"I'd love that! I'll text you later."

She hung up and walked up the steps of the university entrance and into work.

Jakob's suggestion rattled around her brain all morning. Why couldn't Benedict offer his mother money? Surely that's what she wanted and if she got it, then she'd disappear again, this time for good. Liv tried to think her way round the idea from every angle and the more she thought about it, the more she was convinced that Genevieve would take the money and run. It would be job done and back to normal service. Now she had an even better reason for trying to speak to Genevieve. If she could secretly find out if Genevieve would go for it, then she could go back to Benedict and subtly suggest that he should pay her off. As Jakob had planted the idea already – and Benedict trusted Jakob – then Benedict might give it more credence. It was worth a shot even if it ended up being something she tried and failed to do.

When Callum knocked at her door a couple of hours later, biscuit tin in hand, Liv took the opportunity to run the idea past him.

"Can I ask you something?" she said, as they walked through the hordes of students towards the canteen.

"Sure."

"Just say my dad had a company and then my mum ran off with someone else, leaving him with the kids."  
"Weird, since I know your mum and dad, but ok," said Callum uncertain where this was going.

"Then 20 years later, my dad's been dead a few years and my mum comes back and says she wants a big share of the company, which I'm now running."

"So are you a strict boss or one that lays on massages and lets people work from home?"  
"What?"

"I'm just trying to get into the whole vibe."

"It doesn't matter," said Liv, as she pushed through the double doors of the canteen. "It's more the scenario than the actual people in it. Though, for the record, I think I'd be a nice boss."

"Me too."

"So what I want to know is, what would you do in my position? Would you give my mum half the company and stay working there or give her the whole thing because you can't stand her? Or maybe pay her off so that you keep the company and she gets her money and leaves you alone."

"Well," said Callum, looking up at the ceiling as he mulled over his options. "If it was your mum, I'd give her anything she wanted because she's properly scary."

Liv nudged him. "Seriously. What would you do?"

Callum took his wallet out of his pocket as they moved further down the queue towards the till. "That's a no brainer. I'd give her the money. It's a win win. She gets what she wants and I get what I want."

"Yes!" Liv shouted, happy to be vindicated. "Yes!"

People in the queue turned to look at her.

Callum looked at her and raised his eyebrows. "You better turn it down a bit otherwise people are going to think it's that scene from When Harry Met Sally."

"Sorry. I'm just pleased you agree."  
"Why? What's this all about?"

"Oh nothing, just some situation a friend's gotten into..." she trailed off vaguely.

"Hmm, 'a friend'?" said Callum, suspiciously.

"More a friend of a friend really," said Liv briskly. "No one you know. So what's happening with you?"

"I've got my eye on you, Liv," Callum wagged his finger at her. "I have no idea what's going on but I'm watching you. Anyway, to less theoretical matters, have you applied for the job?"

"What?" Liv struggled to focus her mind back on the job in her department. "Oh, yeah. I did. Last week. When are we meant to hear about interviews?" She hadn't given the job a single thought over the last week.

"This week, I think. They're having a meeting to draw up a shortlist this afternoon."

"How do you know all this stuff?"

"I have my sources." Callum tapped his nose. "Actually, Prof Whitfield left a print-out of his calendar on the printer and I saw when I went to collect my handouts."

They took their coffees and walked over to an empty table. Callum prised the lid off the tin.

"Ooo, she's made those little Portuguese custard tarts. Yum." He passed the tin to Liv and she carefully took out one of the little pastries. The pastry shell was perfectly flaky and a lovely scent of cinnamon wafted from the caramelised custard top.

"Mmm," said Liv, taking a delicate bite. "That's so good."

Callum took a bite too. "Blimey, that is good," he said through a mouth full of vanilla goo.

"She should go on Bake Off."  
"I know. I think she's focusing more on starting her own cake business, though."

"Shame," said Liv, licking the tiny shards of pastry from her hand. "I'd love to see what innuendos they'd come out with."  
"'That's got a soggy bottom'" quipped Callum.

"'You've got to beat it hard till it's really stiff'," said Liv.

They both sniggered.

"'This didn't get the finger treatment at all,'" Callum added.

"'You've got great penetration there,'" Liv continued.

They both laughed uncontrollably. Liv found that she was crying. She dabbed at her eyes with her napkin.

"What are you two laughing about?"

They looked up to find Toby. He had his Beats earphones half on and a takeaway coffee in his hand.

"Just something silly," said Callum. "Fingers and bottoms."

He and Liv broke into giggles again.

"Very mature," said Toby drily. "Not the sort of thing I thought I'd hear you say. You look too much like a choir boy for that kind of stuff."

Callum's expression didn't change but Liv felt a flare of anger on his behalf.

"And you wanted?" she asked him curtly.

"Sorry?" said Toby, taken aback by the directness of the question and her tone.

"Was there something you wanted?"

Callum shot Liv a surprised look.

"Er, no," said Toby, looking sheepish and slipping his headphone back on properly. "See you later." He turned and skulked off.

"Wow, Liv" exclaimed Callum. "What was that all about?"

"I've decided that Toby is just like the pathetic bullies at my school. He's all stuck-up and entitled and he doesn't like the fact that Benedict's really rich. It makes him feel insecure so he puts me down. Well, I've had enough of that. I put up with that at school – all the nasty, snippy comments about how much money they had and how much I didn't – and I'm not putting up with it now."

Callum nodded slowly in respect. "Fair play. It seems to be working. I've never seen him scurry before."

"I know it's sad but I love to see him scurry."

"You know what? I'm not so sure you'd be a lovely boss after all. I think you might be a bit more Alan Sugar. 'You're fired!'! He laughed.

"Only if I employed arseholes like Toby," she said, wolfing down the last bite of tart.
Chapter Twenty-Six

Liv found it hard to concentrate all afternoon. After going back to her office, she decided to track Charlotte down the conventional way. A quick look at LinkedIn and bingo, Charlotte was there for the taking. Liv spent ages wording a message, not wanting to be overly confident or too desperate either. In the end she opted for a straightforward 'Can we meet?' and with a shaky hand, she clicked 'send' and tried to get back to work. She didn't have to wait long for a response. Within minutes, she had a message back. 'Can't imagine why you want to meet. When and where?'.

Liv scowled at the screen. Typical Charlotte. They'd not even met yet and she was already on the offensive, belittling her. Liv put the anger to one side and tried to think of somewhere discreet to meet. Somewhere Benedict wasn't likely to be. That was her main concern. She couldn't afford for him to see her talking to Charlotte. It would undermine her whole plan to gently steer him towards paying Genevieve off.

'How about your hotel?' Liv messaged back. Surely that would guarantee discretion, Liv thought. After he'd thrown Charlotte out of his hotel, there was no chance of running into him at another. Charlotte messaged straight back again. '6pm. The Grand. Room 448.' Liv was surprised by how smoothly this was going. She'd expected more game playing from Charlotte, at least a bit resistance to meeting and slow responses to her messages. There was no of that and Liv was relieved. It was hard enough to mentally prepare herself to talk to Charlotte; she didn't have the stamina for a prolonged and, knowing Charlotte, unpleasant back and forth just to arrange the damn meeting in the first place. She took a quick breather and then texted Benedict.

'How are you? I forgot I've got a seminar at 6 tonight. See you after at home? Love you x'

Lying made her uncomfortable but she held on to the thought that it would all help in the long run.

'Busy day. Lots of meetings. Won't be back till 8ish. Love you too x'.

Perfect, thought Liv. Plenty of time to see Charlotte without raising any suspicions.

The rest of the afternoon went by far too quickly. Liv knew this would put her out of her misery sooner rather than later but, as 5pm rolled round, she felt a tight knot harden in her stomach. She was usually absolutely starving by 4.30, scrambling around in her bag and desk for a snack. Now, though, she felt sick. The last thing she wanted was something to eat. She gulped down some water from the bottle on her desk and then tried to calm herself by Googling negotiation strategies. She typed in 'how to win an argument with a narcissist' and was surprised to 1,760,000 results. It seemed that she wasn't the only one going head-to-head with a self-important bully. She jotted down some notes and then ripped the piece of paper out of her notebook, folded it and put it in the pocket of her dress. She patted her pocket, reassured that she had some weapons. The fact that she had a doctorate in psychology didn't seem to calm her nerves. Her knowledge was all theoretical and went straight out of the window when it came to Charlotte. She vowed to reread the notes in the cab on the way to The Grand so that she was primed and ready to go.

At 5.45pm, Liv's cab pulled up outside The Grand. She peered up at the building, the name picked up in stained glass on a canopy over the main entrance. It was ironic that Charlotte was staying at The Grand as the place was most definitely not grand enough for her. Liv imagined that Charlotte smarted at having to stay in such a down market place but didn't have any choice as Benedict had turfed her out of the only five-star place in town. Liv took a little comfort in that as she made her way inside, imagining how the graffiti style painting on the wall and faux library look of the reception area would irritate Charlotte. Liv paused for a moment before approaching the desk. She took out the piece of paper in her pocket and tried to reread the words. She repeated them to herself like a mantra and then folded the piece of paper back up and slipped it back into her pocket.

"I'm here for a meeting with someone in room 448," she said to woman who looked more like an air steward than a receptionist.

The receptionist looked at her computer screen. "Ah, yes suite 448. She's expecting you. Take the lift up to the fourth floor and it's the second door on your right."

Liv nodded and walked over to the lift, wishing that she could magically fast-forward time to around 8.30pm when she'd be at home on the sofa, shoes off, relaxing with Benedict. She called the lift and felt the palpitations in her chest increase with each passing second. She tried to fight it back but her nerves were getting the better of her. She unbuttoned her coat and roughly pulled it off. She was suddenly very hot and bothered. You're here to do a good thing, she told herself. You're here to protect Benedict. Charlotte's only a person. When the lift came, she stepped inside and watched the doors close, feeling like the doors clanging shut on a prison cell. She resisted the urge to press the button to open the doors and run out into the street. Just then her phone buzzed in her pocket. She fumbled around to find it and took it out with shaking hands, hoping that it was Charlotte cancelling their meeting at the last minute. It was India.

"How about Ibiza for a hen weekend? Ix"

Liv smiled despite herself and put the phone back in her pocket and smoothed down her dress. The lift bumped to a stop and the doors slid open. Liv stepped out and in her panic, found that she couldn't remember whether to turn left of right. She frantically searched for the door numbers and seeing 448 to her right, went over and stood in front of the door. For a second she gathered herself and took one final, big, calming breath and then knocked. It seemed like an age before she heard footsteps approaching the other side of the door. The footsteps were hard, probably from Charlotte's trademark spike stiletto heels. Liv swallowed down an unwelcome amount of stress saliva and plastered a fake smile of confidence across her face. The door opened wide and there was Charlotte. The first thing Liv noticed was her hair. Charlotte's mane of expensively highlighted blonde hair, usually swept up into a chic, tight chignon, was loose round her shoulders. Then Liv noticed Charlotte's dress. It was a silky black cross-over number. The strange thing was the dress wasn't crossed over; it undone and Charlotte was holding the two parts together at the front in a loose fist. She was normally so tightly put together, without a single hair out of place, that Liv had trouble recognising her. She did, though, have those ridiculous heels on.

"Ah, it's you," she purred, for once looking happy to see Liv. She released the dress from her clutch and raised her hand to that it was resting up against the top of the door. She leaned against it like a 1950s Hollywood siren. The dress fell open to reveal a very sexy set of lingerie underneath. It seemed that Toby wasn't the only to shop at Agent Provocateur. Her creamy breasts threatened to spill out of a burlesque black lace corset that cinched her tiny waist. Underneath, she wore a pair of sheer tulle knickers with a frothy little lace skirt round the top and a pair of suspenders made from the same see-through black fabric. She looked, Liv thought, like a dancer from the Moulin Rouge. She had a slightly flushed look on her face, which made Liv think (albeit very reluctantly) of sex. Liv really didn't want to think about Charlotte and sex at the same time but it was impossible given the rosy-cheeked, dishevelled apparition in front of her.

"I was just talking about you."

"Really?" said Liv, thrown by the way events were unfurling. She'd expected to be met by the usual business-like Charlotte at the door, in a Max Mara coat dress that made her look like a member of a secret government organisation. She expected to be marched in, dissected and then spat out again in quick succession.

"Yes, wasn't I?" Charlotte called over her shoulder into the corridor behind her. "Just talking about her?"

Liv peered into the corridor to the doorway at the end. The door was open.

"What?" came a distant response.

Liv heard more footsteps as someone approached them from inside the suite. What on earth was going on? Had she got the time or day wrong? If not, why did Charlotte have someone in her room, a man judging from the deep voice she'd heard? And a man she looked like she'd just had sex with? None of it made sense.

"Look," she blurted out to Charlotte. "You're obviously busy and I've got the wrong time or something. I'll come back another..."

She watched Charlotte's face form a slow, smug smile as the mystery man stepped out into the corridor.

"What did you say?" he said to Charlotte.

He said something else too but Liv wasn't listening by that point. Her eyes were fixed on him and her ears had shut down. She struggled to compute what she was seeing. Why was Benedict here? Why was Benedict not wearing a jacket? He was standing there in just his shirt and trousers, looking as flushed as Charlotte was. Benedict turned his to attention to the door and saw that it was Liv.

"Liv!" he called and rushed towards her.

Liv stumbled backwards in her rush to get away. She regained her footing and ran back to the lift. She frantically pressed the button and the doors opened immediately. Her head spun wildly as if she'd been smoking a joint and the weed was just kicking in. Everything was out of kilter. She felt woozy and paranoid and totally unsure of what was happening.

"Liv! It's not what you think! Liv, wait!"

Liv jabbed the button in the lift to close the doors. She wanted them to shut so badly, to block out what she'd seen. And she certainly didn't want to see Benedict. Luckily the doors slid shut and the lift silently travelled downwards. Liv barged her way out of the doors the second they began to slide open, unable to wait till there were fully apart to escape. She had to get out of here now, away from what she had just seen. She needed to process it all, to help her confused brain slot these awful images into a logical jigsaw. Charlotte, the lingerie, her bedhead, Benedict, his flushed face. She barged through the knot of people waiting at the reception desk and burst out into the street. A black cab was just dropping someone off and Liv stepped into the backseat as the last customer was getting out. A surprised driver looked up in the rear-view mirror at her.

"In a rush, are we?" he said jokingly.

She pulled the door shut quickly and said: "Horfield. Take me to Horfield please."

The driver nodded. Liv heard the reassuring click of the doors being locked automatically. The cab pulled into the evening traffic.

Liv stayed perched on the edge of the seat, unable to move. She was in some sort of trance that was rudely broken by a frantic banging on the cab window. It was Benedict.

"Liv! Liv, stop!" she heard him shout as the taxi began to pick up speed to make the amber traffic lights before they turned red. Benedict ran to keep up with them and he would have caught up with them had the driver not accelerated as the lights went from amber to red.

"I'm guessing you didn't want me to stop," the driver said, looking at her again in the rear-view mirror.

She shook her head.

He sighed. "Relationships, they're not all they're cracked up to be, are they? I've been divorced twice and now I'm happy on my own. I can come and go as I please, no one to tell me when I have to be home or where we're going on holiday. It's just me and the dog. Perfect. I just wish I'd known that when I was young. Could have saved myself all kinds of bother, never mind all the money I shelled out when I got divorced. If you want my opinion, love, stay single."

Liv didn't say anything. She looked out of the window at the passing blurs of lights. Christmas wasn't far away and the shops all had bright displays in their windows. Every street they drove down in town had pretty lights strung across them, making the dark November night seem almost magical rather than damp and drab. Liv didn't care or even notice that it was wet and cold outside. For a second she stepped out of herself and realised that she was in shock. She recognised this feeling, of being totally dazed and detached from the world. She'd felt it that night with Matt two years ago. The events that unfolded that night made no logical sense to her as they were happening – why was Matt raging, why was he pushing her onto the bed, why was he forcing her pyjama bottoms down and climbing on top of her? They were undoubtedly happening, she could feel them physically, the confusion and then fear as Matt surged towards her, incoherent and mad, his hand round her throat as he shoved her backwards onto the bed, the way his nails caught her leg as he ripped down her pyjamas. It was all real and yet so surreal that her brain struggled to contain the two at the same time. Instead, it was like a circuit board tripping out. Her brain cut off from what was happening and she looked on, frozen. Now, in the back of the cab, she knew that this wasn't anywhere near as devastating as what had happened two years ago. She wasn't in danger but she was still dazed by it. She hadn't seen this coming at all. Everything she had thought was real and true – that Benedict loved her, that they were meant to be together, that the past was behind her - was a pack of lies. Did Benedict love her at all? Had he ever? Was this situation with his mother just a big ruse to see Charlotte? She didn't know. She'd have to think about it, analyse every single thing, every word, every action, that had led up to the point when the shock had faded. She had to know if she'd been blind to the signs, if there had been any signs at all.

"You alright, love?" the driver said, snapping her back to reality.

"Er, yes," she said in a small, broken voice, unsure of whether she could talk at all.

"Where are we going then? I need an address."

"33 Elm Road, please. First turning past the prison and then right to the end of the road."

He nodded.

They drove past the long, high walls of the prison and then turned right down a tight side street. It was packed on both sides with VW camper vans and family cars. The driver slowed down to make his way through the narrow gap. The area had changed a lot in the last ten years. It used to be people like Liv and her family, working class people, usually immigrants, that lived here. When Liv was little, the street was a perfect place to play. There were hardly any cars and the pavements were great for skipping or riding your bike. Now, the whole area had gone upmarket as the middle classes moved in for the decent school round the corner. They brought their expensive camper vans and people carriers with them. You couldn't walk down the street for recycling bins and bulky cars parked on the pavements. The houses looked smarter than they had in Liv's day, with this Farrow & Ball painted front doors and square cut box hedges and white gravel in the gardens, but you certainly couldn't skip or ride a bike down here anymore. There were those wooden plantation shutters at every window and rooms built into the lofts. The only house on the street that stayed resolutely in the 80s, with its net curtains and unironic gnomes in the garden, was number 33.

The cab squeaked to a stop outside and idled while Liv handed the driver some money.

"Night, love," he said as she shut the car door. "Don't let the bastards get you down."

Liv gave him a half-hearted smile. It was too late for that. The bastards had most definitely got her down and she wasn't sure if she would be able to get up again.
Chapter Twenty-Seven

Liv stood on the pavement and rooted round her bag to find the keys. It was a fluke that she had the keys with her at all. She didn't usually but Nonna had finally agreed to sell her house, number 33, and Liv had been tasked with showing an estate agent for a valuation last week. Why the old lady was doing this now, Liv didn't know, but then Nonna worked in mysterious ways. She liked to keep her family on the back foot, usually not doing what she was expected to do and then sometimes doing the most predictable thing just to throw everyone a curve ball. After years of trying to convince her to sell the house, Liv's dad had given up arguing with his mother. It was only then that Nonna decided to sell it.

"Your mother is trying to kill me!" Liv had heard her mum say to her dad last Christmas. "We've gone over and over this. Every time we said she should sell it, she said 'you want to take my house away from me, put me in a home and take my money!' And now, suddenly, she's in a mad rush to get rid of it. I swear to God, Vittorio, that old woman will be the end of me."

Liv didn't know why Nonna had resisted all these years. Maybe she wanted a bolthole. Liv could certainly understand that, especially now. She needed somewhere to go and though she'd never thought of going to Nonna's house before – Nonna had strictly forbidden anyone to actually live in the house even though she wasn't living there herself – it was the only place available. She didn't want to go 'home' to Benedict's flat. Ironically, she'd only recently been starting to call it 'home'. She couldn't go back to her old flat. Jakob had moved in with India. And she didn't want to run back to her parents like the last time she'd had a terrible fight with Benedict. She didn't always want to be the flaky daughter who ran home at the first sign of trouble. She also couldn't face the interrogation from her mum about whether the wedding was off. It was all too much to deal with when she wasn't sure what the hell was going on anyway. Nonna's house was the only option.

The house hadn't been touched since Nonna had left ten years ago. She'd covered everything – or at least, instructed her daughters-in-law - to cover all the furniture in protective plastic. The whole place looked it had been trapped in resin like a bug. The vinyl sofas with their embroidered doilies on the arms. The orangey pine dresser filled with favours from family every wedding, baptism and holy communion – porcelain doves, crucifixes and angels. The fake flowers in the vases with their cheap Willow pattern transfers. It was all there as it had been when Nonna was still in residence, caught in aspic and slightly creepy. Liv went round flicking on all the lights, noticing that the plastic light switches were now yellow with age. She found the boiler in the airing cupboard upstairs and turned that on too. She heard it kick in and the reassuring gurgle of water coursing through the old radiators. The upside of keeping everything exactly as it was, was that Liv could open any kitchen cupboard or drawer and find everything that she needed. She pulled open the odds and ends drawer and saw that there was a ball of that wiry old green twine that her Nonno always had handy for gardening emergencies. The loose end of twine was neatly sellotaped to the ball. Liv smiled. Nonno liked to keep everything tidy. His shed had been as organised as the shelves of a supermarket. The kitchen cupboards were the same. Liv found them stacked full of tins and packets. Most of them were out of date so she pulled the bin over and started throwing them all out. A few tins of cannellini beans and tuna were still in date so she set them on the immaculate counter for later in case she got hungry. It was unlikely to happen, Liv knew. She felt empty inside but not empty in a hungry way but rather hollow, like the events of the last hour had stripped out everything inside her and left her bare.

She found clearing out the cupboards soothing so, without taking off her coat, she made her way round the kitchen, throwing all the expired things into black bin bags. When she filled one, she tied it up and took it outside. Then she went back in, shook out another black sack and moved on to the next room. When she got to the under stairs cupboard, she heard a faint buzzing. The buzzing came and went and Liv knew it would be her phone ringing in her bag that she'd left by the front door. She ignored it, happy to be busy doing something that didn't require any more thought than whether a packet of pasta was still in date. The radiators were beginning to fill the cold rooms with a dry, dusty heat. Liv took her coat off and hung it on the coat rack by the front door. She rolled up the sleeves of her dress and took off her shoes. She moved her way each room methodically, chucking out anything that couldn't be salvaged. When the bathroom cupboard had been cleared of a rusty old Alka Seltzer tin and a yellowing tube of haemorrhoid cream, Liv took the last bin bag downstairs and put it next to the pile in the front garden. She then locked the front doors, flicked off the lights and went upstairs. There she peel the plastic cover off the single bed in the spare room, the room she'd sometimes stayed in, reluctantly, after Nonno had died and Nonna needed company. The covers were still the same – a pink, nylon spread covered in orange flowers with a huge, flouncy skirt that Nonna had bought back in the 70s. Liv peeled it off and threw it on the floor. She remember how scratchy it was. Underneath was a thick blanket and then a white sheet. Liv pulled them back and slid into the small bed, not bothering to take her dress off or clean her face. She switched off the bedside lamp and lay in the dark. She'd left the curtains open and the room was suffused with the sulphurous orange glow from the street light. Liv pulled the covers up tight to her chin and listened to the regular gurgles of hot water working its way round the clanky old radiators. Her mind was blank. She kept staring at the window and listening to the gurgling until at some point, she didn't know when, she fell asleep.

The next morning she woke up, surprised to find that she'd slept at all. It was getting light outside, or as light as it got on grey days in late November. The room was hot and she had a dry mouth. She kicked back the covers on the single bed and got up, only then remembering that she'd slept in her clothes. Liv felt grubby and hot and in desperate need of a wash. She padded out to landing, took a towel from the pile in the airing cupboard and went through to the small bathroom. It hadn't changed in decades. The suite was a bright Pepto Bismol pink and the loo still had the black toilet seat that Liv remembered from her childhood. She turned on the shower over the bath and stripped off. When the water ran hot, she climbed in and let the scalding jet cascade over her. She closed her eyes and tried to halt the jumble of horrible images that were quickly filling her mind. Charlotte's breasts ripe in her corset, Benedict emerging from what could only be Charlotte's bedroom. The rush of memories winded her and she shakily crumpled in the bath. She sat there with the water raining down on her and cried. She cried for herself, for being deceived and for being stupid enough to let someone deceive her. She wept hard for the relationship she thought she had. Before she'd met Benedict, she didn't even think they existed, relationships that were so intense and immediate, and now she knew that they didn't. Not really. That made her cry even more, that she could have been so naïve to think that he was her soulmate. No one had a soulmate. Soulmates were a con, a bit of false advertising that left everyone disappointed. She was hiccupping from the tears now and swallowing water from the shower. The water started to go cold suddenly and she stood up, shocked by the extreme change in temperature. Turning off the shower, she stepped out to grab the warm towel from the radiator. Liv caught sight of herself in the mirror above the sink. Even in the mottled, slightly cloudy reflection, she looked rough. There was mascara residue round her eyes and she looked washed out. Liv grabbed a flannel and scrubbed at her eyes, not caring that it hurt. When she looked in the mirror again, the black smudges were gone and her face was pink, mainly from the hard scrub but at least she looked alive again. She wrapped her hair in the towel, scrubbed a finger round her teeth in the absence of a toothbrush and went in search of some clothes.

Nonna must have been a bit of a fox in the 1950s, Liv thought as she rifled through the clothes (obviously covered in plastic) hanging in the wardrobe. Liv was used to seeing Nonna in a black skirt, blouse and cardigan but the wardrobe told a different story. Liv found lovely full skirted dresses with vintage prints on, the sort of thing Sophia Loren wore in films she watched with her mum on Saturday afternoons. Liv had the right body shape for them. She had full breasts and hips but a tiny waist. India always said she had a 1950s figure. Liv pulled out a dark blue dress with long sleeves and a square cut neck line. She rooted around until she found some underwear, a less than sexy pair of big M&S knickers, and got dressed. Throwing on her coat and her shoes, she walked down to the local petrol station in search of breakfast.

The street was surprisingly busy but then it was 8.30 and kids were being hustled to school. It was a sea of prams, kids on scooters and stressed looking parents checking their watches. Liv skirted round them and tried to work out what to do. She knew from experience that she had two options today: decide to be positive (it wasn't going to happen on its own) or let everything drag her down. Sometimes it was almost a treat to let yourself drown in self-pity but Liv knew that, ultimately, it never led to anything good. She decided instead to call in sick and then take a couple of days to get her head straight. Or at least a bit straighter. She wasn't expecting miracles.

Buying a toothbrush, toothpaste and a few bits from the shelves for breakfast, Liv took her carrier bag of stuff and set off back towards Nonna's house. The walk home was slower. She knew she'd have to use her phone to contact work and she didn't want to see the messages it might hold. Her phone, the thing that had first connected her to Benedict, was now something that she feared. It had become toxic overnight. On the day she'd met him, he'd spilled coffee all over her and her phone. The phone died instantly. He'd dashed out of the café and returned with a brand new one. She'd come to cherish the phone. It reminded her of him every time she looked at it. She carried round in the pocket like a talisman and every time she thought about him, it would buzz with his latest text as if they were psychically linked. Now the last thing she wanted was a text from him, grovelling and lying. She'd have to force herself to ignore any messages from him but text India and her parents to tell them that she was ok. Benedict was bound to have contacted them by now to see if they knew where she was and she had a certain amount of panic limitation to do. Her mum, she knew, would be pacing her kitchen until she heard from Liv.

Liv opened the front door to number 33 and was hit by a lovely hot wave of air. It smelt just like it did when Nonna was still living there – Mr Sheen, mothballs and Yardley's freesia perfume with an undertow of bleach. Liv shrugged off her coat and hung it up. Then she set about doing everything she could to avoid looking at her phone. She took her toiletries up the bathroom and put the food on the kitchen counter. She filled the kettle, took down a cup and saucer from the cupboard and then waited for the water to boil. When it was ready, she made herself a cup of tea and sat down at the small Formica topped kitchen table to drink it. Liv stared out of the kitchen window into the overgrown garden. She'd have to get a gardener round the sort it out before people starting to book viewings, she thought. The room was perfectly quiet, apart from the occasional clatter of crockery when she put her cup down on the saucer between sips of tea. When she was done, she took the cup and saucer, washed them and then dried them carefully with the starched Princes Charles and Lady Diana commemorative tea towel before putting them back in the cupboard.

Once that was done, Liv realised she couldn't eek things out anymore. She'd have to get her phone out. She went to the hall and slowly extracted it from her bag with the care of a bomb disposal expert handling an unexploded mine. She went to sit on the stairs, unlocked the screen and went straight to her emails. Then she texted her mum ("I'm at a conference. Benedict must have forgotten about it") and India. She was about to put the phone away again when it rang, startling her. She looked at the phone as if it were a strange creature that had just fallen from the sky. The ringing seemed alien to her. It shattered the silence in the house. She was putting it back in the bag when a text pinged onto the screen.

"PICK UP THE FUCKING PHONE. I NEED TO TALK TO YOU. IND X"

Liv looked at the text. India might want to talk to her but she most definitely didn't want to talk to India. India had warned her not to get tangled up with Charlotte and she'd ignored her. Liv didn't want to face the 'I told you so' right now. She'd call her later, when she was feeling more with it.

Another text pinged before she'd had time to put the phone back in her bag.

"I'M GOING TO RING IN A MINUTE. PICK IT UP. IT'S ABOUT THE BABY."

Shit, Liv thought, I'm so selfish. Here I am thinking that she wants to talk about Benedict and really she's got something way more serious going on. She pressed 'answer' on the first ring.

"Liv, where the fuck are you?"

"What's wrong with the baby?"

"What? Oh nothing. I just needed you to pick up."

Liv was momentarily outraged but also relieved that the baby was ok. "That was low."

"Yeah, well, you weren't picking up. I've been calling and texting since last night. Where the fuck are you?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Of course it fucking matters. I've got your mum ringing me out of her mind with worry."  
"Sorry," Liv said quietly.

"What's going on? I've had Benedict round here wondering where you are. He must have rung your mum and asked her too."

"I don't really want to talk about it now. I'll tell you when I've had a chance to get my head round it."

India sighed loudly. "You might as well tell me, Liv. Jakob's going round to see later so I'm going to find out anyway."

"You were right," Liv said slowly. "I shouldn't have talked to Charlotte."

"I know. I'm always right. Why was I right in this particular case?"

"I..." Liv trailed off, unable to put last night's events into words.

"You?" said India, coaxing her. "You talked to Charlotte, you fought with Charlotte, you pushed Charlotte off a bridge?"

"I spoke to Charlotte. I went to her hotel to talk to her about Genevieve. I wanted to see if Genevieve would take some money as a pay-off rather than going to court for her share of the company."

"Right. And what happened?"

"I went up to her room," Liv said, cringing at the images this conjured up in the mind, "knocked on the door and Charlotte answered looking like she'd been recently shagged. Her hair was all round her shoulders, her face was flushed and her dress wasn't even done up."

"Charlotte? As in my uptight bitch of a sister?"

"Yeah, that Charlotte. And then she went all seductress and leant against the door like the dangerous sexy women do in films and her dress fell open. She had on this amazing lingerie underneath, suspenders and everything."

"Hold on, I'm still struggling here. You're talking about my sister Charlotte?"

"Yes it's your bloody sister Charlotte! I'm not a fucking idiot, you know. I can recognise your sister." Liv wanted India to stop interrupting.

"Sorry, I'm just stunned."

"Yeah, well, imagine how I felt," Liv said bitterly. "Anyway, I thought I'd got the wrong time, as she was obviously busy, so I said something along those lines so I could leave. Then she said that 'they'd been talking about me'."

"Who's 'they'?" asked India.

Liv paused, feeling the fury rising in her chest. "It turns out that 'they' means her and Benedict. He came out from the bedroom to see who was at the door."

"You are fucking kidding me!"

"I am so not fucking kidding you."

"Are you sure read it right? He could have been there for a million different reasons."

"He wasn't wearing his jacket and his face was all flushed too."

"What did you do?"

"I tried to get out of there as quickly as I could. I grabbed a taxi outside."

"Did he follow you?"

"Yeah but I got away."

"Are you going to talk to him?"

"No! I'm too angry. I can't bear to think of him with Charlotte and I hate myself for being such an idiot."  
"Why would you think you're an idiot?"  
"For thinking he was the real deal. He was a fake all along and I was too stupid to see it."

"It was – it is – the real deal, Liv. I saw it with my own eyes. There must be something else going on here cos I can't imagine Benedict being unfaithful to you, especially with Charlotte. He can't stand her."

"Exactly!" said Liv triumphantly. "That's precisely what we all thought but there he was, shagging her. In plain sight and all that."

"God," said India. "What a fucking nightmare. Where are you, by the way?"

Liv hesitated. She didn't want to face the music just yet. "Is it ok if I tell you in a couple of days? I'm ok but I need some time to get my head round this."

"Are you sure you're ok? You can always stay here. Your room's still empty."

"Thanks but I'm fine where I am."

"Ok. Let me do some digging and I'll get back to you. This might not be what you think it is and then you can come home."

Liv knew not to let herself get caught up in India's optimism. She'd seen enough to know what was going on between Charlotte and Benedict. Now all she had to do was accept it.
Chapter Twenty-Eight

Liv set up a makeshift office on the table in the dining room at number 33. She stripped off the clear plastic cover, the checked plasticised tablecloth under that and then the blanket that Nonna put under that to protect the table. Looking at the table – an unimpressive veneered job that was pristine but would probably fail to attract any takers on Freecycle – Liv wondered why Nonna had bothered. It was hardly Louis XIV but then again, Nonna was clearly ahead of everyone else in the whole recycling game. Liv couldn't find anything less than 20 years old in the whole house, from the knickers she'd borrowed, which had the old St Michael's label rather than newer Marks and Spencer tag, to the green Beryl tea set in the cupboard. In deference to Nonna, Liv put a tea towel (an immaculate Princess Anne and Mark Phillips commemorative wedding one from 1973) on the table and put her laptop on top of that. She sat down and did her usual timewasting preamble to work. She checked her personal email, then the serious news and then the Daily Mail website for any top celebrity news. Then she switched to Twitter to check out who was being outraged by what before reluctantly opening the Word document she was working on. She scrolled through page upon page of writing, writing that she'd done over the last three months. She was amazed that she'd written so much already. When she got to the last sentence, she rested her fingers on the keyboard, ready to get typing. The cursor blinked accusingly, marking the passing of seconds and then minutes. Liv could hear the ticking of the reproduction grandfather clock in the hall too. She tapped her fingers lightly on the keyboard as if to wake them up but nothing happened. She looked blankly at the words on the page and nothing came to her. Usually she could pick up the thread of the last thing she'd been writing if she gave her mind enough time to warm up in the morning. But now it was as if her brain had been wiped clean. She would have been happy for her memories from yesterday evening to be wiped clean, like a character from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but not her work brain. She needed her work to keep any grip on her sanity. Work had structure, it had direction and logic. Most of all, it was under her control. She decided what she was going to write and the conclusions she was looking for. Without that anchor, she'd be cut adrift and she couldn't handle that. She needed something to cling onto while everything else seemed to be going to pot around her.

Liv gave up and went to the kitchen to make yet another cup of tea, hoping that the break would help to restart her brain. When she sat back down at her laptop, cup in hand, and found that she still had nothing to type, so she decided to give up all together for now. Maybe later on, once she'd been out and cleared her head a bit, she could come back and find the thread of her work. She also needed to get some different clothes. This dress she was wearing was lovely but slightly itchy and the big pants felt weird too, not only because they were her grandmother's. She was more of a bikini girl and Nonna's pants were massive as well as synthetic. She made a note to get some replacement toiletries too and grabbed her coat and bag in the hall and left.

It was bizarrely nostalgic walking down to the main road to catch a bus. Liv had often done this walk as a child and then a teenager. Her parents often dropped her off at Nonna's house before school as they needed to open up their café by 7am. Liv, her brother and sister would be given their second breakfast of the day by Nonna, who was already fully dressed and stirring the bubbling tomato sauce for this evening's pasta, before leaving again at 8am for school. Liv found that the streets were populated by a different crowd now. The kids were all at school and instead there were mums pushing Bugaboos and pulling along toddlers behind them. They were all going the same way as Liv but at an incredibly slow pace as the toddlers stopped to examine leaves and sticks on the ground or to be picked up by their mothers after falling over. It was the first time Liv had really noticed these people before. She lived in an area where there weren't many young families. Clifton was the most exclusive area in the city and the ridiculously high prices for the imposing Regency houses only made it possible for wealthy, usually older people to live there. As she sat at the bus stop on the main road, Liv watched the mothers with their prams and wondered if that would ever be her. She very much doubted it now. She'd briefly thought about children when she was in her last year of her degree. She and Matt had been together for a couple of years and they were planning to move into their own flat after they graduated. Liv imagined that this would lead to them eventually getting married and having children. She'd liked the idea of being married to her uni boyfriend. It made her feel like a solid person. When they were old and people asked how long they'd been together, she could proudly say they'd met when they were eighteen. It would be a badge of honour. Now, though, she wasn't sure if she'd ever grow old with anyone. Any new shred of hope she'd felt emerging in the last few months had been stamped on by Benedict. Just the thought of him made her eyes fill. She'd not only lost him but she'd lost hope, which was devastating.

The bus came and she got on, taking the front seat upstairs. While the bus made its long and halting journey away from town to the shopping centre, Liv went back and forth over every little detail of the last three months. At first she tried to hide the fact that she was crying silently, dabbing her eyes furtively with a tissue, but in the end she gave up, letting the tears fall uninterrupted. She'd become that person who didn't care anymore. She was crying on a bus, dressed in her grandmother's clothes. She'd become one of those women, the ones she saw from time to time and did her best to avoid.

Liv was vaguely aware of the phone buzzing intermittently in her bag beside her on the bus seat but ignored it. Suddenly she felt a hand on her shoulder.

"Your phone's ringing."

Liv turned awkwardly in her seat to find a middle-aged man behind her. He had a large shiny red face, not unlike a boiled ham, and his last remaining strands of hair had been slicked up into a sparse quiff over his equally shiny red scalp.

"It's been ringing and buzzing nonstop," he carried on, with obvious irritation. "It's bloody annoying. Would you either answer it or turn it off?"

Liv felt this wasn't a request but an instruction. "I'm sorry," she muttered apologetically, ferreting in her bag. "I'll turn it off." The phone screen was full of alerts – missed calls and texts. As she went to press the button to turn it off, one message caught her eye.

"This is Genevieve Cassell. I'd like to meet you to discuss something of interest to you."

Genevieve Cassell was possibly the last person on earth she wanted to see, other than Genevieve Cassell's bastard son, Liv thought angrily. She'd triggered this whole disaster with her money grabbing. Why would Liv want to see her, whatever it was she had to say? Liv switched the phone off and threw it back in her bag, indignant that the woman should dare to contact her.

The shopping mall was quiet as Liv made her way around Boots and then various clothes shops. It wasn't the most enjoyable shopping experience she'd ever had. She walked into her favourite shops, picked up the first things she saw, paid for them without trying them on and left. All the while, the text from Genevieve niggled at her. What could Genevieve have to tell her? If it was an apology for fucking up Benedict, then it was way too late for that. It wasn't likely to be an apology for fucking up their engagement either. The fact that they were due to get married had been the catalyst for Genevieve's sudden interest in her ex-husband's company. Liv being in the picture meant that Genevieve was no longer entitled to a share of the family fortune. The more she thought about it, the more annoyed she got. How dare Genevieve contact her. Hadn't she caused enough damage already? Liv knew that she was misdirecting her anger – she was angry with Benedict mainly, not his mother – but it felt good to feel something other than emptiness and sadness. The anger made her feel alive. It coursed through her, waking her up as it went. This was better than feeling like a hollow shell. The anger powered her determined strides through the mall. The anger burned away the fear that Genevieve had summoned up in Liv over the past couple of weeks. Liv had fretted endlessly about the effect the case was having on Benedict, that it was eating away at him and his hard-won sense of self. The woman was toxic.

Liv decided to forgo the bus ride back for an Uber instead. She switched on her phone again and saw that Genevieve had been in touch again. Liv's temper flared again at the cheek of this woman. Unable to resist, Liv opened the text and saw that it had two attachments. Her phone took a while to download them, giving Liv the chance to think better of it, but when the first attachment materialised slowly, loading millimetre by millimetre, Liv couldn't look away. It was a photo. She instantly recognised the top of Benedict's head and then his hair and his profile side-on on the left-hand side of the photo. Then her eyes moved to the right-hand side. It was the profile of another person, a woman, who was sitting facing Benedict. Liv knew instantly that it was Charlotte, this time with her usual blonde chignon. The pair of them were sitting at a table in a restaurant and Liv's eye was drawn to Benedict's hand. It was resting on Charlotte's forearm. He'd reached across the table to touch her arm, the way he did, or used to do, with Liv. More than anything else in the picture, it was this simple gesture that felled Liv. She couldn't take her eyes off it. It didn't help that Benedict was looking into Charlotte's eyes. Liv clicked away to find out what the second attachment was. Deep down she knew that whatever it was would hammer another nail into her heart but she downloaded it anyway. It was another picture, this time of Benedict and Charlotte climbing into the back of his car. Liv felt bitter bile rise in her mouth.

She quickly forwarded the text to India. A minute later the phone rang. It was India.

"Fucking hell, Liv! I mean, what the fuck?"

"I know."

"Where did you get these pictures?"  
"Genevieve texted them to me just now."

"Jesus, what a bitch! And Benedict. I can't believe he'd do this. Charlotte, yes, but him, no."

"Well, it proves that what I saw last night wasn't a one-off."

"Yeah, but that's no consolation, is it?"

"No," said Liv, sitting down on a bench. "No, it's not."

"Where are you?"

"At the Mall," Liv admitted, not caring that India now knew where she was. It hardly mattered now, did it? she thought glumly.

"Get your arse over here now. You shouldn't be by yourself."

Liv hesitated. "Will Jakob be there? I don't want to get in the way..."

"Don't be fucking ridiculous. You won't be in the way. You're my best friend."

"Ok, then. I'll get an Uber now."

India opened her front door the second the Uber pulled up outside her flat. India's mum Kate emerged behind her. The two of them converged on the pavement as Liv got out of the car.

"My dear girl," Kate said, pulling Liv into a hug. "What a catastrophic shitshow. Let's go inside." Kate steered Liv in through her front door and India followed.

"India showed me the pictures," said Kate as she settled Liv into a chair at her kitchen table and searched the cupboard for a bottle of brandy.

"Sorry," India mouthed across the table to Liv.

Liv shook her head. It didn't matter. In fact, she was glad to be pulled back into the fold for some much-needed love and alcohol.

"I must say, I am most surprised. Not by Charlotte, of course. My daughter has exhausted my stocks of surprise over recent months but I am most disappointed with Benedict."

"Understatement!" India exclaimed.

"Quite," said Kate, placing two tumblers and a bottle of rhubarb gin on the table. "I'm afraid it's flavoured." Kate peered at the label. "Can't find simple gin anymore or vodka for that matter. It's rose petal this and elderflower that."

"Mum, I'm sure Liv has more urgent things to worry about than flavoured gin."

"Yes, Liv, I apologise." She reached across the table to pat Liv's hand. "How are you, my dear?"

"Mum!" India snapped. "How do you think she is?"

Kate gave India a disapproving look. "I think we should let Liv tell us how she is."

Liv took a deep in breath. "I'm not sure. I've gone from feeling totally numb this morning to totally enraged. Those photos..." She trailed off.

"Indeed, those photos," said Kate. "Not the finest hour for either of them."

"No," said Liv, quietly. "I just feel like such an idiot."

Kate and India both rushed in to comfort her.

"You're not an idiot!" India said hotly.

"No, of course not," said Kate.

"But how did I not see this coming?" Liv asked.

Kate patted Liv's hand again. "You are not at fault. You were not to know that Benedict was capable of such things. We didn't know he was either and we've known him since he was a child. People are very adept at keeping their dark sides hidden."

"If it helps," said India. "Jakob doesn't think Benedict did anything wrong."

"I'm not sure that's very helpful at all," Kate said sharply to her daughter. "I appreciate that they are friends but the pictures tell an altogether different story."

"Has Jakob seen the pictures?" said Liv.

"Yeah, he has," said India. "Sorry. He was there when I got your text,"

"God, I feel so embarrassed," Liv wailed, putting her head in her hands. "Everyone knows what an idiot I am."

"Liv, you're not the idiot," said India. "If anyone is, it's Benedict."

"Yes," said Kate. "He most certainly is. Have you spoken to him?"  
Liv shook her head.

"I don't blame you," said Kate, topping up Liv's glass. "Genevieve Cassel has a lot to answer for. Do you know why she wants to speak to you?"

Liv shook her head again. "She obviously wanted me to see the pictures but beyond that I don't know."

"I didn't like that woman back when the children were small and I most certainly do not like her now," said Kate. "Egocentric and vain. It would seem that time has not mellowed her."

"Are you going to meet her?" asked India.

"I don't know. I kind of want to and kind of don't. Part of me wants to run away and hide and the other part wants to scream and shout at her."

Kate pondered for a second. "Well, it's not a bad idea. It could give you closure."

"Really?" India asked her mother. "Liv should meet her?"

"Well, it would give Liv a chance to vent her feelings and say all the things she wants to say."

Liv nodded. "I just don't want to be ambushed by her, the way I was by Charlotte."  
"If you really do want to talk to her, then why don't I come with you?" India offered. "You've got back up then."

"Are you sure you're in a fit state, India?" her mother asked.

"Oh for God's sake, Mum, I'm fine."

"You've still got morning sickness," said Kate. "And the doctor said you were not to stress yourself. I would hardly call waiting to pounce on Genevieve Cassel the equivalent of a quiet lie down."

"No," said Liv, firmly. "I agree. I can go alone."

"Why not have her come here?" said Kate. "We can hover in the background and step in the second it all gets too much."

"Yeah," said India. "We could have a safe word."

"I suppose so," said Liv carefully. "I'll think about it. Thanks, though."

"It is a serious offer, Liv," said Kate. "Now, India says you are being mysterious about your accommodation. I insist you come and stay here. I can imagine that you don't want to stay with the lovebirds downstairs." India made a face. "However, it is just Tim and myself here. You can stay in your old room upstairs. You'll have the whole top floor to yourself."

"That's very kind of you Kate," Liv began.

"Nonsense, it's not kindness," said Kate. "You are not a stranger; you are family and this is your home. I will be offended if you don't come and stay."

"You sound suspiciously like my mum," laughed Liv. "Are you sure you're not Italian?"

"Alas, I am not," Kate sighed. "I used to long be Monica Vitti, voluptuous and wet through in the Trevi Fountains. Or Sophia Loren. Your father had quite a thing for her when we met. It's more Monica Bellucci these days. Your father does have a penchant for a raven-haired beauty with a serious rack. Unfortunately, after I breastfed you three, I couldn't compete. My breasts are now Spaniel's ears. Still, your father can fantasize."

"Mum!" India wailed, wanting to be spared from more information about her parents' sexual preferences.

"India, you're such a prude," Kate said. "And so are your brother and sister."

"No we're not!" said India hotly. "We just don't want to hear about you and dad shagging. There's a big difference between not wanting to talk about sex and not hear about your parents having sex. Urgh. God, you're making me feel sick again."

"Putting that to one side," said Kate smoothly, "I'd like you to take these."

She handed Liv a set of house keys from her pocket. "Shall I expect you for dinner?"

Liv smiled. Kate had a sneaky way of getting you to do something without forcing you. "Can I think about it?"

"Of course. The offer is genuine as will be my disappointment if you're not here for dinner. I put some lamb shanks in the Aga this morning. The meat will be falling off the bone at about 8pm."
Chapter Twenty-Nine

When Liv opened the front door at number 33, the offer of dinner and a bed at Kate and Tim's suddenly seemed very attractive. Their house was always full of life whereas this house was most definitely devoid of any life whatsoever. She'd been struck by this when she'd shown the estate agent round. What she'd taken for granted as normal as a kid, she'd now seen through the eyes of a stranger. The little shrine to dead relatives in the corner by the front door, with its flickering fake candles and plastic flowers. The weird patterned tiles on the ceiling. The brown gas fires hanging on the walls. The cheap furniture that Nonna had coveted as if it were from the court of Louis XIV.

"Deceased estate, is it?" the estate agent had said, between taking photos and pointing his little laser measuring device at the walls.

It wasn't, she explained, but she could see why he might have thought that. The whole house was a shrine to the past. Nonna had done her best to keep everything exactly as it was when Nonno was still alive, when she ruled the roost and didn't have to rely on her children to look after her. Before daughters-in-law dared to answer back and grandchildren brought their gay boyfriends to family weddings. When food was better, people were happier and young people had better manners. The thought of sitting among all these fake flowers, photos of dead relatives and passata that had gone out of date in 1987 made Liv feel breathless. She felt suffocated by the dry, dusty air. She didn't want to be here. She wanted to be with people who would comfort her and make her feel alive. Number 33 made her imagine a future of ready meals for one and using the TV guide to plan her days. The idea of eating microwaved shepherd's pie with soap operas for company made Liv turn straight around and walk right back out of the front

Liv arrived at Kate and Tim's just as the lamb shanks were being dished up.

"Ah, Liv," said Tim, opening the tall front door, "perfect timing."

He closed the door behind her and led her down to the kitchen.

"Wonderful," beamed Kate, when she saw Liv. "Come and eat and then you can settle yourself upstairs afterwards. Do give the girl a glass of wine."

Tim took another glass from the cupboard and gave it a careful wipe with a tea towel. It was his ritual. He held the glass up to the light and squinted to check for spots of dirt. He gave it another quick wipe and then set it down in front of the third setting at the table. Liv smiled. Kate has been so sure that Liv would come to stay that she'd already set a place for her.

The food, as usual, was good and Kate and Tim chatted about all sorts of things as they ate. They knew instinctively that Liv was too distracted by her own thoughts to join in the conversation so they left her in peace, to sit and enjoy being surrounded by people. As they discussed what they were doing for Christmas, Liv realised that in many ways they'd been better parents to her than her own. They were infinitely more relaxed about things than her own mum and dad, who used the moral code from a 17th century Italian village as their benchmark for their children's behaviour. Or rather their daughters' behaviour. Bruno, the boy, was left to do more or less what he wanted. Boys had been dealt the winning hand back in the old country. They were indulged and encouraged regardless of whether they deserved it. Liv had often been stung by her parents' praise for Bruno, who was, by his own admission, no Stephen Hawking. An outsider, seeing his parents' reaction to his school reports, would have thought Bruno was about to bash out his own masterpiece about space and time. He got extra pocket money for getting Cs. Liv's straight As didn't generate half as much excitement or pocket money. From time to time Liv would complain to her parents but, as her older sister Lucia told her, it wasn't worth it. Bruno was a boy and girls just weren't treated as equals. Liv bristled at this and was relieved to see that Kate and Tim never treated their daughters Charlotte and India any differently to their son Rufus. When Liv moved in with them as a teenager, she was treated the same too. While Rufus was expected to pick up after himself just like the girls, Bruno could lounge in front of the TV safe in the knowledge that his sisters were cleaning his room upstairs. Bruno also had the freedom to come and go as he liked, hardly bothering to give his parents any information about where he was going or the time he was planning to come home. They didn't press him for the information either unlike Liv, who had to provide a full breakdown of her itinerary – where she was going, who she was going with and how she was getting there and back. There could be no boys and no girls they thought might be a bit too racy. Liv watched her older sister go through the whole process before her and learned that the only way was to lie. Lucia, who loved boys and the racy girls, lied about it all and as long as she was careful, she got away with it.

Liv was surprised to find that India and Rufus didn't have to lie to Kate and Tim. In fact, far from lying, India and Rufus were positively encouraged to go out and have sex and get drunk.

"We grew up with frightfully repressed parents," Kate would say. "While everyone was on the pill and out all night, I spent my teenage years at dull dances in the local village hall. My father would arrive at 9.30 sharp to pick me up and if I wasn't outside by 9.35, he would come in and find me. Can you imagine the shame?"

Liv could, very easily. Her parents weren't that different to Kate's, though Kate's had been a generation older. Liv's had kept the old traditions alive but Kate and Tim were determined to trash them all. So Liv suddenly found herself living in a house where the adults wanted to hear every last detail of a wild night out. Where Sunday mornings weren't set aside for atoning your sins in church but for sitting round the kitchen table dissecting your latest misdemeanours. At first Liv would sit and listen while India told them who she'd snogged, what she'd drunk and where she'd thrown up. Eventually, she started to join in too. Her parents would have been appalled but Kate and Tim were delighted. Liv found it liberating after the years of pretending to be a good girl to keep her parents happy. She didn't want to be good and she most definitely wanted the same opportunities as India and Rufus had. If she hadn't have lived with Kate and Tim, Liv knew that she'd have followed her sister, moving to Italy with her parents and marrying her first boyfriend. Instead of sitting at this table now, Liv would probably be sitting round her parents' table, surrounded by her own kids and wondering what she'd done with her life.

"You look lost in thought," Tim said, as he cleared away their plates and loaded them into the dishwasher.

"I suppose I am," Liv admitted, getting up to help him.

"I'm not surprised, you've got a lot to think about," Kate added.

"I know I'm not supposed to say anything," Tim began. Kate shot him a stern look. "Nevertheless, I want to say that I am shocked and hugely disappointed with Benedict. It seems so totally out of character. He's never been anything but honest and honourable, which is more than can be said for our daughter."

"Yes," said Kate, "the less said about Charlotte, the better. Your mother has a lot to answer for."

It was true that Granny Campbell-Blythe was not someone to be messed with. She had all the warmth of a block of ice and none of the charisma. And Charlotte was a chip off this particular old block.

"Luckily the rest of them have dodged her genes," Tim mused, unruffled by Kate's criticism of his mother. "As for Benedict, when I see him, you can be sure that I will give him the hiding he deserves."

Liv smiled. Tim was unlikely to give anyone a hiding. He was tall but slight, a typical academic who wore crumpled linen suits in summer, loved watching cricket but never did anything more strenuous than uncorking bottles of wine and even then he struggled sometimes. The thought of him trying to take on Benedict made her think of that scene in Fawlty Towers where gawky Basil Fawlty whips his broken-down car with a branch.

"It is puzzling," said Kate, slicing up a homemade orange polenta cake and putting a generous dollop of mascarpone on each plate. "It seems so un-Benedict. Have you spoken to him?"

Liv took the plate Kate offered her and shook her head.

Tim poured them all a glass of a delicious dessert wine and they ate and drank in silence for a few minutes.

"Are you planning to speak to Genevieve?" Kate asked carefully.

"I don't know," said Liv, putting her cake fork down on the edge of her plate. "I want to do what you said – draw a line under it all – but I'm also curious about what she wants to say to me."

"It is unlikely to be anything good," said Kate. "My experience of Genevieve tells me that whatever she has to say will be motivated by selfishness and vanity."

Tim nodded. "Bloody awful woman. Always stalking around Clifton like a French gazelle in ridiculously high heels. Thought she was Brigitte sodding Bardot. Can't abide her."

"Yes!" exclaimed Kate, warming to the subject. "The nanny would be in front pushing the pram and Genevieve would totter behind them wrapped in a coat with sunglasses on."

"Sounds like she's not changed much," said Tim, taking his last forkful of cake and dredging it through the mascarpone.

"In more ways than one, according to India," Kate said. "Apparently her face is both rigid with Botox and padded with fillers. "

"Dear God," Tim choked. "She must look like Madonna."

Liv shot Tim a surprised look.

"I pick India's gossip mags out of the recycling," he explained. "Quite educational. Madonna's latest face is quite grotesque, I must say. It looks more and more like her bosom – cheeks as inflated as her breasts."

Any more conversation about Madame X was halted by India clattering in through the back door. She sat down at the table, dragged the plate with the cake on over to her and hacked off a great big wedge.

"Good evening to you too," said Kate. "Let me get you a plate." She carefully slid the brutally massacred slice of cake onto a plate and handed it to India with a small cake fork.

"What were you saying about breasts?" India asked between mouthfuls.

"Madonna, darling, face like a terrible oversized implant," said Tim, nonchalantly sipping his dessert wine.

"Why are you talking about Madonna?" asked India.

"We were talking about Genevieve and the conversation naturally turned to plastic surgery," explained Kate.

"Ah," said India, munching away. "Bloody good cake, Mum."

The look on Kate's face was at once proud that her daughter liked the cake and disgusted that her daughter could eat something so delicate and fragrant with such a lack of grace.

"To what do we owe your presence?" Tim asked. "Do you need money or are you here to book babysitting duties?"

"Very funny, Dad," said India. "I came to see Liv actually. Sorry, Liv, the only thing that stops me feeling sick is eating." She put down her fork. "Phew, that's better. Jakob just rang me. He had a meeting with Benedict this evening at the restaurant. Apparently, Benedict's in a terrible state."

Liv winced. She didn't want to hear that. Much as she was in a state too, she didn't want to know that she was hurting him.

"Sorry," India apologized. "Too much information. But here's the thing. Remember I said that Jakob didn't believe that Benedict was having an affair with Charlotte?"

"Darling, I'm not sure we should be dredging this up again..." Kate said.

India cut her off. "Wait till you hear this. Jakob knows for definite that the whole thing is fake. The hotel room scenario, the photos, everything. Genevieve and Charlotte cooked it all up between them."

"Are you sure?" said Kate. "If you aren't, I suggest you stop right there."

Liv wasn't convinced. "Jakob would say that. They're friends."

"But it's true!" India insisted. "Remember I saw them when they were having lunch?"

Liv nodded.

"Well, they were there for ages and the waiter who served them overheard bits of what they were saying."

"What did they say?" asked Kate.

"This calls for something stronger," said Tim, getting up and going to the drinks cupboard. "Brandy perhaps."

"Could you get me some crisps, Dad?" India called out.

"Let's stayed focused," said Kate. "This must be agony for Liv so do not make her wait around for you two to get booze and snacks." She sniffed disdainfully.

"Sorry," said Tim, returning to the table. He threw a packet of crisps across to India and poured out three glasses of brandy. "Continue."

"Right," said India, munching on her crisps. "They were talking about getting Benedict to come to Charlotte's hotel room for a meeting and then arranging for you to turn up. Don't you see? They wanted you to get the wrong idea."

"That doesn't explain why they looked like they'd been shagging," said Liv hotly.

"That was all bollocks too. Genevieve said Charlotte should whack the heating up in her room so that he would look all flushed and take his jacket off."

"What about Charlotte being half undressed?" asked Liv, feeling unsure now about what she'd seen.

"Charlotte said she'd make sure you got the wrong idea. She was planning to go lingerie shopping and find something hot to wear under her dress. "

"And the photographs of Benedict and Charlotte having lunch?" asked Kate.

"They were taken by Genevieve," India continued, through another mouthful of crisps.

"I'm sure Hercules Poirot doesn't have to put up with watching his informants churning food round their mouths," Kate sniffed. "Manners, darling. You're pregnant not destitute."

"But Benedict was touching Charlotte's arm," said Liv. That image had been seared into her brain. Benedict's hand on Charlotte's forearm, exactly the way he reached out to touch her own arm when they were eating.

"Well, when Charlotte asked to meet Benedict, he suggested going for lunch at Jakob's restaurant. Jakob made sure that the same waiter served them again. Apparently, Charlotte and Benedict started to have a bit of an argument and Charlotte started to get really loud. Everyone turned to look and Benedict put his hand on her to make her quieten down. It wasn't how it looks in the picture. He was trying to get her to shut up not shag her."

"How do you know all this?" asked Kate, impressed that her daughter had all the answers.

"Staff gossip," said India. "The waiting staff know everything that's going on at their table. Have you got any more crisps, Dad?" She balled up the empty packet and licked her fingers.

Tim sighed and got up to find some more.

India turned to Liv. "The really important bit is that they were planning to get you out of the picture so that Genevieve would get her money and Charlotte could have a crack at Benedict."

"That sounds a bit far-fetched," said Liv.

"It's true!" said India. "Charlotte's manoeuvred herself into position. Now that she hasn't got a job and she's fucked everything up with Miles, she's trying to crowbar her way into Benedict's life. She's always had a thing for him and he's even more attractive now that he's totally minted."

"She has always harboured feelings for him as much as anyone that cold hearted can have feelings for someone," Kate mused.

Liv felt the tiny seeds of hope fighting to push through the hard shell she'd put around Benedict in her mind. Was it possible that he hadn't been having an affair with Charlotte? If he wasn't, then why didn't he tell her that he was meeting Charlotte? "I don't understand why he kept his meetings with Charlotte secret. Surely that only points to one thing?"

"Not necessarily," said Tim. "Perhaps he wanted to bring this whole ridiculous saga to a quick end. Perhaps he wanted to make her an out of court offer."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, digesting what they'd just learnt. Tim was the first to speak.

"So far this has all been second-hand or even third-hand information, has it not?" he asked.

They nodded.

"In order to ascertain whether this information is correct, we need to go back to the source," he continued. "Now, Liv, I know this may not be what you want to do but I suggest meeting Genevieve. Speak to her directly and then you will have the answers."

Liv winced. It wasn't what she wanted to do at all but then again, she wouldn't get any clarity or closure if everything was left hanging. It was all unanswered questions and she knew that those questions would go round and round in her head.

"Why not ask her to come here?" said Kate, her eyes alight with beginnings of a plan. "We can make ourselves scarce in the kitchen and then you can call us if you need us."

"Yeah!" said India. "Shout out the safe word and we'll rush in. What should it be? Botox? Filler?"

"Don't be frivolous, darling," said Kate. "This is a serious matter."

They all looked at Liv, waiting to see what she'd decide to do. Liv inhaled deeply. "Ok," she said finally. "I'll do it. I'll text her now and see what she says."

They watched as Liv tapped out a message. She put the phone down on the table and they waited. Moments later the phone pinged.

"That didn't take long," said Tim, topping up their glasses.

"What does it say?" India asked.

"She wants to know when and where," Liv read.

"I suggest you do it now," said Kate. "Strike while the iron is hot. Then tonight you can go to bed in full possession of the facts rather than tossing and turning and endlessly wondering."

Kate knew her well. She would toss and turn and analyse everything and generally drive herself mad. "Ok," said Liv, typing out a quick response suggesting they meet her at 8.30pm.

"Right," said Kate, standing up. "We have half an hour to draw up a list of questions before she comes. Tim, grab some paper and a pen and we'll start."

At 8.25 Liv looked at her watch. She needed to pee, partly from nerves. She ducked out to the downstairs toilet while India, Tim and Kate continued to throw out questions for Genevieve. When Liv came back, she found them crowded round the table unpacking something from a box. Tim was reading some instructions, Kate was plugging in cables and India was fiddling with a white handset.

"It's Mum's idea," said India in explanation.

"Yes," said Kate, straightening up with some effort. "I somewhat jumped the gun with my baby shopping. I ordered this from John Lewis so that we can keep an eye on the baby when I'm on granny duty."

"Honestly, Mum, I'm 12 weeks pregnant!" India said.

"I know, darling, but I wasn't planning to tell you for a while. Then I realised we could perhaps open it now and keep an eye on proceedings this evening. Is it working yet?"

"No," said India. "You try, Dad."

Tim took the handset and fiddled with it. "Take this bit and put it on the mantlepiece in the living room, Liv. Make sure the camera is pointing at the sofa."

Liv took the little gadget and ran to position it into the living room. Then she ran back into the kitchen. "Can I have another brandy?" she asked.

"Of course," said Tim, pouring her a large one. "Here are the questions. We've possibly overdone it a bit but it's best to be thorough."

Liv looked at the A4 sheet of paper. There were 35 questions on it. It was all a bit much to take in.

"Focus on what she wants exactly, how she plans to get it and what she expects you to do and you'll be fine," said Kate.

"Don't worry about remembering her answer," says India. "I'll write it all down."

The doorbell rang before Liv had finished scanning the sheet. She swallowed down the rest of the brandy. "Wish me luck," she gasped, the alcohol stinging the back of her throat.

"We'll be in here so don't worry," said Kate. "Just give us the nod and we'll come and rescue you. Now go!"

Liv put the glass on the table and left the kitchen, pulling the door closed behind her. She walked down the corridor to the front door and paused before she opened it. She looked down at the sheet of questions again and then folded the paper in half and stuffed it in her pocket. Taking a deep breath, she swung open the heavy door.

The woman on the doorstep was smaller than Liv expected. She was wearing a pair of towering heels but Liv was still taller than her. The woman's blonde hair was swept up into a high chignon and most of her face was obscured by an enormous pair of sunglasses. Liv stifled a smile. It was 8.30pm in late November in Northern Europe. There wasn't exactly much call for sun protection.

"Genevieve?" Liv asked.

"Madame Cassel," said Genevieve, in a strange accent that spanned Paris and New York. She swept past Liv into the hallway. She gazed at the wide stone staircase, the chandelier, the high ceilings and sniffed. "English architecture. So provincial." She continued, uninvited, to the living room.

Liv shut the door and followed her. Genevieve was standing in the middle of the room, assessing every detail. It was an impressive space by any standards. Huge casement windows stretching the full height of the cavernous room, another chandelier and beautiful parquet flooring.

"So predictable," she said disdainfully. "English people decorate as badly as they dress."

Liv heard a muffled shout followed by a loud 'shush' from the hallway. No doubt Kate giving Genevieve a piece of her mind. Genevieve didn't seem to notice.

"Would you like to sit down?" asked Liv.

Genevieve looked at the sofa and then the armchair before answering. She chose the armchair, brushing the seat contemptuously before she sat down though there was nothing on it. She sat straight backed with her legs swept to one side and tucked away like a royal. She looked so French, thought Liv. Genevieve was wearing a dark checked coat over her shoulders with a fitted black dress underneath. She slipped off her sunglasses and put them on the small table next to her along with her clutch bag. The woman was like a walking Chanel advert.

"Let us not waste time," said Genevieve briskly. "You asked to see me."

Liv could see Genevieve assessing her. The look on her face suggested that Liv was not making the grade, whatever that grade was. Liv tried to collect herself. "Yes, I did. I wanted to ask you about the photos you sent me."

Genevieve leaned forward and narrowed her eyes. "You're fairly attractive I suppose but not beautiful," she said, appraising Liv's face. "You lack symmetry."

Liv hadn't warmed to Genevieve in the last few days and this meeting was doing nothing to change that. She decided to overlook Genevieve's crashing rudeness and focus on extracting as much information out of the terrible woman as she could.

"Why did you send them to me?"

Genevieve looked at her hands, twisting the enormous jewelled ring on her wedding finger. "I thought they would be interesting to you."

"'Interesting?'" That wasn't exactly the word Liv would choose.

"Yes, I thought you might want to know what my son was up to."

"I see," said Liv, not really seeing at all. Genevieve said 'my son' so smoothly that you'd never guess that she hadn't seen her son in more than twenty years and in fact, her son wanted nothing to do with her. "And what do you think he's up to?"

"Is it not clear? Are you stupid?"

Liv was so tempted to shoot back something along the lines of having a first-class degree, a PhD and a career as an academic but she bit it back. "So, you want me to see Charlotte and Benedict together."

"Of course. They make a beautiful couple, non? Charlotte has perfect symmetry, by the way. And she is very accomplished."

Liv struggled to remain outwardly calm. Charlotte was undoubtedly pretty and smart but she was a deeply horrible, vindictive person. Having the ideal distance between her pale blue eyes and even white teeth didn't make her any less evil.

"They would produce beautiful babies."

"Er, that might be problematic," said Liv. Charlotte clearly hadn't told Genevieve about the small matter of making Benedict infertile. Everyone was obviously playing fast and loose with the truth to get what they wanted. Liv experienced a little thrill of having some information that Genevieve wasn't privy to. "Charlotte must have forgotten to mention it but she gave Benedict a sexually transmitted disease when they were teenagers. He can't have children now as a result." Liv waited for a reaction but Genevieve's face gave nothing away. Liv wasn't sure whether this was due to her amazing poker face or the vast amounts of Botox.

"Nonetheless" Genevieve sniffed, smoothing her dress over her knees, "they make a perfect match."

"You might have noticed that Benedict has other plans. We are engaged."

"Engaged but not married. There is still time for things to change. I imagine those photos might change them."

Liv couldn't believe quite how brazen Genevieve was. She wasn't in the least embarrassed about her plan to get Liv out of the way. Genevieve had done all the leg work and now Liv was expected to suck up the evidence and bow out like a good girl. Well, screw being a good girl, thought Liv. She wanted to be as rude and brutal as Genevieve but knew she had to keep a lid on her anger until she had all the information she wanted. She swallowed down her anger and ploughed on. "That depends."

"On what?"

"I don't know," said Liv. "I thought you might tell me."

"I don't need to tell you anything," Genevieve snapped, clearly beginning to lose patience with Liv. "It is all there in the photos. Benedict does not want you. He wants Charlotte. Your engagement is a sham and the quicker you realise that the better."

"You seem to know a lot about Benedict despite not having seen him since he was four."

"Well, I know what I see and I see desire between Benedict and Charlotte." Genevieve readjusted her coat round her shoulders.

"I think you mistake desire for pound signs. If I marry Benedict you stand to lose out financially. And Charlotte doesn't get her man."

"Ah," said Genevieve, leaning forward, "finally you mention money. I can offer you more than you would know what do to with."

"I don't want your money!" Liv bristled.

"Benedict is going to leave you regardless. You will go back to your pathetic little life, living in someone's basement and scurrying off to your little research job. Why don't save yourself the heartache and break up with him first? Leave with some dignity and some money."

"Money from you?" Liv quivered with anger.

"If you decide to break off your engagement I will give you 10 percent of the money I stand to gain from the company."

"And if I say no?"

"You don't want to say no."

"I don't want the money."

"You say that now. You're all" - she waved her hand around airily at Liv – "moral and upright but trust me, you shouldn't refuse me. When you are older and no one wants you anymore, you will be grateful that you have money."

"I think you're talking about yourself, not me."

Genevieve paused before answering, as if weighing up whether she should say the next thing or not. She leaned forward. "If you insist on marrying Benedict, I could make things difficult for you."

Liv was genuinely intrigued. What could Genevieve possibly do? "Difficult?"

"Yes", said Genevieve smugly. "Let's just say that if you marry Benedict, the journalists writing about the wedding will be very well informed."

"What do you mean?"

"They will all know about your past."

Liv sucked in a sharp breath of surprise. Had she understood Genevieve's threat? Was she really saying what Liv thought she was saying?

"People will write about your wedding. Benedict is rich and eligible. It will be a classic 'wealthy bachelor gets married' story. You'll probably be approached by magazines for exclusive pictures."

Liv said nothing. Her skin was prickling with fear and her heart was racing. She gripped the arm of the sofa to steady herself.

"They will want to find out all about you, the woman who has bagged such a prize, and I will make sure that they know all the things you want to hide."

Liv couldn't believe what Genevieve was saying. Genevieve was threatening to tell anyone who wanted to know about what had happened with Matt. Liv reeled from this realisation. People flicking through Hello! would be able to read about her. It was bad enough that her family, friends and colleagues knew about it but to have your photo and potted history published for public consumption was hideous.

"But all that stuff is already in the public domain," Liv said, trying to grab back some control in the conversation.

"We all know that journalists are lazy," said Genevieve breezily. "They don't bother to do the hard detective work anymore, especially if someone can offer them everything they need to know on a plate."

Liv wasn't sure what to say in response. She didn't care about the list of questions anymore and she really didn't want to hear what else Genevieve had to say. She got up from the sofa. "I think you should leave now," she said flatly.

"I think you should consider what I've said very carefully," said Genevieve, rising slowly from the armchair. Slowly and deliberately, as if she was choosing to leave rather than being asked to, she picked up her sunglasses from the side table and slipped them into her clutch bag. "I can make the difference between a very comfortable future and a very uncomfortable one." She pulled her coat around her shoulders again. "You will see that my son is not worth it."

"How dare you talk about your son like that?" Liv spat, suddenly unable to contain herself any longer. She still wasn't entirely clear what was happening between Charlotte and Benedict but she felt the need to defend him. "You know nothing about him!"

"Neither do you, it would seem. You knew nothing about his affair."

"And you seem to be confusing your own life with his. Not everyone has an affair. And not everyone leaves their children behind and choses never to see them again until they need money."

"You're so naïve," Genevieve said dismissively. "With your bourgeois principles. You understand nothing about life."

"I understand plenty. I understand what kind of person your son is. He is kind, hardworking, thoughtful and generous. He's nothing like you..."

Genevieve was poised to answer when they were both disturbed by a noise in the hallway outside. The door was thrown open and Benedict burst in.

"Don't waste your breath on her, Liv," he said, his eyes burning with anger. "She's not worth it."

"Ah, Benedict," said Genevieve, seemingly unruffled by his sudden appearance. "What a pleasant surprise."  
Benedict snorted. "I can't say the same about you. Time to leave." He pointed to the door.

Liv looked at him. His face was hard. His eyes were dark and narrowed. It would take a brave person to mess with him in this state.

Genevieve didn't flinch. She tucked her clutch bag under her arm and turned to Benedict. "You're just like your father. So weak and sanctimonious."

"Don't you talk about Dad like that!" Benedict roared. "He was..."

Liv placed a hand on his arm. "Don't," she said quietly. "She's not worth it."

Genevieve walked over to the door. She turned back to them. She looked them up and down with unconcealed contempt. "I can see you deserve each other."

"You can see yourself out," said Benedict curtly.

They stood and listened to her heels clicking across the hall and then the loud slam of the front door.

"Do you think she's right?" said Liv, looking up at Benedict.

"About what?" he said, looking down at her, his face softening.

"That we were made for each other."

"I do. Do you?"

She stepped closer. "I think I do."

He took her hands and then pulled her to him. She give in, laying her head against his chest as he wrapped his arms round her. Liv felt herself relax into him. He felt like home.

"Please don't leave me again," he said quietly.

"I won't," she said, throwing her arms around his waist and hugging him tight.

Their reunion was interrupted by the sound of feet rushing up the hallway.

"Jesus, what a fucking drama!" said India, the first one into the room. "Your mum is pure evil."

"India," Kate scolded.

"No, she's right," said Benedict. "My mother is evil."

Tim and Jakob followed them into the room.

"That was quite a confrontation," said Tim. "Liv, I must say, you retained your composure magnificently."

"Yeah, Liv," said India, throwing herself down on the sofa. "I would have totally decked her."

"And I would have too," said Kate. "In fact, I had to be restrained from charging in here. Luckily Jakob arrived in time otherwise there would be Botox and Chanel all over our provincial rugs." Kate settled herself into the sofa next to India. Jakob came over and sat on the other side.

"Man, that was intense," said Jakob. "I didn't hear all of it but what I heard was bad enough."

"I think we could all do with a drink now, except India of course," said Tim. He walked over to his large drinks cabinet.

"Don't forget the crisps, Dad," India called after him. She turned to Benedict and Liv who were still standing by the fireplace. "I hope you don't mind but I got the whole thing on my phone. I thought you might need it."

"Thanks," said Benedict. "I think we have enough to throw out her case now."

"Now tell me, Benedict," said Kate. "Was there any truth in anything she said? I'm assuming there isn't a shred."

"Well, she is my mother but I think that's about it, I think," said Benedict.

"What about the photos?" said India, knowing that Liv would feel too awkward to ask such a direct question.

"Charlotte asked me to meet her to discuss an out of court settlement. I wanted to settle so I went along. Once I got there, she threatened me with feeding the stuff about Liv to every hack she knew. She knows a lot from her time with Miles. All those terrible society journalists and diarists." He turned to Liv. "I couldn't let her do that."

"Indeed," said Kate. "And the photos?"

"I grabbed her arm to stop her going. I said I wouldn't be threatened like that and she got up to leave. I realised that she might follow through on her threat if I told her to fuck off outright."

"And the hotel?" Liv asked, feeling emboldened by the growing sense that Benedict was trying to protect her, not cheat on her.

"After that lunch, she contacted me to say she'd drawn up a deal. I wanted to meet her at my offices the next day but she said no, she wasn't feeling well so I should go to her hotel. I really didn't want to go as I didn't trust her so I asked Jakob to come with me."

They all turned to look at Jakob. "Yep, he did," Jakob nodded. "I went with him as back-up."

"You didn't tell me!" said India hotly.

"Because I knew you wouldn't be able to keep it a secret from Liv. Benedict wanted to get it all sorted out first so that Liv wouldn't have to know anything about it."

Liv squeezed Benedict's hand.

"Wise decision," said Tim, coming back into the room with an assortment of bottles, glasses and crisps on a tray. "Never could keep a secret. Even when she was little. Drove her brother and sister mad." He placed the tray on the coffee table in front of them and threw India a packet of crisps.

"Why was Charlotte all flushed and half naked when I got there, then?" asked Liv.

"She claimed to have the flu so the heating in her room was insane," said Benedict.

"Yeah, it was roasting hot in there," Jakob chimed in. "It was suffocating."

"So when I knocked on the door...?" Liv asked.

"She must have loosened her dress at the door because she definitely wasn't dressed like that with us," said Benedict.

Liv looked at Jakob for confirmation. India turned to look at him too.

"You better not have seen my sister in suspenders and a corset!" India shrieked.

"No, of course I didn't," said Jakob. "I wouldn't have looked anyway." He kissed India on the cheek.

Liv turned to look at Benedict and raised her eyebrows. Had he seen Charlotte in all her glory?

"I didn't look either," Benedict said. "I ran after you anyway, remember? I wasn't exactly concentrating on her."

It was true that he had rushed after Liv. He'd run down all the stairs while she was in the lift and had caught up with her out on the street.

"What good boys!" Kate exclaimed. "I can't say that Tim would avert his eyes in such a situation."

"Mum," India wailed, "you're talking about Charlotte. His daughter?"

"Oh, my God, so I am. I do apologise. And I also sincerely apologise for the terrible pain she has caused everyone here." Kate looked genuinely contrite on Charlotte's behalf.

"It's not your fault, Kate," said Liv. "You don't have to say sorry."

"But I do," Kate persisted. "This year Charlotte has caused nothing but trouble for you and Benedict. I don't understand her motivations and frankly, I don't care what they are as her actions have been abominable."

"Please don't blame yourself," said Benedict. "No one knows what will happen when genes are thrown together."

"Yeah, Mum, look at Genevieve and Benedict," said India. "They're not exactly similar, are they?"

Kate smiled at India. "Thank you, darling."

"Dad and Charlotte, though," said India, giggling. "Two peas in a pod!"  
Tim threw another packet of crisps at India's head. "Cheek," he said. "That's the last time I'm your snack slave. And Kate is right. If there's anything we can do to repair the damage, please let us know."

"We will," Benedict promised.

"I am fully expecting two weddings and a birth in the next few months," said Kate, looking directly at Benedict and then Liv. "I do not want my eldest daughter's actions to have prevented this. I have bought hats. They will be used."

Benedict put his arm round Liv's shoulder. "I think we're ok?" he said to Liv. It was a question rather than a statement. He looked at Liv hopefully.

Liv clasped the hand that was curled around her shoulder. "I think we are."
Chapter Thirty

The stall holders were setting up when they arrived. It was only just getting light and Liv could see them unloading boxes from the big transit vans that were blocking the pedestrianised street. The battered old vans looked out of place amongst the grand honey-toned buildings, with their columns, arches and porticos, and the ornate Victorian streetlights. The vendors, wrapped up against the December cold in their gloves and hats, briefly turned to look at the black car coming to a stop at the corner and then got back to the business of laying out their art prints and vintage bric-à-brac on their stalls.

"We're really early," said Liv, looking up at the large Art Deco clock on the nearby hotel.

"I know," said Benedict.

"The others won't be here till 9."

"Let's get a coffee, then," he said.

His driver slipped out of the car and came round to open the door for Liv. She did her best to get out elegantly. It wasn't easy in her new boots. They were much higher than she was used to. Trevor offered her his hand and she took it, grateful to have something to hang onto while she found her balance on the pavement. Liv pulled her coat around her, tightening the belt on the new navy Stella McCartney coat Benedict had bought her for the occasion. She dreaded to think how much it had cost but she was thankful that she had it on now. The thick wool trench coat was perfect in this cold drizzle.

Benedict climbed out after her. He was wearing a beautiful navy-blue Tom Ford suit. The slim-cut wool jacket skimmed his broad shoulders and lean, muscular frame. His crisp white shirt made his olive skin pop. He was so well put together that Liv could easily imagine him stepping out of an E-Type Jag in an early James Bond movie.

"We'll be done by 9.30, Trevor," Benedict said.

"Right ho, I'll be here," said Trevor. "Good luck."

"There's a little place round the corner," said Benedict to Liv. "It has the best coffee I know." He took Liv's hand and they walked away from the stall holders and down a side street. He stopped in front of a tiny café with a black front. The tall glass windows either side of the door were steamed up. Benedict pushed open the door to reveal a queue of suited people lining up at the black tiled bar. On the bar sat a pale blue coffee machine, the sort that Liv had only seen in Italy.

"I thought we should have proper Italian coffee today," said Benedict, as he followed her in. "They serve the Neapolitan stuff here."

Liv smiled. Trust Benedict to think of this. It was a small detail but it mattered to her.

Benedict led her past the bar and over to a little seating area. They grabbed a table and Liv shucked off her gorgeous coat, suddenly too warm in this lovely fug of coffee, steam and human activity. She folded it very carefully and placed it on the bench next to her. She was now conscious that she was totally overdressed.

"Maybe I should keep my coat on," she said, standing up to put it on again.

"No," said Benedict. "You look perfect. I'll grab some coffees."

She sat down again and watched him walk down to the bar and find his place at the back of the queue. Luckily it was fast moving. The suited people were waiting for takeaway. Liv noticed that they all seemed to be going across the road to the Crown Court on the opposite side of the street. Lawyers, she realised. Despite their formal clothes, Liv felt very exposed in her own. Admittedly it wasn't the most traditional outfit. They were all in grey, conservative suits and here she was in a white jumpsuit. Admittedly it was a beautifully tailored jumpsuit and only exposed the skin across her breastbone. The pale wool crepe skimmed her waist and flowed down into wide legs with sharply pressed creases. The long sleeves tapered down into sculptural ruffles at her cuff. She pulled at the cuffs, feeling self-conscious. Looking in the mirror this morning, she'd felt cool and edgy. The jumpsuit was her homage to Bianca Jagger. Years ago, Liv'd seen an old photo of Bianca at her register office wedding to Mick Jagger. The sight of such a beautiful, self-possessed woman in a white suit had stayed with her. Bianca was the epitome of style. She looked strong and uncompromising. Liv had toyed with the idea of wearing a suit but then realised that Benedict would be wearing one too and it would a bit weird, the pair of them both in suits even if she wore the jacket with only a delicate lace bra underneath. She'd found this jumpsuit instead. It was far more interesting than any dress Liv had seen. They all seemed overblown for a discrete trip to the register office. Pearls, tulle and veils were over the top for a cold, dull Friday morning. At least this way she felt stylish and a little out of the ordinary.

Benedict came back with a tray bearing two pale blue sauces, the exact same blue of the coffee machine, with one glass of coffee on each and two plates of sourdough toast. The coffees were a creamy caramel colour with a thick layer of creamy foam on top. Combined with the warm toast slathered in salty thick butter, it was the perfect breakfast.

"It's not the most conventional wedding breakfast," said Benedict, crunching into the sharp crust of the bread.

"But it's definitely the best kind," said Liv, spreading as much butter as she could onto the remaining crust. She popped it into her mouth and smiled as she chewed.

Benedict watched her. "You make me so happy," he said.

"How can you say that while I'm sitting here chewing?" she laughed.

"Seriously, you do," he reached across and took her free hand. It was the hand with her engagement ring. He moved the ring round on her finger. She felt the electricity crackle on her skin as it did every time he touched her. "This is perfect on you."

Liv looked down at the ring. The square diamond sat in a cluster of tiny diamonds that extended round the ring. The stone was huge but it still looked elegant. "It's beautiful."

"Just like you," he said seriously.

"If I'd known you were going to be this complimentary, I'd have suggested getting married sooner."

He looked at her with such intensity, need and desire that she stopped joking around. When she'd woken up this morning, she'd felt a bit giddy with nervous excitement. The opposite seemed to be true for Benedict. He was being earnest and sincere, while Liv found it hard not to be flippant. Looking at him now, though, she felt anything but flippant. They sat at a little table in a busy café, her hand in his, and she felt the depth of the connection between them. The weight and scale of it was overwhelming. She felt anchored to the spot, in the quiet, still eye of a storm while ordinary life continued to swirl around them. Customers came and went, staff cleared tables and the coffee machine hissed but none of it touched them. Liv felt that together they completed a circuit. She flowed into him and he flowed into her in an unbroken circle. It wasn't so much that they completed each other, as Liv had heard people say in schmaltzy films, as much as they were interlocking magnets, drawn together by something invisible and yet stronger than either of them. Liv understood all of this just looking into his wide green eyes and she knew he did too. She hoped they could hold onto this feeling whatever happened to them in the future. If they could keep this connection, she knew they would be fine.

The spell was broken by the sound of Benedict's phone vibrating on the table.

"It's Jakob," he said, reading the message. "He says they're all there – India, Kate and Tim – waiting outside the register office. Shall we go?"

Liv smiled and said: "Yes, let's go."

THE END

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About the Author

Delphie Gray worked in TV before she began writing professionally.

She lives in Londonwith her husband and two children.

Follow her on Twitter @delphiegray1

