Out on a Limb Read Free

leg, which is under my arm, I am also clutching a second bouquet. Red roses, lots of them, which I know his secretary will have been instructed to ring and have delivered at some point earlier in the day. I put the flowers on the seat and pull a slim box – my proper present – from my handbag.
    As proper presents go, it’s a stunner. Dee yanks it open and diamonds wink up at her. Roses. Diamonds. Cliché upon cliché. But then, hey, what was our affair if not that? ‘Wow!’ she says. ‘Wow, Abs. It’s stunning .’
    I take it back and lever the lid closed with a snap. ‘It is,’ I agree, shaking my head sadly. ‘Such a waste.’
    I watch her scurry back across the car park as I rummage once again in my bag for my phone. We’ve been such good friends for such a long time, and I know I’m going to spend an inordinate amount of time fretting about her, now I’m all freed up from fretting about myself.
    But for now I must shrug off the last threads of memories and fret in the moment – about tea. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that Jake will have forgotten I told him I’d be home late about fifteen seconds after me having told him this morning, so I open my phone fully expecting to find I’ve been sent a text saying where U??????. But the display, when I switch it back on, shows that voicemail have been trying to contact me, which is the sort of thing Jake would never do. Being male and fifteen, he would no more send me a voicemail message than consider a coat hanger as being related to clothes. Sebastian, then? Now, that would be nice.
    I connect. It’s not Seb. It’s my mother.
    My mother has just the two main modes of operation. Either slightly dramatic or seriously dramatic. That this is the latter means just the one thing. That my day is about to get worse. ‘Oh, darling! she warbles. ‘Where are you? I need you! It’s Hugo! He’s left me! He’s gone!’

Chapter 2
    D AMN . I SHOULD HAVE known my mother would muscle in on the day somehow. Should have, but didn’t, even so. I sometimes wonder if being someone who should have known things (instead of belatedly remembering I knew them in the first place) is genetically coded somehow. Perhaps it’s just the downside of having an optimistic nature. I should know it’s going to rain, and yet I don’t bring an umbrella. I should know I’m a twelve but I still try on tens. I should have known, in the first minutes, the first seconds of meeting Charlie, that here was dangerous territory in a Hugo Boss suit. But I didn’t. I just thought (as we all did) ‘gosh, he’s nice’, never thinking where that sort of thinking might lead.
    And I should know, because it’s obvious, because everyone knows it, that bad things always happen in threes. Except in my defence, I do actually know that. I just thought I’d had three already.
    Sitting in my car with my mobile in my lap, therefore, it occurs to me (as is so often the case where my mum is concerned) that, foresight aside, she really has no business riding roughshod over such a timeless and well established principle. Or maybe, once I consider it a little further, it’s me that’s got the sums wrong. There’s Charlie, of course. Disentangling myself from Charlie is definitely the number one bad thing in my life right now. And then Sebastian. Though, when you think about it, your first born flying off to partake of his gap year can’t really be classed as a bad thing. Yes, bad for me – obviously – because a week in and I’m already tearful at the newly diminutive ironing pile and there not being any need to get Peach Iced Tea from Sainsbury’s any more. And sitting on his bed a lot. Sighing. Such is every mother’s rite of passage. And there’ll be more of that, for sure.
    But not bad for him . And my own sense of sadness is of course somewhat leavened by my feelings of motherly pride and being able to bang on about his place at Uni and the brilliant A level results that I just know he’s