Please Forgive Me Read Free

yet again; her father now lived in Hong Kong and her mum in South Africa with a new partner. She could have gone to her mum’s of course, but she didn’t want to be a burden, and more importantly she knew that in order to get through this, she needed to be on her own for a while.
    ‘Look…’ Grace said quietly, after a long pause, ‘I suppose I might as well tell you, I bumped into Adam the other day,’ and Leonie’s heart almost stopped. ‘He doesn’t know you’ve moved away.’
    She felt faint. ‘You didn’t …?’
    ‘Of course I didn’t,’ Grace replied quickly. ‘I promised I wouldn’t, didn’t I? I’m not saying I agree with it, but a promise is a promise – even it had to be made over the phone from across the Atlantic,’ she added archly.
    Leonie tried to digest what her friend had said but didn’t really know why she felt so surprised that Grace had seen or spoken to Adam; Dublin wasn’t that big a city after all, was it?
    ‘So don’t you want to know what we talked about, or what he said?’ Grace prompted when Leonie stayed silent.
    ‘No I don’t actually,’ she said, swallowing hard. ‘I’d rather not talk about him at all to be honest.’
    ‘Well he looked absolutely terrible, and for what it’s worth, I think he’s really sorry that –’
    ‘Grace please,’ Leonie interjected hoarsely. ‘I just don’t want to know, OK?’
    ‘Well, I’m sorry but you’re my best friend, and I’m really worried about you! Look, I know what happened was awful, but isn’t there any chance you two could try and work things out? Forgive and forget, maybe?’
    Leonie closed her eyes. ‘I really don’t think so, Grace,’ she replied determinedly, knowing in her heart that some things just couldn’t be forgiven.
     

Chapter 3
     
    Two weeks later, Leonie got the keys to the apartment and moved out of the Holiday Inn into what would be her brand new home – for the next six months at least.
    She’d told Grace the truth when she’d said she didn’t know how long she’d be staying away; all she knew was that it was what she’d always done when faced with any major decisions in her life.
    OK, so her job required her to be cool, calm and decisive and she was usually pretty good at applying these same traits to other people’s problems, but for some reason, she could never manage to call upon them when it came to her own.
    In her teenage years, when all her classmates were worrying about exams and college places, Leonie decided to avoid the stress by taking a year out to go backpacking around Asia and Australia. While Grace and her other school friends had been horrified (albeit more than a little envious too), Leonie’s parents had been fully supportive. In fact, the only major decision she’d given real consideration was agreeing to marry Adam – and clearly, she should have thought even harder about that , she mused now as she dragged her backpack up the steps to the front door of the house.
    Entering her apartment, she was struck once again by the large angled bay window that dominated the living room and flooded it with light and sunshine, and she guessed she’d while away many a day and evening sitting on the window seat and drinking in those amazing views across the bay. It was the perfect spot for curling up with a good book, which Leonie suspected she’d be doing quite a lot of.
    And while it was tempting to ‘hide away’ (as Grace put it) in a place so cosy and lovely, she knew there was no point. She’d end up dwelling even more on what had happened back home.
    No, Leonie decided immediately, there would be no moping about here; she’d done enough of that already, hadn’t she? Instead, she’d take a few days to settle in and then make it her business to explore the area properly. The city was so compact you could see a lot of it on foot, and if walking the hills got too difficult she could always hop on one of the cable cars (although they looked very scary going up