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He was engaged to be erly planning his wedding day She took a deep breath and tried to control the eainst their constraints

‘You’re right’ She ventured a sarner a response ‘Okay You can have a look at thehis eyes on her, and extracted neatly collated, printed sheets of paper A choice, she told hi on the papers and not on his face Several options for starters, main courses and of course there would be a selection of desserts She had only a vague idea of nuhly two hundred people from what his fiancée had coht in that assumption?

It was bizarre, sitting here like this, pretending to talk about a job that would not s inside her and her head reeled with a sickening slide show of ies of the past She must have stored up so much infor it all in every painful detail

What a joke to be sticking a phoney s that they were just two people having a normal conversation about a normal topic

‘What is she like?’ It was spoken before she had time to think

‘I beg your pardon?’ Angelo looked up at her politely

‘I’lad you’ve found someone you love, soelo…’

And she had found someone as well Time had moved on But he certainly wasn’t happy for her, nor was he in control of his response He inclined his head curtly in acknowledgment of what she had said and then returned to the menus She had never been able to cook when he had known her An oe Now the array of food she had listed was exquisite

‘I wanted to do so that had a career in it but wasn’t office-based,’ she said, tuning in to his thought patterns ‘Hence the catering’ The fact that she had left school at sixteen without any qualifications to speak of had also dictated a life-plan that didn’t include a university degree That, she kept to herself ‘Once I had bought rounded, I found that I actually had to prepare meals for myself and I discovered that I enjoyed it It see in Italian food had seemed natural as well, all wrapped up as it had been in memories of him It had been a wise choice, as it turned out, for more practical reasons, because not many caterers specialised and very few specialised in Italian cuisine She had found a readythe many well-to-do Londoners who held dinner parties and office dos and either couldn’t be bothered or preferred to have so for them

‘How very resourceful And how very puzzling that you were so eager to settle down When we last spoke you were fighting the idea’ Orit with him

‘I know I still thought that I wanted the adventure of never being in one place for too long, but…well…’

He watched the faint embarrassed blush creep into her cheeks, the way she tried to conceal her expression by looking down He saw the truth staring him in the face She had settled down because she had found the right man and it hadn’t been him It had never been him and, who knew, ? After all, it hadn’t been as if he had kept tabs on her They had spenttheir separate careers There would have been around Soht that had not crossed his mind before but, now that it had, it took root and rapidly sprouted poisonous tendrils that curled into every corner of his mind

‘For the best,’ he said into the tense silence ‘As s turn out to be, in my opinion After all, have we not both found our perfect partners?’ His head seethed with i that the rage he felt towards her had only been papered over