‘This is your wake up call. I repeat, this is your wake up call.’ I could hear a small laugh on the other end of the phone. ‘Are you awake?’ I asked in the lowest voice I could find. I could have lied and said I was suffering from a migraine, or I could have given in to the reality of the hangover that was doing a bloody good job of stripping basic bodily functions.

‘Funnily enough, yes,’ she replied louder than I needed her to.

‘You didn’t stay.’

‘No. Did you want me to?’ She was on dodgy ground.

‘It would have been nice to pretend for a bit longer.’ Even dodgier.

‘That’s why I left and went back to my room. I couldn’t stand the breakup in the morning.’ She laughed lightly, but I heard the sigh that accompanied it.

‘Thanks for looking after me. I found the ibuprofen and I put my foot in the bin you left at the side of the bed. Nice move, by the way. You should consider a new career as a hangover mopper-upper.’ Fuck. I was regurgitating mindless words.

‘I don’t do mop-ups, Dawson. My gag reflex is delicate when it comes to other people’s sick.

‘So much I could say. So many images.’

‘I’m going to take off after lunch. There’s a few seminars I want to see this morning but nothing really grabbing me this afternoon.’

‘I have to do my seminar at eleven.’

‘I’m not sitting through that bore-fest again. Greatest cure for insomnia ever.’

‘Can I see you? I mean, will you come next door? There was something I should have told you last night but tattoos and alcohol got in the way.’

‘Sounds like my kind of night. Give me five minutes.’

Fifteen minutes later, I was still waiting. I was pacing and my hand was a permanent fixture at the back of my neck. A soft knock broke it away as I bounded over to the door.

‘I love the character assassination tops you’re favouring,’ I laughed.

She pointed to her top that had ‘winging it’ written in black across the front. ‘Life mantra.’ She smiled and everything about me buzzed.

‘God, you’re beautiful.’ I couldn’t help it. I had to say it to her. She was making me feel everything good again.

She shook her head in frustration, rolling her eyes and storming past me. ‘I don’t want you to say things like that.’ She started busying herself with picking up towels and putting the bed straight while I watched in awe, my arms crossed and my knuckles tapping against my mouth.

‘Sit down; leave all that,’ I said.

‘You always did struggle to pick up after yourself. Old habits, hey.’

‘Hmm,’ I replied, knowing that in reality, she was my habit.

‘Why did you want to see me?’ She stopped mid pillow pat, serious, self-assured. She flung the pillow to the top of the bed as I motioned for her to sit down.

This is hard, but I need you to know. It’s time you got the truth. The full truth.’ I coughed nervously and tried to stop my leg from bobbing up and down. ‘I don’t know why I’ve been so worried about telling you because it explains the situation I’m in.’

‘Situation? Is that what you call your marriage?’ she replied, hurt flashing across her cheeks in a blush.

‘Let me talk,’ I said as I found the steel in my determination to get this out, no holds barred. The truth and nothing but the truth. ‘We started talking last night about the letter you sent.’ She was covering her mouth with her hand. She had a habit of laughing when she was nervous, which could get her into a whole heap of shit from people who didn’t understand how she worked. I understood, so as far as I was concerned, if she needed to laugh, it was far better than watching her have a bloody good cry.

‘It was a bad week. Mum was struggling and I was doing the usual mind fuck of questioning everything. And just for the record, the whole letters only and no phone calls thing? The shittest decision I’ve ever made. I mean, really. It was shit.’

She nodded but didn’t speak, anxious for me to get to the point. She wrapped her fingers around the cuffs of her top and pulled the sleeves down over her hands.

‘One night, when I was sitting with Mum, I decided I was going to ring you. She was drifting in and out of sleep but I couldn’t leave her. Those times were the worst. Not just because she was becoming a shell of herself, but because I had nothing else to do but think about us.’

Abi drew her foot up onto the chair and wrapped her arms around her leg, pressing her forehead against her knee as I spoke. ‘Then the letter came. I was heartbroken, Abi. It was exactly what I didn’t need to hear. I was a mess. I couldn’t believe you were moving on so quickly. I’d assumed you were as beat up as me.’

‘I was!’ she shouted. ‘I was miserable. I was holding out for your letter before your birthday. I was pleading with you to invite me down to London to celebrate together. I needed one more hit. I thought if we had one more weekend, I could either make you see how good we were together or get you out of my system.’ She pressed her palms against her forehead and splayed her fingers across her hair. ‘I crying until I heard Mum let herself in. We talked for hours about relationships, and I told her everything. Every-fucking-thing. She said the only way to get a man’s attention was to make them jealous, so I sat at the table through the night and wrote the letter as a last ditch attempt to try to get you back. I didn’t know what else to do.’

‘Fucking hell, Abi. Your mum has to be the worst person to ask for relationship advice.’

‘It was a stupid, rash decision,’ she said through tears. ‘I thought that if I said I was seeing someone else, you’d come back to me, that jealousy would get the better of you,’ she said, turning her head away from me and looking at the floor in despair. ‘I made it up. There wasn’t anyone else. Only you.’

‘Fuck, Abi, I was devastated. I can’t tell you how much it crushed me.’

‘Don’t! I can’t hear it. I can’t deal with what happened next because of me!’ She continued to cry as I crouched down in front of her.

‘Clara was just a distraction. A way of clearing my head. I don’t even know how we got to that point. She was interested in my mate Mark, and the last thing I remember was saying it was time for me to go home.’

That was the fucked up truth. Clara had been invited to my birthday drinks by Mark. He was a man on a mission. They were supposed to get together that night, but deep down, I knew she wanted me. I tried to fuck away the anger, get the hurt out of my system and forget the memories, but all I did was increase the hate I felt towards myself.

‘Was it good? Better than us?’ she said with such a determined tone. She laced her fingers together and raised her hands to clasp them to the back of her head.

‘No, it wasn’t better,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘I was drunk. I don’t remember any of it.’

‘So how do you go from a distraction fuck to marriage? I’d really like to know.’ She was so hurt it shone through her eyes.

I dropped my head to the floor as I sat down at her feet. My heart was pounding in my chest as we reached the moment I had dreaded for the last few months. ‘Don’t hate me.’

I heard a gasp of air and a loud sob as she stood and walked to the other side of the room, her fingers pressed against her mouth. She walked in circles next to the bed where I’d held her the night before. ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ she said in fast bursts. ‘No, please, no.’ She continued pacing and wafting her hands repeatedly in front of her face as she cried. As she started to piece it all together, her voice was shredding me inside.

‘I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. Abi, please, you need to hear me out. Please.’ I watched as realisation swept across her body.

‘You got her pregnant, didn’t you? Oh fuck. Fucking hell, no. Please tell me I’m wrong.’ She stopped dead before sitting on the floor beside me trying to lift my head with her hands so I’d look at her. I couldn’t face her and she became angrier. ‘Tell me I’m wrong!’ she shouted on a piercing wail.

‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’