It had been a year since I last spoke to him. I had counted every single day. The anniversary of being thrown out of his house. Coming to Annie’s only to be thrown out of her apartment as well.

What a year it had been. I only had to close my eyes and I could vividly remember that last day. The night we had made love. I had lost my virginity and it had been perfect. I remembered falling asleep in his arms, no idea what he'd given me in return for taking my innocence.

I woke up in the morning and he wasn’t there. I had been awoken by a knock on the bedroom door. “Come in,” I said.

It was his secretary, Gwyneth. “Good morning,” she said, carrying in a tray of breakfast things. Toast was piled high and a steaming mug of coffee was soon in my hands as I sat up in bed, keeping the blankets high to shield my naked chest from view. “How are you today?”

“Good. Where’s Mr Stempel?”

“He is out for the day but I have been authorised to make the payment of one million pounds to you.”

“I haven’t been here the full week though.” I remember how disappointed I felt. The money didn’t matter anymore. What mattered was spending time with the man I’d fallen for. Not just fallen but skidded down and down at lightning speed into love without any hope of applying the brakes. I could still feel his touch as Gwyneth held out the check towards me.

“You are bound by the contract terms. You are never to return to this house. You are never to contact Mr Stempel or anyone associated with him. You are never to speak of what happened during your stay here. In return here is your check.”

I looked at her hand and then up at her. “I don’t want his money.”

“It’s yours. Take it.”

“Does he really want me to go?”

“Told me himself. He just wants you gone from the house before he gets back. He never wants to see you again. A taxi has been called. It is waiting outside for when you’ve finished your breakfast.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Then I shall wait outside while you dress. You’ll find your original clothes in the wardrobe.”

She pointedly left the check on the bed but I didn’t touch it. He wanted me gone. I’d been a bloody fool. I should have guessed. All that niceness was just to get me into bed. Now he’d done it, he didn’t even have the balls to tell me himself that I was to go. He wanted to pay a million pounds to screw me. Well screw him.

I got dressed without crying, feeling as if nothing I had felt was correct, as if the rug had been pulled out from under my feet. This was what happened when you trusted men? I never would again.

Gwyneth escorted me from the building like I was a criminal. I left the check on the bed. I couldn’t take his money. I had all I needed which was the knowledge that he wanted nothing more to do with me.

I got to Annie’s to find her in the process of loading her stuff into a van. “What’s happened?” I asked as I stopped in front of the building.

She put the box she was carrying down onto the pavement before answering. “I thought I’d got away with hitting Ryan a bit too easily. Evicted just like you. We’ve got today to get everything out.”

“Where are we supposed to go?”

“I’m going to stay with my mom. I’ve already taken your stuff over there. It’s all crammed into the garage. She’s parked her car on the street to make room. You can stay in my old bedroom with me. It’ll be like being kids again. One long sleepover.”

Which is exactly what happened. For a year we lived together in her room. It was small and cramped but we coped. It became more cramped as I started to get bigger and even more cramped when two sharing became three.

I managed to get my job back at the museum. Alan Brears had heard that I was the reason they had the Flambert painting on display and personally hired me back. Everything was as it had always been there except with a new painting in the Milton room. It took pride of place in the very centre, all the other pieces repositioned to better give it room to breathe.

It felt strange to look at that painting. It was still beautiful but now under the surface were other feelings. One was the surreal knowledge that it could have been hanging on my bathroom wall. I could have sold it and kept the money for myself, been a multimillionaire.

I only had to look at the amount of people enjoying it to know I’d made the right decision in telling him to bring it here.

The painting wasn’t the only gift Mr Stempel had given me. The other gift had become apparent when I missed my period. I took the test with Annie and her mom watching and together we all burst into tears when it showed up positive. “I’m pregnant?” I asked, waiting for them to tell me I wasn’t.

“Yep,” Annie replied. “Now will you tell him?”

 “Sorry can we talk about this first? I’m having a baby. I can’t believe I’m having a baby.”

“You’ll make a good mom.”

“I never planned on being a single mom.”

“Neither did I,” Rebecca said, stroking Annie’s hair. “Sometimes life throws you a curve ball and sometimes it throws you an Annie.”

When she was born I named her Dora, keeping the Dickens tradition alive even though Mr Stempel wasn’t involved. I still couldn’t call him Nick, it felt wrong.

Dora was the most angelic baby you could imagine, causing me almost no trouble. I was on maternity leave with her when I went back to the museum. Annie was guarding the Flambert painting.

“Another couple of months and we’ll have enough saved to pay the deposit on a place of our own,” she said when she saw me.

We’d decided we didn’t want to rent again if we could possibly avoid it. With her mom taking no money for us, we’d been saving like mad all year and almost had enough.

I could have had the money we saved and ten times as much if not more just by taking the check. I couldn’t do it though. I couldn’t take his money. That would have proved that I was nothing more than a purchase, like the painting or the land.

I was paid while on maternity leave and I got another few months with Dora before going back to work. I wanted her to appreciate the culture around her from the first moment and we regularly went to the museum together once I could walk easily after the birth. At sixteen weeks she was starting to giggle a lot, blinking up at the paintings in a way I could have sworn was filled with understanding.

Mr Stempel still hadn’t been seen. There was a newspaper next to me on the bench and I glanced down at the headline. He’d missed the latest government meeting he was supposed to attend and several social functions. Rumour had it he’d become a Howard Hughes type, locked away in his mansion, not taking calls, not accepting visitors. Good for him. He could count his millions while I raised our child.

They’d said he had enough money to know everything about everyone. Did he know about Dora? Did he even care? He could have got in touch anytime but had chosen not to. Maybe he had checked up on me and found out where I was living and with a baby. He was probably too ashamed of me.

He wasn’t my problem anymore anyway. Dora was all I cared about and she was getting ready to feed, starting to grumble in her carrier. I stroked her tiny head and shushed her, saying bye to Annie before heading to the baby room.

That evening I left Dora with Annie’s mom for a couple of hours. Annie wanted to go to Paddy’s. She said she had some good news for me and we needed to celebrate. I was happy to join her but my heart ached to be away from Dora. I was also intrigued as to what the news was as she’d only hinted in her text message to me.

I got to the pub to find her already ordering champagne. “Can we afford that?” I asked.

“Guess what you’re doing when you come back to work?”

“What?”

“Setting up our educational outreach group, getting kids into history.”

“What? How did you arrange that?”

“They got a big donation last week and they’re using it to set you up. The funding is all in place, they just need you back to organize it.”

I heard a slow clap behind me and turned around to see Gwyneth sitting at one of the tables, listening in to our conversation. “Congratulations,” she said, a drunken sneer on her face. “Aren’t you the lucky one.”

“Gwyneth?” I replied. “What are you doing here?”

“They’ll shaft you just when you think it’s all doing fine,” she said, ignoring my question. “If I were you, I wouldn’t celebrate too soon.”

She’d clearly been drinking for a long time, empty glasses spread out on the table in front of her. “Who’s that?” Annie asked.

“She’s Mr Stempel’s secretary.”

“Was Mr Stempel’s secretary,” Gwyneth replied. “Until I went into business with Richard Senior. There’s another man who bullshits people. Always men. Never trust them. It’s too late to go back though. If I were in your shoes, I’d take that funding and run off with it. Spend it on something fun. Who cares about other people? They only screw you over. Oi! Another drink over here.”

“I think you’ve had enough,” the bar tender called over to her. “Maybe you should think about going home?”

“Home? I can’t go home. I haven’t been there for months but it’s too late now isn’t it.” She got unsteadily to her feet and weaved slowly towards the door. “They all screw you over,” she said, pushing the door open and vanishing into the street.

“Well, that was interesting,” Annie said. “What do you think she was talking about?”

“No idea and it’s nothing to do with me anymore.”

“Well said.” Two glasses appeared in front of us. Annie held one up. “To the future.”

“To the future,” I replied, whilst glancing across at where Gwyneth had been sitting. I toasted the future but I was thinking about the past.