I shrugged off my blazer and shifted my weight so I was straddling him. He hands went to my hips and his head snapped forward.

“What are you doing?”

“I just want to enjoy our time together this weekend.” I started to undo his tie.

“So you are going to use me for sex and then dump me?” The corners of his mouth turned up just a fraction and I grinned at him.

“I’m not dumping you, but the sex thing sounds like an excellent suggestion.”

“As I said, anything you want.” And he pulled me forward, brought my lips to his.

***

The weekend together was incredible. Difficult but incredible. We took in some sights, ate at amazing restaurants, wandered around the park hand in hand, and spent a lot of time in bed. I was sure that he was trying to convince me to change my mind, but he never said anything and I was grateful. Even so he succeeded in convincing me a hundred times. I doubted myself for the entire trip. I was genuinely happy with him. He made everything so much better.

Every now and then I would get a reminder of why I needed our time-out. Women took him in everywhere we went, blatantly looking him up and down at times and at other times openly flirting with him right in front of me when I was clearly with him. It left me feeling unworthy of him and I found myself imagining the possibilities he would have when I returned to London. That paranoia and insecurity was something I’d never experienced with any man. It can’t have just been because Daniel was so handsome, so perfect. Charlie and Fran crept into my mind at various points, too. That box of emotions was well and truly open and although there were no more tears, there was a deep dark pit at the bottom of my stomach that never left me.

On Monday, after breakfast, I insisted Daniel went into the office. I was being picked up at 10 a.m. for my flight and I couldn’t bear the thought of an emotional airport goodbye.

“So this is it.” He clung to me as if were the last time he was ever going to see me.

“It’s just two months Daniel.”

“And at the end of two months, if you need more time or your feelings for me have changed or you’ve fallen for someone else? There are so many uncertainties, Leah.”

“None of that will happen. It’s much more likely you will run off with a Victoria Secrets model.” The thought sucker punched me in the gut. That was the risk I was taking. The risk that if I gave him up for two months, so I could be sure of me, sure of my feelings for him, that I would lose him forever.

I pulled him closer. He didn’t respond. He knew the possibilities; he knew before he flew out two weeks ago. That’s why he’d been so upset. He placed a firm kiss on my forehead and without looking at me again headed out of the door.

Oh god. What had I done?

***

I got back to London with a plan. It was raining. Of course it was. I came in drenched and pissed off at the world and Anna was on the sofa channel surfing. It was just after midnight, so I knew she was only waiting up for me. I poured myself a glass of wine and collapsed on the sofa next to her.

“You OK?” she asked.

“Yes, I think I’m going to be.”

She smiled and patted me on the leg. “Wanna talk about it?”

“Actually no. I’m good. Or at least I will be. Let’s talk tomorrow, I need to unpack and get to bed but thanks for being so fantastic.”

“Well, in the words of Scarlett O’Hara, tomorrow is another day.”

Indeed it was and that’s when my plan would kick in.

The next morning I felt OK, in control. I took a deep breath and pressed send on the familiar number. He answered after just one ring.

“Hello?” the voice sounded uncertain.

“Charlie, it’s Leah. I was wondering if you had some time after work this week to meet with me?”

He was clearly shocked but he quickly agreed to meet me on Thursday evening. Good. Step one was in place.

The next thing I did was book some therapy. I wanted to do this properly. I would go every a week. Working it around David and my clients was going to be difficult but I was determined to make it work.

I wasn’t sure what to do about Fran, whether I wanted or needed to confront her. I knew I had to see Charlie but with Fran I wasn’t sure. I put that on hold.

Despite me thinking I was just going to be able to press pause on Daniel and have him drift out of my mind, it wasn’t that easy. I thought about him every day. For the first few days I thought about little else. I wondered if he would be able to stop himself contacting me. I convinced myself that he wouldn’t find it difficult. Men were so much better at compartmentalizing things. Then I wondered if I would be able to stop contacting him. That was the real question. I nearly picked up the phone, texted him, emailed him a million times. It was like those early stages of dating when you really like someone and you want to tell them everything but you know you have to hold yourself back. Having made a big fuss about a time-out I couldn’t exactly change my mind after a few days.

Gradually it got easier, not just because I managed to contain my thoughts about him to a few times a day rather than all day but because I focused on seeing him in just a few weeks. It made it easier somehow knowing that if I kept my resolve now, it would be all the sweeter when out time was up.

One of the times I allowed myself to think of Daniel was reading the daily alert I had set up for the Gematria group. I justified the google alert that I set up as because of the Palmerston deal but on the basis I only set it up after I came back from New York, I’m not sure who I was trying to kid. I wanted to know if any more bad news came out about the New York office. I’m not sure what I would do, whether I would reach out to him, but I wanted to know.

The following weeks were tough. One by one all my boxes were opened and all the feelings about so much stuff that I’d not thought about in months, years in some cases, came out and raged through me as if brought to life by the sunlight I revealed them to. There were plenty of ups and downs, lots of tears and anger and swearing and wine drinking. I tried to balance out the wine drinking with running and that helped with the emotional weight that I felt, it made me feel lighter and stopped me thinking about all the sex with Daniel I was missing out on. It felt like I was in training for a marathon, physically and mentally. Daniel’s return was D day and I wanted to be as ready, as fit as I possibly could be.

Meeting Charlie was difficult. I don’t know if I expected seeing him to magically make me feel better but I don’t think I expected how odd it would be. In so many ways it was like it always had been between us. I knew him so well and I’d forgotten that somewhere. He ordered my wine for me before I arrived and we traded information about parents and jobs as if we were chatting at home while making dinner together. I don’t think I’d expected that familiarity to still be there. Since I’d let myself think about him, I’d turned him into a monster in my head but here he was, same as ever, his monstrous parts well hidden.

Eventually we navigated the elephant in the room. I didn’t scream or shout or swear or punch him, which I thought was remarkably restrained of me. He apologized. He said that he had probably been trying to make me hate him by sleeping with a friend of mine but it hadn’t been conscious. I said he’d succeeded. He said he wanted out of the relationship and should have never proposed I agreed but admitted I should have never accepted. I knew things weren’t right between us when I accepted. I’d just been on a road, wanting to get to the end of it rather than asking myself if I was going in the right direction. I had to take some responsibility for that. We talked about when it went wrong, but I don’t think either of us knew. Maybe it had just never been right. There were lots of apologies and regrets on both sides. In the end he thanked me, and I believed it was a genuine thank you, for picking up the phone. It felt like it had been the right thing to do.

When I relayed it all to Anna, almost word for word, she agreed our meeting had probably been for the best but said she still would hate every bone in his body until the day he died. She really was the perfect friend.

Three weeks into the eight week separation I got called into David’s office. I was worried I was going to get a bollocking for taking up so much of Brendan’s time. He was really proving himself working with Deb on the disclosures and he was so enthusiastic I couldn’t do anything but reward him by giving him more and more to do, which he loved. Although he said he could balance my work with the PA stuff David required, I had my doubts. David was almost certainly feeling neglected.

“Leah, I need you to send an email out to the team on the Palmerston deal. The whole thing is on hold.”

I was shocked. Daniel and I had never talked about the deal when we were together but I couldn’t help but think that if we weren’t on our time-out, I would have known about this before David.

“Oh, OK, that’s fine. Should I tell people why or whether it’s likely to come back on?”

They were all valid questions but I was fishing for information for my own personal reasons, unconnected with the content of any email I was going to draft.

“I don’t have much info. Just that it’s unlikely to come back on. What is weird is that my wife mentioned that apparently there’s a re-launch of a New York hotel that’s happening this week, she knows they are a client and I think she was hoping we would get to go.” He laughed. “It just seems a little strange that they were refurbing a place that was going to be part of the sale. Who knows what’s going on?”

Leaving David’s office my paranoia ran free. Had the deal been pulled because of our time-out? Was he punishing me? Perhaps Daniel had found someone else and wanted to cut any links with me. He had never mentioned a re-launch of any of his New York hotels but I guess he didn’t really mention any specifics about work, other than what he’d told me about the New York MD. Were the two connected?

Oh god, I just wanted to speak to him. I wanted him to reassure me that he still loved me and that there wasn’t anyone else and that I was just being paranoid. I grabbed my phone and wallet from my bag and ran out the door. I’d go and get coffee which would be an excuse to get out of the building. In the elevator, I scrolled down my phone and hovered over Daniel’s number. He would want me to call him wouldn’t he? If he knew how I was feeling? If it was over between us I wanted to know now, I didn’t want to have to wait another five weeks just to have my heart crushed. Better the devastation starts as soon as possible and then it would be over sooner. But I couldn’t make the call. I was the one who initiated this time-out and I had to stick to it. My paranoia would just have to eat me alive.

Anna and I went out for drinks that evening. We drank and chatted around a table with the buzz of the bar surrounding us rather than on our sofa with the television in the background but it was good to get out. We saw a couple of people we knew which was nice. Catching up on other people’s news really distracted me from my drama. I realized I’d not really seen anyone other than Anna and Daniel for what seemed like months. It probably was months. I was deliberately staying under the radar since Charlie and I split. I didn’t want people feeling sorry for me and I didn’t want to have to put up with people’s sympathy faces. And because Daniel was always there, either physically or in my head, I couldn’t face people because I felt guilty that I didn’t feel worse about what had happened with Charlie. Daniel made me feel better about everything.

About a week later, I was just beginning to convince myself that I was being paranoid and that if Daniel wanted to cut all ties with me he wouldn’t be so cruel as to wait until our time-out was over. Then I opened that day’s Google alert. David’s wife had been right: One of the Palmerston New York hotels was being relaunched. There were a few press articles covering the unveiling. They all seemed to mention the misconduct of the New York MD and what was now a criminal investigation, although there weren’t many details of what the criminal allegations were and they also showed pictures of the refurbished hotel. Any publicity was good publicity I suppose.

Trailing through the articles, there were photos on the red carpet of various celebrities attending the event. My heart actually stopped when my eyes found a picture of Daniel with his arm around a woman’s waist smiling into the camera. When I looked closer I could see it was his ex-wife Georgina. What was going on? Was this an old picture? I was scrambling between all the pictures in the different articles and it was clearly a picture from just last night. So that was that. He was with his ex-wife. I was wrong; he had taken me at my word and not contacted me for any reason, not even to tell me he was back with his ex-wife.

I called Anna and in barely understandable English told her what I was looking at. I wanted her to tell me I was overreacting, that it didn’t mean what I knew it meant. Of course she couldn’t do that because what she saw was what I saw.

What had I done? I’d pushed away the person who I wanted to be closest to. It was all my fault. I’d taken a huge risk and it had backfired.

The phone ringing jolted me out of my haze of confusion, sorrow, and regret. I answered it without thinking but I could barely say my own name.

“Hi, Leah, it’s Polly. How are you?” She must be ringing to check how I was.

I tried to pull myself together and sound normal. “Hi, Polly, it’s so nice to hear from you. I’m good, how are you?” Well that sounded vaguely normal, didn’t it?

“I’ll be near your offices again later today and I wondered if you have time for lunch?”

Before I knew it I accepted. In the back of my mind I felt that having lunch with her would somehow bring me closer to Daniel and I grabbed the opportunity. It was only after we made the arrangements and I tried to turn my attention back to my emails that the anxiety crept in. Was she calling to check that I was OK after Daniel’s reunion with his ex-wife? Was she going to give me Daniel’s side of the story? To stop myself from talking myself into crazyland I went to check on Brendan. He was still smarting over the Palmerston deal aborting and was back doing full time PA work and he wasn’t happy about it.

I arrived slightly early at the restaurant. I wanted to have time to check my makeup and decide what I would order before she arrived, that way I could spend all my energy trying to pretend I was fine.

“Leah!” she exclaimed when she saw me. She was smiling brightly as she kissed me on both cheeks. She collapsed opposite me and deposited a couple of shopping bags either side of her chair. “It’s so good to see you. You look amazing. I love this place you picked,” she said as she looked. Juno was one of my favorite places in the City; it was small but very glamorous, with crystal chandeliers hanging all over the ceiling and baroque furnishings.

“I’m so glad you like it, and you look amazing, too. Have you been shopping?” Polly then proceeded to pull various things out of bags for my reaction.

“I shouldn’t have been near any shops as I had a meeting by Liverpool Street, but I so rarely come into London, I couldn’t help myself!” She was positively gleeful. Was she trying to pretend like nothing had happened? Perhaps she was trying to cheer me up. I didn’t say anything, taking my cues from her.

It was easier than I would have thought to chat about nothing in particular and to act happy and upbeat. She was so lovely and bubbly that I imagined no one could be unhappy around her.

After our plates were cleared she put her hand on my arm and leaned in to speak to me so no one else could hear. I tensed. This was it. This was when she was going to say something that would crush me.

“How are you getting on with Daniel being in New York? Are you finding it difficult?” I was stunned. I didn’t know what to say. Perhaps she didn’t know about his reconciliation with his ex-wife. “I’m sorry, am I being insensitive?”

I didn’t speak because I didn’t know what to say.

“Yes, it’s very difficult to be apart from him, and I miss him dreadfully. I’m trying to use our time apart to sort out some stuff with my ex.”

She looked at me sympathetically. “You poor thing. Only another month to go. Are you going to go out to New York again before he comes back next month?”

She can’t have known about his ex-wife. In fact, she didn’t even seem to know about our time-out. I could do nothing but roll with it. “No, I don’t think I’ll make it out again. I’ve got so much to do.” It was the truth and that’s all I had.

“Well, what are a few weeks in the scheme of a life together?” she squealed. “I shouldn’t say stuff like that, should I? I just can’t help myself. He just seems so happy with you, and I think you are just perfect for each other!”

I smiled and I felt tears well in my eyes, so I took a sip from my glass of water and tried to make sure I didn’t get emotional. Well, more emotional, anyway.

Back at the office, because the Palmerston deal had aborted, my workload was more manageable and I left the office just after 6 p.m. I headed home, picking up a bottle of wine on the way. It was a sorry state of affairs. Here I was, thirty, pretty much single, and headed home on a Friday night to drink alone. I was halfway through the bottle when Anna got home. She looked thoroughly pissed off.

“You OK?” I asked. I tore my eyes away from my laptop, where I was pretending to be on Twitter but really I was back to cyberstalking Daniel.

“Actually, no, I’m in a foul mood. I’ve got far too much to do at the office and I’ve just abandoned it—if I worked non-stop for a week without any sleep I don’t think I’d get through it, so really, what’s the point? I might as well come home and drink wine. And, I called Ben today and I didn’t get a response and he didn’t call me back, which is just bloody rude. I really needed a shag tonight. And what’s worse, I don’t think it’s just the shag. I think I might like him, which is really annoying.”

“Have some wine.”

“Are we self-medicating, do you think, drinking like we do?” Anna asked.

“Of course we are self-medicating.” We both laughed.

“So, you like this guy?” I asked.

“All right, you don’t need to go on about it,” she snapped.

I laughed. “You are a crazy cow. Do you want to talk about it?”

“No, I do not.”

I didn’t say anything.

“But I just do like him. And I just don’t know what to do with myself about it,” she said softly.

“Well don’t ask me, I’m a complete headcase. My fiancé ran off with a friend and Daniel was the love of my life and I pushed him away trying to do the right thing.”

“Leah ...” It was Anna’s warning tone. Without saying it she was trying to remind me what my therapist said. My therapist reasoned that if Daniel had gone back to his ex-wife while we were on a short break, which was by no means a certainty, then our relationship was never going to last in the long run and better to know now before I was in deeper. As Anna helpfully told me—I could have just watched Indecent Proposal for the same life lesson and it would have been about 500 quid cheaper—but still, it didn’t make it any the less right. At the same time I couldn’t help but wonder what if?

“Do you know what we need?” I perked up.

“What?” Anna was less enthusiastic.

“A night out. That’s what we need. A proper, dressed up to the nines, girls night out. None of this you taking me out for a quiet drink, trying to cheer me up or sitting here on this sofa moaning to each other. Tomorrow night we are going to go out and have fun. Let’s invite Bridget and Alice and we’ll go out and dance and laugh. We need a blow-out.” I was decided. This is what we needed to break the cycle of misery in this flat.

“OK. If you say so.”

“I do, and even if we have to fake it, we’re going to have fun. And I know I shouldn’t comment because I have no expertise in this area whatsoever, but give Ben a chance. It’s not like he’s not called you for weeks, it’s just been a few hours.”