‘What are you doing?’
‘Ringing for a taxi.’ Eyes hard, she sketched a saccharine-sweet smile. ‘I think I’ve imposed enough on your hospitality.’
He strolled to the door, pausing with his hand on the handle. ‘Your shoes are on the windowsill, and your hat.’
‘I don’t have a hat.’
His eyes went to her hair before, face set, he removed his gaze from the fascinating flame-red curls. ‘Of course you don’t. That would mean you stand the tiny risk of not being the centre of attention when you walk into a room.’
The suggestion that she wanted attention was so unexpected she struggled to think of a suitable response.
‘I’d book your taxi for the east gate if you really don’t want that fame...but you’re only delaying the inevitable, sweetheart.’
With that parting shot he left without a backward glance.
* * *
The hospital car park was full. Mari drove around three times before she finally found herself a space in an overflow area, or almost a space. The one she backed her old Beetle into was so narrow that to get out she had to breathe in to squeeze her way between the car and wall, managing to scrape her knees against the brick wall as she did so.
Without a lot of interest she viewed the damage, the nuisance value of her torn trousers barely registering against the oppressive weight of the real disasters she was dealing with—some of her own making. At times it felt as if she were drowning...but mostly she managed to tread water.
It was two days since the event that had triggered the media storm and by some miracle Mark hadn’t discovered what she’d done. That was the plus in what had been a nightmare weekend. Sebastian, with his sinister predictions of consequences, had been proved horribly right.
Mari was paying big time for her moment of madness.
She had been horrified when she had got out of the taxi to find a local reporter and photographer waiting. Head bent, she had not responded to the battery of questions or appeals for a quote.
Ironic now that she had thought that was bad—an hour later the duo had been joined by a dozen more from the nationals.
She had closed her curtains, ignored the notes shoved under the doors and turned off her phone, but she hadn’t been able to resist the masochistic impulse to go online. There she had discovered the predictable photos posted on numerous sites, and unlike most of the comments, which had been almost universally negative, some had been flattering, especially the one that had gone viral of Sebastian looking impossibly handsome and noble carrying her looking like some sort of ginger Sleeping Beauty up the aisle.
On a lighter note she had discovered an amusingly written piece, which included a detailed, itemised and hilariously inaccurate breakdown of how much her outfit had cost on the—it turned out—much-read fashion blog of the woman who Mari had almost forgotten had admired her outfit on the way into church.
This had spawned several much darker spin-offs that itemised not only how much her clothes had cost but how much she had cost! It seemed that according to ‘experts’ very few of her body parts were the ones she had been born with! She’d had a nose job, cheek and lip implants...opinion was split on her breasts!
It was universally agreed that Sebastian had footed the bill to turn her into his perfect woman.
The phrase had been picked up by a Sunday tabloid that recognised headline gold when they saw it. They had put the words above two shots of her, one in the supposedly ultraexpensive wedding outfit, the other taken Saturday morning when, bleary eyed in her pyjamas, her hair a wild mess and looking slightly demented, she had opened the door and faced a battery of flashes.
But she had taken control and stopped acting like a victim. The turning point had come about two o’clock that morning when she had found herself reaching for the tablet on her bedside table. What else was there to do when you couldn’t sleep but to get up to date with the latest vile names people were calling you and what awful things they were saying about you? The tablet propped on her lap, she had stopped and asked herself, What are you doing, Mari?
She could not control what people wrote but that didn’t mean she had to read it! The light at the end of the tunnel was that presumably there would come a time when people would get bored with talking about her breasts. Until then she was going to walk around with her head held high.
And that morning, when the number of press outside the building where she lived had decreased, it looked as if she had survived the worst, or so she’d thought.
But the hits kept coming!
She lifted her chin. As tempting as it was to just give up and admit defeat, it wasn’t an option. Mark needed her support. She pushed a strand of hair that had escaped the loose plait that hung down her back and glanced down... All dressed up, or in this case down, and nowhere to go.