‘As of about five minutes ago. Everything okay at Mormor’s?’
He sighed. ‘She’s singing. Absolutely delighted with herself as far as I can see. Not a smidge of remorse.’
‘She’s a monster.’
Jannes laughed out loud. ‘That might be a little harsh considering all she wants is for us to be happy.’
‘Hmm. Are you going back to Harbourside?’ she asked, telling herself it was just friendly chitchat rather than her wanting to know how much longer he was going to be in town.
‘My agent organised a couple of meetings for me here tomorrow now that Spencer is on board. Then back to Harbourside and a training camp in Norway. I don’t know how contactable I’ll be...’ His voice trailed off and she realised that this was a ‘couple’ sort of conversation. Checking in and warning of radio silence. Was this where they were with one another now? Explaining your whereabouts like you would with a real-life fiancé?
She felt a familiar twinge of discomfort at this. That they were becoming more to each other than just a lie. This was where she usually started a subtle freak-out. Because when the person she was with started telling her where they were going to be, making plans to see her, she had to decide whether she was going to believe them. Or whether they were just telling her what she needed to hear, covering their tracks so that they could do what they wanted without getting caught. This was the part where trust came in. When it started to matter to her whether the other person was telling the truth. And, invariably, it was where she threw up her walls, ensuring that no one would be able to hurt her.
She had to remind herself that it didn’t matter whether Jannes was telling the truth. That their relationship was a pretence. That even if he did lie to her, she wouldn’t get hurt because he didn’t owe her the truth. He didn’t owe her anything. That was what made this safe—a relationship that she knew was based on a lie could never hurt her. That was what made this different.
‘Well, have fun,’ she said, at what she hoped was an appropriate place in the conversation. She didn’t want to admit that she’d got distracted wondering whether she should care if he was telling her the truth. By wondering what their relationship might be like if she wasn’t so...damaged.
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ Jannes asked, and she guessed she hadn’t pitched her voice quite right, that he’d heard something of her doubts.
‘Yeah, I’m sure,’ she lied, before hanging up with a rushed goodbye.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TWO WEEKS LATER, and Lara had to conclude that her followers were so in love with Jannes on her behalf that it made up for the fact that they were faking the whole relationship. She’d posted some pictures from early in their friendship, focusing on the truths in their relationship—that shared history—rather than the fictional future that they were meant to be planning. She’d declined all requests to partner or advertise anything wedding-related, pleading for the moment her intention to enjoy her engagement before starting wedding planning. She might be doing something morally dubious in not revealing the full truth about her engagement, but she wasn’t so morally bankrupt that she would use her fake engagement to make money.
She concentrated on the coursework for her MBA—life would be so much simpler with a consultancy business, which didn’t rely on snapshots of her personal life. Jannes had been away at his training camp in Norway for the past two weeks. And should have been on her doorstep an hour ago to go with her to the twins’ christening.
But there was no sign of him. His phone wasn’t ringing and her messaging app said he hadn’t logged in since yesterday. And every time she thought to herself that she’d throttle him if he made her go to this thing alone after she’d told people that he’d be there, she wondered if it was something worse than him letting her down going on. Whether something had happened to him out on the water. That maybe he wasn’t coming back to her at all.
Her stomach gave a lurch of fear. Thinking about how he was letting her down was at least a distraction from worse thoughts. She glanced at the time on her phone. If he wasn’t here in the next fifteen minutes then she was going to be late to the church—and showing up solo. This whole thing with Jannes was meant to be sparing her intrusive questions—if she showed up without him after they’d RSVP’d that he would be there it would be bound to prompt faux sympathetic looks and whispers behind her back, entirely defeating the object of this whole charade.
Eventually she fired off a text, letting Jannes know that she was leaving without him. Maybe if he got it in time he would be able to meet her at the church.
She made sure her phone was synced with her car, just in case he called or messaged while she was on the road to the country church. More floral shift dresses and pashminas. More florid uncles backslapping one another in the hotel bar at the reception afterwards.
If they staged another intervention like the last one, she was certain that she would either die or explode with rage. Which didn’t really seem fair to them, considering the rage was mainly directed at the man who had screwed over their lives as much as hers.
And, speaking of the devil incarnate, if she wasn’t mistaken, she was going to have to spend the afternoon dodging that loser of a sperm donor. Pip hadn’t invited him to her wedding, but she knew this branch of the family were still on speaking terms with him. Thinking about her father was more uncomfortable than ever now that she was living her own version of his lie. She didn’t want to see what he had done to her in a different light. She’d spent her whole adult life trying to come to terms with the damage that he had done, and thinking of him as human again, rather than a monster, only made things more complicated.
Jannes would have been the perfect person to have her back, to keep her safe—God knew he’d proved as much at Pip’s wedding. All of which was an excellent distraction from worrying that something might be seriously wrong.
She had always been slightly ill at ease when Jannes was out at sea and incommunicado. When he was on land they would text a few times a day—just mundane stuff about what they were doing, work, mutual friends. So when her phone went silent, nothing felt quite right until that message pinged letting her know that he was back.
But it had never felt like this before, this gnawing feeling that something must be seriously wrong. If he hadn’t just decided that this event—that she—wasn’t important enough for him to show up—or even let her know that he could be late. Her hand itched with the urge to check her phone, even though she knew that if he’d called or messaged she would have got a notification on the car’s screen. But the anxiety was making her rational brain more annoying than helpful.
As the mileage countdown on her satnav reached single figures, she gripped the steering wheel tighter. So tense that when she reached the church, and Jannes was parked right outside, hands in his pockets and sunlight bouncing off the blinding white cotton of his shirt and the lenses of his sunglasses, she wasn’t sure whether to kiss him, hit him or throw up on him.
Relief flooded her body like a drug as she threw open the door of her car and marched across the car park, only stopping when she had two handfuls of Jannes’s shirt in her clenched fists.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ she managed to say through clenched teeth.
‘Um...hi to you too?’ Jannes said, his voice low and amused as he glanced down at her white-knuckled fingers still grasping at his shirt.
She could barely breathe with the relief of seeing him, and had to force in a breath to be able to yell at him. ‘You were meant to be at my place two hours ago!’
‘We...have an audience,’ he said, looking past her shoulder, and she could imagine the eyes of a couple of dozen relatives fixed on her and Jannes.
They both had parts to play, she remembered. The fact that she didn’t even know if she was angry with him or relieved, or delighted, didn’t really matter.