The Man She Married: A gripping psychological thriller with a heart-pounding twist(5)

‘Ah well,’ he sounds unperturbed. ‘Maybe see you around. Meantime, stay away from dodgy lifts.’

I assumed that would be the last I ever saw of Dominic Gill. I was wrong.





Three





Alice





Then





‘So you survived the trip to the top floor?’

It’s nearly five weeks later, and Comida is catering its first directors’ lunch at Ellwood Archer. I’ve fully briefed my team of chefs and servers in advance but decide to show my face at the event so that the board have confidence in my commitment. So that they know I’m prepared to be hands-on if required. I’ve just emerged from the lift, and I’m heading towards the kitchen adjacent to the boardrooms.

‘Oh. Hi.’

I become flustered when I look up and see Dominic Gill, partly because I’m trying to balance a huge pile of table linens in my arms and partly because I’ve forgotten just how attractive he is. He’s had a haircut and ditched the gel and he’s wearing a better suit this time – one that fits really well. It makes him seem simultaneously taller and broader.

‘You got the job!’ I say with a delighted smile. ‘Congratulations! I’d shake your hand, only…’ I indicate the heap of linen.

‘I did.’ He fixes his tawny eyes on me. ‘And how about you? I’ve been thinking about you.’

‘You have? Goodness.’ It’s lame, but I’m too thrown to come up with a better response. Colour rushes to my cheeks.

‘How’s the sort-of boyfriend?’

It takes me a few seconds to realise that he means Richard from Tinder. Who eventually arranged a second date, during which the conversation was so shockingly clunky that we mutually decided not to go for a third. ‘Oh, it’s… that’s over.’

Dominic flashes a smile. He has large, square teeth which have been on the receiving end of top-flight dentistry. ‘Good. Then you’ve got no excuse not to have dinner with me.’



‘So you’re going on a date with him?’

I’ve phoned JoJo, crooking the phone against my shoulder as I lay out dresses on the bed in an attempt to make a decision.

‘Well, no, not really. We’re just going to go and grab some dinner.’

‘And that’s not a date because…?’

I don’t think I can explain to her what it is about Dominic that I find so unsettling. Maybe it’s because it’s been such a long time since I’ve met anyone naturally, organically; just by dint of them being in the same space and striking up a conversation. Or met anyone at all, really.

I got together with my first boyfriend, Josh, when I was eighteen and still at school. That relationship lasted nearly three years, until I was twenty-one. We ended it amicably, agreeing that in doing a lot of growing up, we’d grown apart. I’d barely had chance to get used to being single again before I was set up with Alex by a mutual friend.

Alex Lockwood. A junior barrister, he was handsome, exciting, alpha. I was smitten from the start, and when Mum died, I depended on him to steer me through the maze of bereavement. He became the centre of my world. If there had been more space in my brain, space that was not occupied with slowly losing my mother to cancer, and with adoration of my impressive boyfriend, it would have occurred to me that with Alex I was punching above my weight. I wasn’t alpha; I was definitely beta.

But I had my emotional blinkers on and failed to see the signs. On my twenty-sixth birthday he proposed, and we started planning our wedding for the following year. Or rather, I did. Alex wasn’t very interested in when or where it happened. This was another red flag that I failed to spot. Instead, I ploughed on, obsessing over party favours and cake stands. I found the perfect dress: a beautiful silk chiffon creation by Philippa Lepley.

Then, less than a week before the ceremony, with all my carefully curated arrangements in place, Alex called the engagement off. He wasn’t sure, he told me. Not sure how he’d feel about me in ten, or even five years’ time. He’d confused compassion for my orphan status with love. But he didn’t love me. Or not ‘like that’, as he put it. Whatever that meant.

Planning a wedding is stressful, but trust me; it’s nothing compared with un-planning one. Returning gifts, phoning guests to explain. Hiding the dress, shrouded in its ivory garment bag, in the loft. For months I was wracked with self-doubt, paralysed by lack of self-worth. I refused to go to social events, instead throwing myself into my business plan for Comida.

Two years later, with the world moving on around me and Alex married to someone else, I took up online dating without a shred of enthusiasm. I endured a string of soul-sapping bad dates, none of which ever attained the status of relationship. In some cases, there was a hint of a spark that quickly fizzled. In others, there was not only the lack of a spark, but a lack of attraction so extreme that it bordered on revulsion.

There was Paul, who spent all evening talking me through the frankly grotesque assortment of inkings on his body. There was a Uruguayan called Cristian, who insisted on coaching me to speak Spanish and whose kissing technique involved licking my face. There was Terry, who looked like a long-term death-row inmate and who cheerfully admitted to having downloaded the photo of a handsome stranger to use on his profile. And Hugh, who got very drunk and started sobbing uncontrollably as he recounted the story of his ex-girlfriend’s cheating. Even worse than those – which had at least provided amusing dinner party anecdotes – were the unremarkable men whose names I could no longer remember, or whose faces I couldn’t recall.