Angie held a hand to her chest and felt her heart pounding beneath her ribs. It hadn’t stopped racing since she had fled the party, every part of her prickling with the adrenaline that her body had produced in response to the shock. She had barely heard a word that Maggie had spoken as they made their way back, Maggie to a taxi rank and she to her flat. She had just wanted to get back to the sanctity of her space so she could start to process what had just happened, although right now she wasn’t sure where to start.
She began with deep breathing exercises, in through her nose and out through her mouth, to try and calm herself into a state where she could at least think straight, and gradually her heart rate slowed.
Jax was in York. How long had he been here, with the potential to bump into her around every single corner she had turned? It must be at least three years. Angie tried to remember how new Hope’s relationship had been when they had first met, but the facts, such as they were, danced in her head and were impossible to catch. Angie hadn’t listened that hard, not really having any interest in Hope’s boyfriend.
Now she tried to delve deep into her memory for any snippets of information. He was a chef, she knew that. They had met at some do when he was doing the food and had spilled something down an expensive dress that Hope had been wearing. Angie remembered Hope telling the story, her eyes dancing with the sheer delight of it all, relishing how uncomfortable he had been about his mistake and how she had strung him along, knowing all the time that there would be other dresses.
What else? Angie squeezed her eyes shut as she tried to concentrate, but when she did that all she could see was Jax, open-palmed in abject apology to Hope, and then their embrace. Her Jax, in love with someone else.
She checked herself. She was being ridiculous. He wasn’t ‘her Jax’。 He hadn’t been for years. Hadn’t he left her for someone else when Romany was a baby? That relationship hadn’t lasted either, it seemed. He obviously didn’t do commitment, full stop.
And she couldn’t complain that he had someone new when she hadn’t wanted him anyway. It had been her decision not to keep in touch. She had been the one who had let the tenuous links between them fall away. That surely told her something. Whatever the two of them had had, it had broken when she became pregnant. Their relationship just hadn’t been strong enough to withstand the storm that an unplanned baby brought with it.
So, he had been in York all this time, she thought, yet she had never seen him. It wasn’t that surprising. York was a city and she’d hardly been keeping an eye open for him. Also, she was vegan now, so she wasn’t likely to be frequenting the kind of fine dining establishment that Jax ran, or even mix in the same circles as him. Hope’s circles. She had seen who they were at the party tonight and if it needed confirming, then that had done it – she and Hope were like chalk and cheese socially.
They were quite alike in other ways, though, Angie thought, she and Hope. Was that what had attracted Jax to her in the first place? Had he seen something of Angie in her and been drawn to it, maybe without even realising that it was happening?
She was being ridiculous now. Apart from anything else, Hope was beautiful and bound to attract men, regardless of her personality. But there was, Angie supposed, a possibility that she was the reason that Jax was in York. Well, not her exactly, but Romany, his daughter. Maybe he had moved to York to be near his child and had hoped that he would bump into her one day.
But how would he even recognise her? The thought of Jax walking the streets of York and staring at every girl of approximately the right age struck her as unbearably sad. Poor Jax, deprived of the chance to contact his own flesh and blood simply because Angie had decided that she did not want to send a forwarding address.
Angie uncurled herself and sat up. The low murmur of the television had stopped and there was no longer a line of light underneath her bedroom door. Romany must have gone to bed. Her baby, untroubled by the fact that her parents had been in the same room together that very night.
So, what should she do now? It would be easy enough to get hold of him. All she had to do was ask Hope. But what would she say? Hi Hope. Would it be okay if I arranged to have coffee with Daniel because, guess what! He’s the father of my teenage daughter! How weird is that!
No. She couldn’t do that. She could track him down herself. A chef named Daniel Jackson with a part-share in a restaurant in York couldn’t be that difficult to find.
But why would she? She didn’t want him. She didn’t want to do anything to spoil what Hope had with him. And, most importantly of all, Romany had made it very clear that she did not want to see him either.