“The last thing I need is rest,” says Jack, coming toward her, his face suddenly alight with mischief.
He bends to kiss her neck as his hands roughly pull up her skirt.
No part of her wants this right now, she’s just not in the right headspace, yet she can’t help but feel appeased that he does. It means that they’re okay; that he doesn’t know anything she doesn’t want him to know, and that even though Ali seems to be doing her best to turn his head, he still wants her.
“Jack,” she says, pulling away from him.
He grabs her behind, pressing himself up against her. “Come on,” he coaxes.
“Everyone’s downstairs,” she says. “They’ll be wondering where we’ve got to.”
“So?”
“So, let’s go and have one more drink, say our goodnights and then come up,” she says, not knowing whether that’s her real intention or she’s just saying it to cool his ardor.
“Fine,” he says stroppily, as he tucks his shirt back into his trousers. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
As she walks down the stairs, Rachel forces herself to clear her head of any feelings for Noah and any suspicious thoughts of Ali. Though, the fact that the two of them are now intrinsically linked makes it all the harder.
“Oh hi,” she says in surprise, when she finds Paige leaning against the kitchen worktop, deep in thought. “You okay?”
Paige smiles. “I was miles away.”
“Noah’s just gone up to bed,” says Rachel, unable to think of anything else to say.
“I’ll go and check on him in a minute,” says Paige. “But first, I need to tell you something.”
Rachel stops pouring white wine into Ali’s glass as she tries to guess what Paige is about to say. She can’t possibly know about what had just happened with Noah. Ali certainly hasn’t had the opportunity to say anything yet and Rachel imagines her first port of call, when she does, is going to be Jack.
As she looks at Paige with her heart in her mouth, she can’t believe that she’d rather it be about Jack and Ali because the alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.
Paige looks to the door before turning back to face her. “There’s something going on,” she says.
An ice-cold terror floods Rachel’s insides. “What do you mean?” she asks. “In what way?”
Paige looks down at her feet, as if contemplating whether to go on. “I was having a cigarette around the back of the restaurant tonight,” she says.
Rachel’s brain feels like it’s being hot-wired, the sparks flying off in all different directions as she backtracks to what Paige might have seen or heard. If she’d witnessed any part of what had gone on between her and Noah, Rachel’s sure that Paige, being Paige, would not be calmly standing here, drinking a glass of Merlot. Still, she’s too scared to test the theory by asking her to elaborate.
“And so I happened to be outside the open window of the ladies’ room,” Paige goes on, looking at Rachel with almost a grimace.
Rachel freezes.
“Ali was in there,” says Paige.
Rachel’s insides contract into a coil, suppressing her airways. “And…？”
“She was talking to someone…” says Paige, her eyes unable to meet Rachel’s. “About you.”
Rachel puts the wine bottle down on the worktop and stares unwaveringly at Paige. “What … what did she say?” she asks, her mouth drying up.
“She was talking about a situation that I didn’t quite catch, and then the other woman said, ‘Does his wife know?’”
Rachel leans against the fridge, desperate for support. Her heart is hammering through her chest as she takes in short, sharp breaths. She forces herself to look at Paige to gauge what else she might know, but there is nothing more than pity etched across her features.
“She could have been talking about anyone,” says Rachel, without conviction.
Paige edges closer. “I’d have been inclined to think so, too, if it weren’t for what happened earlier in the evening.”
Rachel looks at her with wide eyes, urging her to go on.
“Jack and I were dancing,” starts Paige. “Just fooling around. I don’t know where you were—I couldn’t find you.”
Rachel pictures herself with Noah and battles to stop the flush of color that is creeping up her cheeks. Yet the harder she tries, the hotter she becomes.
“Anyway, Ali came up to us and whispered something in Jack’s ear that made him stop dancing.”