Page 30 of Mad About You

Every time Harriet looked at him, she heard the tone in which he’d spoken about her.AndI will feel every second of it.She shivered anew.

As the lights dimmed, a man approached their seats, doing the crab-like scuttle beloved of roadies trying to remove something unwanted from a stage while the gig was underway. The:if I bend over, no one can see mestance.

‘Lorna? Lorna Everett! I knew it was you!’ he said.

He knelt down in front of them. He was thirty-something and attractive, in a careless sort of way: mid-length brown hair pushed back from his face, five o’clock shadow, jeans with trailing hems.

‘…Gethin?’ Lorna said, putting her drink down with a bump. ‘Oh my God! How are you?’

‘Good thanks! I’ve not seen you since the accident!’

‘The one where I fell down a manhole, broke my leg in three places, and chipped my kneecap?’

‘Yes! Oof. Hope it’s healed now?’

‘My career in the Royal Ballet was over, but yes I can walk.’

‘Fuck, that’s awful. I felt so responsible as we were both messing around at the time,’ Gethin said.

‘So responsible you failed to visit me in hospital,’ Lorna snorted.

Hmm. It must’ve really bothered Lorna, as she wasn’t the resentful type.

‘I did come to visit you,’ Gethin frowned.

‘… What?’

‘I came to see you on the ward!’

‘Bollocks you did! Did you …?’

Harriet and Roxy sipped their Prosecco with wide eyes.

Gethin lowered his voice further out of deference to the adverts starting.

‘You seemed quite out of it. You’d had a lot of morphine. You told me you were Catherine of Aragon, Henry the Eighth’s first wife. You accused me of being infatuated with Anne Boleyn and plotting to behead you. Then you screamed at the nurse for more “special syrup” and told me to fuck off.’

Harriet and Roxy stifled considerable laughter and Lorna appeared temporarily, and deeply uncharacteristically, speechless.

‘Ah …’ Lorna said, after a pause. ‘While obviously I was not a Tudor queen, had I been Catherine and had you been Henry, this would have been correct.’

‘It was Leeds General Infirmary, but yes, your grip on the fifteen-hundreds was sound. I did try to message as well but your phone got smashed in the fall and I assume you had a different number afterwards? Or blocked me, hah. For my wife-murdering.’

Oh dear. Harriet could see Gethin from IT – who’d legendarily disgracefully withheld a shag, and then pastoral care – might have been misrepresented. A revised history must be written.

‘Oh … this is a cock-up,’ Lorna said, weakly.

‘You run a restaurant, I heard on the grapevine? Stalked you on Twitter, if I’m honest.’

Ooh,Harriet thought.

‘Yeah.’ It was hard to tell in this light but was Lorna … blushing? ‘Divertimento up on Otley Road in Headingley.’

‘That is so cool. It’s yours? You’re the owner?’

‘The debt-ridden owner, but yes, it’s mine.’

‘Wow! I’m still doing shitty corporate IT jobs. You are really living your dream.’

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