‘I am. But I don’t want to get Andrea into trouble.’ She looked so worried that Elijah’s ire subsided. Andrea shouldn’t have said anything, but he believed she had his best interests at heart. He would still have a word, but it would be a gentle one.
When Biscuit let out a bark, it made both him and Nora jump, and Elijah chuckled at the dog’s transformation: his tail was up once more, and his whole demeanour had lifted. He even looked as though he was smiling.
‘I don’t think he likes it when we squabble,’ Nora observed.
‘No, I don’t think he does either, so it’s best we don’t, isn’t it?’ He held out a hand for her to shake. ‘Friends?’
Nora laughed. ‘I wouldn’t go that far. Frenemies, more like.’
‘Frenemies it is.’ But when her hand slipped into his, the spark that travelled up his arm at her touch, ignited something in his chest.
He liked her, he realised. And not only that, he desired her, too.
Oh, dear, this wasn’t going to end well, was it?
CHAPTER TEN
Nora gazed at the menu in dismay, trying to find something tasty that wasn’t either loaded with carbs or wasn’t a sodding salad. And she was sick to bloody death of vegetables. Right now, she didn’t think she could eat another stick of celery or floret of broccoli without throwing up. Yet here she was, sitting around a table with Trinny and some of Trinny’s friends from work, in a gastro pub in Thornbury on a Saturday evening, contemplating an effin’ bowl of leaves.
It made her stomach churn. It also made her want to cry.
‘Go on,’ someone urged. ‘Let your hair down. You can go back on the diet tomorrow. Aren’t you allowed cheat meals?’
Nora kept her eyes glued to the menu and muttered a non-committal, ‘Hmm.’
Trinny said, ‘You can eat anything in moderation, Nora.’
Nora glared at her. Trinny should know better, since she knew the reason.
‘It’s true,’ Trinny insisted. ‘I’ve been reading…’ She ground to a halt and bit her lip.
‘I’ve heard that the keto diet is the way to go,’ someone else said. ‘I keep meaning to try it, but I like bread too much. I’d die if I had to give up bread. And pasta. I couldn’t live without pasta.’
‘What about chips? Hot, salty, vinegary chips. Mmm.’
‘Oh, yes, chips. I forgot about those. You can’t not have chips.’
You can,Nora thought,when you don’t have any choice.And surprisingly, people don’t die if they don’t eat bread or pasta. She was proof of that – although, right now, she felt as though life wasn’t worth living. She couldn’t go on like this.
Scanning the menu again in the hope of finding something to get her tastebuds tingling, Nora wished she hadn’t agreed to come out this evening. She just about had a handle on her boring food at home, but being here was testing her resolve.
No matter how often she read that getting a grip on diabetes was a marathon and not a sprint, and that she needed to be kind to herself and not to make too many changes at once, she was terrified what might happen if she didn’t get her blood glucose under control.
‘Imagine a life without chocolate?’ the woman on Trinny’s left said, and Nora felt like pushing her off her chair – because Nora wasn’timaginingit, she waslivingit, and chocolate was the thing she missed the most.
Maybe she’d have the butternut squash soup? But that was a starter, so would it be weird if she ordered it for her main? And was butternut squash considered a carby vegetable?
Oh, sod it. One meal wouldn’t hurt, and she’d been really good since her diagnosis. ‘I’ll have the focaccia with balsamic vinegar, olives and sun-dried tomato to start, followed by the burger with Monterey Jack cheese and triple cooked chips,’ she decided. She’d even have a dessert after, if she felt like it. If she was going to fall off the healthy eating wagon, she may as well do it in style: there was no point in half-measures.
And when Trinny offered to top up her wineglass, Nora didn’t object. She would simply have to go on an ultra-long walk tomorrow to burn off all the extra calories she would consume this evening.
The hangover (if that’s what it was) began even before Nora arrived home that evening. Or maybe it was something she’d eaten? The burger, perhaps?
It started with feeling nauseous, then a stomach ache followed, accompanied by a headache. Wearily, feeling like death warmed up, Nora collapsed into bed, exhausted. Then she felt so thirsty she could drink the Atlantic dry, so she had to fetch another glass of water. But of course, what goes in, must come out, so she couldn’t get to sleep because she needed to pee every five minutes. Not only that, she seemed to have been lying awkwardly, because she kept getting a kind of pins and needles in her toes, like a burning sensation, which saw her stick both feet out of the bottom of the bedcovers in the hope it would cool her trotters.
Things finally seemed to settle down after a while, and she was gratefully drifting off to sleep and thankful she didn’t have to get up for work in the morning, when an odd and uncomfortable fluttering in her chest made her sit up.
Bloody hell, that was all she needed – palpitations. She used to get them quite often, but since she’d stopped drinking so much cola and coffee, they’d eased off.
