‘But it’s the whereabouts of Lord Jason I need to know about,’ she said. ‘Can’t you think of anywhere he might be?’
‘Well, let me think …’
But Linda’s thinking was disturbed by a hammering at the door.
‘Is that him?’
Jenna rushed to answer it, but quickly slammed it shut again on seeing the flash of bulbs from the landing.
‘Jenna, Jenna! What have you got to say about the picture in circulation all over the internet? Jenna!’
‘Oh God,’ she said, running back to Linda. ‘We’re under siege. Somebody’s tipped the press off that I’m here.’
‘Oh dear. What are we going to do?’
‘I’ll call the police, see if I can get them thrown out of the building at least. They shouldn’t be in your communal hall.’
‘Shame that,’ said Linda. ‘I were going to run o
ut to the offy. If I’m Lady Harville, I ought to be on the champagne.’
It had been a stupid idea to storm off without his mobile or his wallet.
Jason could see that now.
In fact, he could see that storming in general was a bit pathetic and childish really.
He wished to God he hadn’t done it.
If he’d kept his temper and stayed with Jenna, he wouldn’t now be crossing a wet wheat field with no idea at all whether he was heading in the right direction for Bledburn.
He hadn’t taken the road back for fear of being pursued and picked up again by Harville and his goons. Luckily they had been so preoccupied with Deano, they had given him a head start. He’d been out of there like a bat out of hell.
But he needed to get back to Bledburn as fast as possible. He couldn’t say he was Deano Diamond’s biggest fan, but he felt he ought to get him some help.
Jumping a stile into a field of nervous sheep, he thought over Harville’s plan. Could it have worked for him? Would Jenna have believed that he, Jason, had decked Deano? And would she then have dumped him?
He thought the answer to the first question was yes. It would be perfectly easy for Jenna to believe he was capable of using his fists on his rival.
He had shown her time and time again what a mardy bugger he was.
‘You need to chill, son,’ he muttered to himself, start-ling a nearby sheep into bleating.
But would she dump him over it?
He found this question more difficult to answer, because it raised a few more, some of which he didn’t really want to think about.
He didn’t doubt that she loved him now, wholeheartedly and passionately. But now was still only a few months distant from their first meeting. And he knew, from bitter experience, that a relationship can start as promisingly as it likes – it still doesn’t mean it will last.
As he tramped through the fields, his mind went back, almost against his will, to those heady early days with Mia, back at school. They had been the Romeo and Juliet of the year, without all the suicides and suchlike. Always getting into trouble with the teachers for their public displays of affection and being told to ‘get a room’ by their eye-rolling peers.
‘Pretty hard to get a room when you’re fifteen and skint,’ he had said once. ‘But if you can get one for us, we’ll take you up on it, no probs.’
In the end, a room had not been necessary.
He and Mia had grown up together, their development into adults entwined with, and perhaps inhibited by, each other. Towards the end, she had accused him of suffocating her, and he had been hurt. She had never said she didn’t want him! He had assumed she wanted to spend all her free time with him, as he did with her.
Perhaps there was a lesson in that. Perhaps he shouldn’t be living with Jenna at this early stage. Perhaps she would tire of him, as Mia had done.