Excerpt from "From This Day"

 

Excerpt from the new book, From This Day. To be published by the end of March. Here you go... 


KATHERINE O’CONNOR, aka Katie to her friends, had in the scheme of things had a pretty good day. She hadn’t slept through her alarm, thus she’d caught the bus on time. True, she hadn’t been able to read her book, a gripping mystery she couldn’t wait to finish, and she’d had to stand, but the woman on one side was wearing a very nice perfume which wasn’t overpowering and the man on the other appeared engrossed in a podcast and emitted only the occasional chuckle. All in all, it hadn’t been the usual unpleasant trip to work. When she got there, she had time to get to the bathroom, check her windblown hair and repair her make up—what there was of it—and the day at work had started pretty good. In fact, it had gone extremely well.

Until she’d seen the photo. The photo of her and him.

Now Katie pushed open the front door to the flat on Bluebell Road, pausing as she shut it behind her, and she listened. There was no sound. No music, no telly, no sound of someone taking an afterwork shower or cooking a meal. Lydia and Julia must still be at work.

Plus the heating hadn’t been turned on and the flat was freezing.

She went into her bedroom, shut the door behind her and for a moment, a long awkward moment, she leant against the door and closed her eyes.

Just thinking about him made her stomach clench, made her heart race, made her nerves fizz, and none of it was in a good way.

It was all, every clench, every heartbeat and every fizz of her nerves, all in an entirely bad way.

A mortifying way and after the past year, she’d thought mortification was done and dusted.

She shook herself, pushed herself away from the door and shrugged out of her work outfit and into trackpants and a super warm hoodie. She used the bathroom, and in the kitchen, she turned on the heating, filled the kettle with water and waited for it to boil.

Unfortunately, waiting only sent her thoughts all the way back around to him and what had become, in her lexicon of life events, a portent of things to come.

She buried her face in her hands as the flush of embarrassment and the burning heat of humiliation slid uncomfortably over her.

She couldn’t go to work tomorrow. Word would have got around the firm, and she was not someone who could just laugh it off. She would have to leave. She would have to resign and leave London. It wasn’t like it was her career that would be in tatters. What career? She just worked as administration support.

And she could find another job. Eventually.

She took a deep breath as she dropped her hands.

Or she could darn well face up to it, head into work tomorrow and just—pretend it had never happened.

She brightened at the thought. If she saw him, and of course she was bound to, she could just act as if nothing had at happened. She could be the opposite of aloof but in a distant, can’t-read-anything-into-it way.

That would work. She chewed her thumbnail. It was about the only option she had so she would make sure it worked. (END)

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