Written in the Stars by Ali Harris Page B

him. I believed that I had a chance to make the right choice and so, despite the fear that had encased my being for so long that I wasn’t destined or deserving of a happy ending, I said yes.
    As we lock eyes now and I’m pulled back into this moment, I tell myself again that I’ve done the right thing. I know Adam loves me and he’s not going to leave me. He won’t. I gaze around, taking in every inch of the beautiful hidden garden. Suddenly Adam is kissing my neck and as I turn and meet his lips with mine I feel myself letting go of the past and swirling towards a happy, sunny, floral oblivion – my future safe and secure in his hands.

Chapter 15
    Bea Bishop has changed her relationship status to ‘Single’.
    The luxury apartment of 5, Canary Wharf Place feels alien when I walk in. It’s a giant shiny spaceship of a building that doesn’t resemble a home in any way, let alone mine for the past five years. I walk robotically through the communal entrance and towards the lifts, observing the shiny lockers and the modern paintings like I’m seeing them for the first time. Heart pounding, I glance at Demetri, the security guard, whom I catch staring at me, before quickly looking back at his computer screen without acknowledging me. Perhaps he doesn’t recognise me wearing the grubby old T-shirt and gardening jeans I pulled on this morning. Or with my new short hair. I chopped it off in Loni’s bathroom the night after my non-wedding. Loni stood behind me as I wept in front of the mirror and I could see she was fighting back tears too. I’d been growing my hair ever since I met Adam and the act of cutting it had felt like leaving him for a second time.
    ‘Shhh, shhh,’ Loni had said soothingly, as she’d brushed the tatty tendrils before gently tidying the ends with some proper hairdressing scissors so they fell in soft waves around my jaw. ‘You’ve always been too beautiful to be hidden behind all that hair. This is much more you. You look like my girl again . . .’
    And I do feel more like me. I haven’t missed my wardrobe of suits, my rails of colour co-ordinated blouses and skirts, the high heels and the expensive jewellery that Adam loved to buy me. I glance down at my bare ring finger. OK, that’s a lie. I have missed my engagement ring. I keep finding myself circling it with the thumb and forefinger of my right hand just to feel some pressure there. The air around it seems lighter too, colder, like that one finger has been relegated to a social Siberia by the other fingers.
    Which is where I feel I’ve been for the past two weeks, too. I’ve barely spoken to anyone except Loni, Cal and Milly. She’s persisted with me where all my other friends have gradually stopped ringing, texting or even sending me messages on Facebook.
    ‘You have to take your life off pause and work out what to do next,’ Milly said last night on the two-week anniversary of my non-wedding.
    ‘I know, I know,’ I’d said, staring blankly at some terrible early evening game show and pulling at a stray thread in my pyjamas as Loni delivered soup and sandwiches to my bed.
    ‘And that means going back to the flat, collecting your stuff and moving in with me.’
    ‘But I can’t!’ I’d protested, nearly spilling my soup in my horror.
    ‘Of course you can!’
    ‘I can’t face Adam . . .’
    ‘You don’t have to. He’s gone away for a while. So you need to get on a train tomorrow, go pick your stuff up and I will meet you a couple of hours later and bring you back to mine where you will stay indefinitely. That isn’t a request, by the way. It’s an order.’
    ‘But-but . . . I can’t just leave! What about—’
    ‘I’ve already arranged it with Loni. You have to go back to work and sort yourself out. You can’t take sick leave forever . . . you’ll get the sack!’
    ‘I’m a temp, Milly,’ I’d reminded her. ‘I can’t be sacked. And besides, Nick has been very understanding. He said I could take as