Steve went after me, all flowers and apologies, right in front of Tracy Barlow. I didn’t even let him get a word in before I slapped him. He deserved it. He’d turned down my proposal, and the humiliation of it all was still burning in my chest.
Later, my mum tried to cheer me up. “You and Steve are made for each other,” she said. “Why do I keep messing it up then? ” I asked her.
She told me that everyone messes things up, and it’s how you clean up afterwards that counts. I wanted to believe her. I love him. And I knew he still loved me, too.
But then he had to go and prove me wrong. He had a row with Tracy, of all people, and he was convinced I was up to my old tricks. I’d told him I was going to a new cleaning job. He didn’t believe me.
He thought I was sneaking around, seeing someone else. He was so paranoid, so suspicious, that he sent flowers to the Rovers to patch things up. They were from Tracy’s, the stingy bunch, and it just made everything worse. I stormed off towards the tram stop, my heart pounding.
He’d called me a liar, he’d doubted me, and I couldn’t take it. I just walked. They were all so busy worrying about me that they didn’t see what was right in front of them. Meanwhile, Glenda had been going through George’s post.
She’d found credit card statements, all these private documents, and she was convinced that his new girlfriend, Cassie, was conning him. She even had a photo of her getting out of a car that wasn’t a cab, with some man. “I reckon she’s up to her old tricks again,” Glenda said. But George wouldn’t listen.
He thought Glenda was just being her usual paranoid self. Glenda wasn’t the only one with suspicions. Abby was fuming. Her landlord, the slimy so-and-so, had let her flat get so damp and moldy that her little boy ended up in the hospital.
He was all apologies now, saying he’d sent in a team of specialists to fix it all, but it was too little, too late. She told him she was taking legal action. He didn’t like that one bit. The whole street was buzzing with trouble.
Kirk was trying to help at the florist’s, puffing and panting as he hauled buckets of water around. “This should be a new workout,” he joked. Tracy was gossiping about Daniel and Alya and who was picking up Bertie from school, a whole saga I couldn’t have cared less about. And in the pub, Steve was drinking alone, telling anyone who’d listen that he loved me and wasn’t going to give up on me.
Tracy told him to think of it like pulling off a plaster. He wasn’t having it. A couple of men almost came to blows outside. It was Abby’s landlord, and the bloke who’d been her new cleaning client, who turned out to be his son.
The son, a detective, had to step in and break it up. “Start acting your age and stop showing yourself up on the street. It’s pathetic,” he said. The landlord slunk off, muttering.
I didn’t know any of this. I was just walking, trying to clear my head. I ended up in a hotel bar, of all places. This bloke came over, all smiles, bought me a drink.
He was charming for a bit, until he got handsy. “Could I tempt you with a little nightcap in my room? ” he asked. I pushed him off.
“Get off me, you’re drunk,” I said. I told him I’d only had a drink with him because I felt sorry for him. That didn’t go down well. He started going on about how girls don’t troll hotel bars anymore, it’s all done online these days.
I’d had enough. I told him to get lost and call it a night. His bitter little rant followed me out the door. “Flaming men,” I muttered to myself.
I was done with the whole lot of them. But I wasn’t done with Steve. I couldn’t be. I just needed him to trust me.
I needed to know if there was any point in trying to make things right, or if his suspicion had already ruined everything for good.
