Page 49 of The Walk of Fame

Never let them know you care.

‘Are you all right, honey? You don’t look too good.’ The check-in woman’s pristine make-up hid a homely face full of concern.

‘I’m fine, really.’ Juno managed a weak smile as she took the boarding pass in trembling hands.

If she could just get on the plane before she broke down, she knew she’d be able to survive this. ‘But thank you for asking.’

She boarded in a daze, desperate not to think about anything. But the horror of her final moments with Mac kept replaying in her head.

There’s no such thing as love.

That was what he’d told Gina. And he’d meant every word. He’d never needed her. That had all been some infantile fantasy that she’d created to justify needing him.

He’d warned her not to make him into something he wasn’t and yet she’d insisted on doing just that. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have fallen in love with a man who could never have loved her back?

She’d wanted to tell him how she felt. Had even harboured some foolish, last-ditch fantasy during the long restless night that if she told him of her feelings he would declare his undying love in return. But optimism had never been her strong suit and his cold dismissal once she’d told him of her plans had doused the last flicker of hope.

Her heart wasn’t just broken, it was shattered, humiliated. Telling him she loved him this morning—and hearing what he’d told Gina—would only have humiliated her more and made it that much harder to pick up the pieces and move on.

The tears trickled down her face as she stared out of the tiny window at the vast geometric sprawl of Los Angeles. As the plane dipped into a turn she caught a glimpse of the jagged coastline and the plateau of the Pacific beyond. She imagined Mac in his magnificent glass and steel house by the sea—no doubt ready to move on to his next conquest. She wanted to be angry with him. To shout and scream and rail against the pain.

But as the jumbo’s engines surged, lifting it above the clouds, the anger she wanted to feel refused to come. All she felt was devastation, and a crippling sense of loss.

He’d told her she would get hurt. Why hadn’t she listened?

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

‘DAISY’S absolutely right, you look dreadful.’ Dr Maya Patel’s capable voice did nothing to sooth Juno’s misery, or the feeling that she’d failed herself and everyone around her. ‘Why don’t you tell me the symptoms and I’m sure we’ll be able to cure whatever ails you?’

Only if you have a cure for self-pity.

It had been four weeks since she’d come home. Four weeks since her ‘fabulous adventure’ had turned into a complete disaster. A complete disaster that she knew was entirely of her own making.

So why couldn’t she snap out of her self-pity?

She’d thrown herself into her work at the shop, making sure she had no time to dwell on the situation. She’d handled the inexplicable burst of tears when she’d had her period on her first day back. She’d deflected the flood of calls from tabloid reporters trying to persuade her to sell her story until they’d dwindled to a mere trickle. And she’d weathered the storm of emotions when a poster from the movie she and Mac had seen together had been pasted up on the huge billboard at the end of Portobello Market.

But, despite all her best efforts, the impact of what had happened kept catching her unawares. She’d lost weight, she couldn’t sleep, she was still bursting into tears at the most inopportune moments and she’d even thrown up several times in the last few days.

She’d turned into a self-indulgent misery guts and she was starting to hate herself.

And, as of yesterday, she had Daisy on her case too. Once Daisy had arrived back from her honeymoon, she’d taken one look at Juno and immediately booked her a GP’s appointment.

Of course Daisy had probed about what had happened with Mac, but Juno had been too humiliated to tell her the truth, insisting she just had a bit of a virus. In fact she’d been so convincing, she’d begun to wonder if maybe she did have a virus.

She hoped so, because she couldn’t allow herself to mourn something that had never been real a moment longer. ‘I think I may have a stomach bug.’

Maya nodded sagely. ‘You look exhausted. Have you been having trouble sleeping?’

‘Yes, a bit.’

‘Mood swings?’

She nodded. How did Maya know that?

‘How about your waterworks? Do you need to go to the toilet a lot at the moment?’

‘Actually, yes, I suppose so.’ Was the woman clairvoyant?