A Sense of Guilt ✔

Chapter 29

Katherine sat in Clare's sterile office as she recounted the details of Joe's affair. 'I guess you expected me to say something like this?' she murmured meeting Clare's eyes.

'No, of course not,' Clare said her small smile never wavering. 'But I did sense that there was a deeper issue between you and Joe, something that you needed to work through.'

Katherine let out a weary sigh, relieved to finally have unburdened herself. 'So how do we go about fixing this?'

'There's no one size fits all solution. The main thing is that you both want to work it out.'

Katherine maintained a fixed smile even as her throat constricted. 'Yes, we do. Before this happened I would have said our relationship was pretty much perfect. Frankly, this has me blindsided. It's not like Joe, not the Joe I know, but it seems this girl has got under his skin.' She shook her head thinking that didn't sound quite right. 'She's his ex, his first proper girlfriend so I suppose he has a soft spot for her.'

'And how are you feeling?'

Katherine swallowed hard. 'Devastated, Shannon might as well have taken a knife to my heart.'

'Don't you think it was Joe who did this to you? How do you feel about his part in it?'

Katherine briefly closed her eyes contemplating the question. Of course it was Joe she should focus on, Shannon was nobody but she absolutely loathed her. She could easily imagine putting her hands around her scrawny neck or ripping out the hair extensions she probably had.

'If it had been anyone else but her, this wouldn't have happened,' she said remembering how sweet and attentive Joe had been. 'Everything was perfect until she came along.'

'Are you quite sure about that? Maybe Joe's affair was an attempt to shake things up?'

Kat sighed not hiding her annoyance. These were hardly insightful questions, nothing she hadn't pondered over a thousand times already. 'Do you think Joe wanted to cancel the wedding, and this was his way of going about it?' she asked instead.

'I can't tell you that,' Clare said jotting down a quick note.

Then what's the point of this?

'I've agreed to postpone the wedding,' she said, trying the words out loud for the first time. 'I don't want to but at the moment it feels like we're in limbo, and Joe's pressurising me to.'

Clare looked down, quickly scribbling some more notes. 'Would you like to bring Joe with you next time? There's a lot of issues here that you probably need to work on together.'

'Next time?' Katherine glanced at the clock and realised her time was up. She pushed her chair back and stood up. 'I'm not sure if he'll want to, or if I even want him to.' She didn't want to find herself feeling ambushed again.

'Well, I'll make you an appointment for the same time next week?' She looked at Katherine expectantly.

'Okay, I'll speak to Joe, see what he thinks.'

~~~

Following her session with Clare, Katherine had gone to the gym hoping that her mind would switch off if she threw herself into a workout. However, after half an hour on the cross trainer, she gave it up as a bad job. Her mind with so overloaded she couldn't cope with the physical exertion.

'Not like you to quit so easily,' Danielle said sitting down next to her in the coffee bar.

'It's been a long week,' Katherine said forcing herself to smile. 'You didn't have to join me, I'd have waited here until you were done.'