Free Escape for Christmas by Ruth Saberton

between him and Aoife O’Shaughnessy, Gemma couldn’t help feeling insecure.
    It was mad, she knew it was, but since when had jealousy ever been rational? That would have made Othello a very dull play. Realistically, Gemma knew that she should be jealous of some of the stunning models and actresses Cal had dated during the good old, bad old days of his Premier League glory. There was Laura Lake the pop princess – famous for her tiny shorts and suggestive dancing, which regularly sent the morality brigade into fits of outrage (“Sure, and didn’t she have the smelliest feet?” said Cal) – or Fifi Royale (“Jaysus, she had more hair extensions than brain cells!”), both of whom were gorgeous with flat tummies and flicky hair. But Gemma never worried about them. Neither did it bother her when some kiss-and-tell slapper came out of the woodwork (“Feck, I probably did shag her, Gem – but, Jaysus, I was so off my face back then it could have been Sister fecking Wendy and I wouldn’t have noticed”). Gemma was only human and she wasn’t a fan of any of this. Still, she loved Cal and this meant accepting that his past was more chequered than a chessboard. Besides, she knew that what they had ran far deeper than the shallow trappings of fame or looks or whatever made great PR. Even more importantly, none of those girls could make a cream sponge to match Gemma’s.
    Aoife O’Shaughnessy, however, was in another league altogether. She was beautiful, intelligent, Irish and a Catholic; she shared Cal’s history, she’d been his childhood sweetheart and, here was the crux of the problem, Mammy South had put her on a pedestal. What would happen if one day Cal realised that, much as he loved Gemma, she would never really be the good Irish colleen he needed?
    Gemma sighed. She was being bloody ridiculous. Cal wasn’t interested in Aoife. He’d told her that enough times, almost to the point of exasperation. She flicked through the Facebook pictures – for somebody so smart Aoife had rubbish security – hoping against hope that she’d see a picture of the gorgeous Irish girl with a man. There were always male friends but Gemma had yet to see Aoife snuggled up to somebody or, better still, snogging his face off. Gemma’s page was crammed with images of her and Cal, although she had to admit that some of these were quite old. But maybe Aoife was far too professional for all that?
    “Get a grip!” she told herself furiously. This was becoming an unhealthy obsession.
    Leaving Facebook, she tried to distract herself with the property porn on Rightmove, but today cute cottages and converted barns weren’t doing it for her. A few days ago she’d Googled a cottage outside Falmouth that she’d liked. Maybe she’d check it out again, now that the dream of Penmerryn Creek was over? The browser history should have saved it.
    Hang on. That was odd. Apart from today’s trawl round Facebook and Rightmove, the browser history was empty. Somebody had cleared it. An icy hand clenched Gemma’s heart. She certainly hadn’t deleted it, which meant only one thing: Cal had. She frowned. This was really odd. Why would Cal do that?
    There’s a rational explanation, she told herself while her brain went into overdrive imagining the very worst. Deep breath, Gemma! Breathe! Maybe he was looking at bloke stuff? Guys did that, didn’t they? (And after all, hadn’t she just taken a bestselling mummy porn novel upstairs with her?) Or maybe when the fuse blew the computer had reset itself somehow? She supposed that was possible. There was nothing sinister.
    Hating herself but unable to stop, Gemma navigated to Cal’s personal email, breathing a sigh of relief when she was able to get straight in. If there were any problems then she knew that he’d have changed the password. Feeling horribly guilty for spying on him, she closed the browser and shut the laptop hastily. Lord. What was getting into her? This lack of sex business was making