Chapter 19
19
KARA
It was already dark, cold, foggy and there was three inches of snow on the ground when Kara opened the boot of the taxi van to load it up with luggage.
‘How can you have so many suitcases?’ Kara asked Drea, using every ounce of strength her biceps possessed to haul yet another suitcase into the back of the vehicle that would whisk them to the airport. ‘Just how? Are we going for a week or are you fleeing the country?’
She’d counted four cases so far, and the driver had helped with the first two before claiming a bad back and retreating into the vehicle. At which point Drea had given her a desperate shrug and said, ‘I can’t risk breaking a nail. I’m getting married.’
Kara put her hands on her hips, bent over, trying to get her breath back. ‘Can I just check how often you’re going to use the “I’m getting married” card. Only, if it’s going to go on, I’m going to start using the “I’ve called off my wedding and I’m heartbroken” card to get me out of manual labour.’
Drea put her perfectly manicured hand through hers. ‘Are you heartbroken? Still? Because I feel that other than taking to your bed for two days, you don’t seem to be sitting with your feelings.’
Kara wrapped her in a hug, appreciating the concern. ‘I don’t want to sit with my feelings because it only makes me want to go smash Josh’s windows and I’m trying really hard not to get arrested before your wedding.’
‘Good plan. Okay, let’s go before you change your mind.’
Desperate to get out of the snow that was beginning to fall thick and fast again, they clambered into the back seat of the van. While Kara shook out her feet to get the thick white slush off her boots, Drea clicked her seatbelt on while having a minor moan to herself. ‘I told Mum we’ll meet her at the airport because I’m trying to minimise my exposure to her. She has an opinion on every detail of the next week and I’m scared too much gritting my teeth will pop off a veneer.’
Kara didn’t respond. Their mum being a lot was nothing new. As the car pulled out of the street, she took in the dark sky above them and was grateful that in less than twenty-four hours she’d be in the sunshine. And yes, she should be wearing a white dress and saying, ‘I do’, but right now she’d settle for a pina colada and double scoop of coconut ice cream on the beach.
‘Anyway,’ Drea went on. ‘I want to hear everything about your encounters at work and with Josh this morning. What happened?’ Drea asked. ‘And leave out nothing.’
Kara rewound her day, back to the start when she’d walked into the Clydeside Studios with Tress, and then pressed play, mapping out everything that happened afterwards. Drea didn’t interrupt until they got to the bit where Kara left the meeting and Josh was in the reception area with Corbin Jacobs.
‘He was not!’ she gasped. ‘You know, screw it – we could still detour and pan his windows. So what did you do?’
‘Erm,’ Kara said, a little shamefaced, ‘I very boldly and bravely ran out of there like my arse was on fire.’
Drea pursed her lips. ‘Not exactly a superhero move, but okay.’
‘I know. Not my finest moment. But anyway, so then…’ On she went, laying out chapter two of the sorry tale, the one that was set in her old flat and that ended with her putting him on the spot. ‘I hit yet another all-time low by giving him a hypothetical scenario – if I agreed to still marry him, would he drop Corbin and the studio as clients and defend me instead? He didn’t say yes.’
‘Oh love, I’m so sorry. What an arse he truly is.’ Drea took her hand, her sympathy making tears pool on Kara’s bottom lids. She blinked them back and cleared her throat before answering Drea’s inevitable question. ‘What would you have done if he’d agreed? Apart from panic, because I already cancelled his flight.’
‘Yeah, he did mention that.’ Kara said, before falling silent for a second, as she contemplated Drea’s question. ‘I don’t know. The weird thing is…’ She was admitting this to Drea before she’d even admitted it to herself. ‘There was part of me that was relieved that he didn’t. How could I marry him when I couldn’t count on him to have my back? Or to put me first? I know Clydeside is one of his biggest clients, but he could have handled this another way. Instead, he just went straight into damage control, and this time, I was the damage.’
‘I get it and I agree. You deserve better. I told Ollie he should have married you when you asked him.’
‘I was eight and I just wanted his bike,’ Kara spluttered.
Drea cackled so loudly the driver did a welfare check in the rear-view mirror. ‘That’s exactly what he said when I spoke to him earlier. Anyway, you can stay with me and Seb as long as you want.’
‘Thanks, Drea.’
It was one of those beautiful sister moments, until Drea added, ‘But not too long because you spend an inordinate amount of time in bed and in the bath. There’s always your old room at Mum’s.’
Kara shook her head, a rueful smile. ‘I’d rather go back to Josh. Or sleep in my car. A Mini can be surprisingly roomy when it’s the best option.’
‘See, you should have married Ollie. You’d have got the bike, half of that swanky townhouse in Park Circus and an LA crash pad. You really are such a disappointment.’ She pivoted to the next fleeting thought that went through her mind. ‘You know what I don’t understand though?’
‘Empathy?’ Kara went with her best guess, but Drea refused to rise to it.
‘I don’t understand what’s happening with Casey Lowden. I feel like she’s letting you take the fall and all you were doing was defending her.’
Kara nodded thoughtfully. ‘I know what you’re saying, but the bottom line is that she didn’t ask me to step in. It was my choice, so everything that’s happened to me since is down to me. I don’t blame her in the least. Maybe she’d rather have handled it a different way.’
‘Yeah, well, I hope you hear from her.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Kara countered honestly. ‘I don’t regret it and I’d do it again, so it’s all on me.’
Before Drea could respond, the car veered off the motorway and onto the slip road to the airport, sending her into a full-on flap. ‘Eek, we’re only five minutes from the airport. Okay, let me just check everything again. Passport, itinerary…’
While Drea lost herself in her oversize bag, Kara took the moment to check her phone. Two more missed calls from Ollie. Argh! The sooner they were in the same place the better because all this phone tag was driving her crazy. She cleared the notifications, before flicking onto social media. The story and video of Sienna was trending on X, and all over her Facebook and Instagram. She no longer had TikTok, after realising she could spend endless hours scrolling IKEA hacks, even though she didn’t need any furniture and she couldn’t use an electric saw if her life depended on it.
She was about to shut it down and put her phone away when she spotted a pap photo of Corbin Jacobs, walking out of his house wearing a medical boot on one foot. According to his spokesman (his name wasn’t mentioned but step forward Josh Jackson), it was ‘a minor injury sustained while taking part in martial arts training for a potential movie role. More details to be released at a later date.’
Suffering from a sudden bout of dickhead-induced nausea, Kara tossed her phone into her handbag, just as they pulled into the drop-off zone at the airport.
The driver grabbed a trolley from the stand, but that was as far as his help with the luggage went, so it was down to Kara to wrestle the cases into the luggage equivalent of a Jenga tower, and then push it, while trying to hold on to the top case so it didn’t fall off.
The terminal building was packed, and Kara presumed that was because it was a busy time, with people returning home after spending the New Year celebrations in Scotland. Once upon a time she’d known a lovely Irish guy who did the very same thing.
‘I’m a gold member of their loyalty programme, so we get to go in this queue,’ Drea directed her to a priority queue, and Kara changed course like an F1 driver taking a hairpin bend. ‘Mum texted and said she’s running late and we should go on through. She’ll meet us in the lounge.’
Kara didn’t want to admit that she was a little relieved. She couldn’t face recounting the whole story of her day to her mum right now. In fact, there was only one person she was desperate to see. Their wait was only twenty minutes or so to get to the front of the line and the whole time, Kara anxiously scanned the terminal for Ollie, but there was no sign of him. She’d been fretting about him ever since the Sienna story broke. All she wanted was to sit down with him and a large glass of wine and make sure he was okay.
When they finally got to the desk, they handed over their passports to a slightly harassed-looking lady behind the counter, who scanned them and then requested that the suitcases be put on the scales. Again, Drea eyed Kara with a pleading expression.
‘All right, all right,’ she said, manhandling the cases from the trolley one by one until her biceps were on fire. She’d need to collect them tonight at Heathrow, and then do all this again tomorrow morning when they flew out to San Francisco, en route to Honolulu.
‘I’m afraid your flight to London is currently delayed for two hours, so you’re now scheduled to depart at 8p.m.’
Drea visibly paled. ‘But I just checked it before we left home and it said no delays.’
‘I’m sorry. It’s the snow and the fog. We have had a weather warning running all day…’ The tension showed in her tight smile. She’d probably had the same reaction from every single passenger she’d checked in.
Kara struck ‘ground crew’ off the list of potential jobs now that she was unemployed. She’d rather deal with Corbin Jacobs than with hundreds of irate customers in one night.
Drea was still under the impression that arguing would make this woman phone the pilot and say, ‘Get your tea down, and get your jacket on – ignore the fact that it’s like pea soup out there and fire up the 747 because this lady needs to get to London tonight.’
‘I saw that, but when there were no delay notifications I assumed it was fine. Sorry, I know it’s not your fault. I’m just worried about the next leg of my journey. We’re staying overnight at Heathrow and then tomorrow morning we’re flying onwards to San Francisco and then Hawaii, because I’m getting married there the day after tomorrow.’
Drea had also inherited the oversharing gene.
‘Congratulations. At the moment, it’s only a two-hour delay, so I’m sure you’ll be fine.’ Kara watched the woman scan the packed hall and suppress a sigh. It was going to be a long night.
‘At the moment…? You mean it could be longer?’ It was impossible to miss both the rising panic and the rising volume in Drea’s voice. People in the queues on either side were turning to stare.
With an apologetic smile, Kara took the passports and boarding passes from the woman’s outstretched hands. ‘Thank you so much. Hope things calm down here soon and your night gets less hectic. Happy New Year.’
Was it still okay to be saying Happy New Year, on the third?
‘Okay, breathe, just breathe,’ she urged Drea as she gently nudged her sister in the direction of the lifts that would take them up to security. ‘It’s only a couple of hours.’
‘But what if they extend it for another hour? Then another. What if we’re here all night and then miss the flights tomorrow?’
‘If we’re here all night, I’ll treat you to a swanky suite in the hotel across the road. They’ve got Toblerones in their minibar and cashew nuts that cost a week’s wages, but you’re worth it.’
They went through the barriers and joined a security line that was approximately seven miles long.
Two little lines appeared between Drea’s eyebrows as she frowned. ‘How do you know?’
‘How do I know what?’ Kara asked, gulping back the realisation of what she’d just said, and trying desperately to come up with a way to dial it back.
‘About the hotel across the road. When did you stay there?’
Of course Drea would remember that kind of stuff. She was a travel professional who booked all Kara’s trips and who stored that kind of info in her travel professional encyclopaedic brain.
‘Erm, it doesn’t matter.’
Drea knew her too well. She immediately zeroed in on Kara’s reddening face, flustered with a side dish of guilt.
‘Ohhhhh. Kara McIntyre, I think it does. And I think I’d like to hear about it.’
‘You wouldn’t.’
‘Oh, I would.’
The good news was that Drea’s anxiety over the delay seemed to have subsided. The bad news was that the reason for that was because she was now laser focused on Kara.
There was no point resisting. The only smart choice was surrender.
‘Okay, fine!’ She glanced around and decided there were too many people in earshot for that conversation. ‘I’ll tell you all about it when we’re somewhere more private… but let’s just say that Josh wasn’t the only one in our relationship who made a mistake.’