Chapter 21 #3
The good stuff. The kind you could snort in the space of a single breath. Luc’s breath caught as the enormity of what had happened spiralled towards him like a tornado. Reality was spinning towards him, too. He could hear a siren in the distance. People shouting.
‘Are you hurt?’
‘The ambulance is on its way. Don’t move…’
The screech of Tom trying to drag in more air suddenly got weirdly quieter. So did his voice. His last words were no more than a whisper. ‘Promise that you won’t… tell Dad I was driving… Or Sophie… ’specially Sophie…’
‘I promise.’ The words were choked, as if they were going the wrong way in his throat. As if they’d turned into jagged stones and he was swallowing them. He’d never know whether Tom heard them because he could feel the spark of life he was holding flicker and then go dark.
Of course he wouldn’t tell Sophie.
Losing Tom was going to hurt her beyond anything bearable. How could he make it even worse by telling her that he had broken her trust? That he had risked everything for nothing more than a spur-of-the-moment temptation?
There was embryonic anger forming but that was almost a relief because it was easier to deal with than a grief that was capable of consuming him and leaving no trace.
There was an echo of the questions the police had asked when they arrived at the accident scene in Raven Vale’s comments that were beneath the photo of the wreck.
Why was Luc Moreau driving that night?
There’s a question. According to reports at the time, more than one friend attending the stag do was adamant that Tom had not touched a drop of alcohol that evening.
Because, he’d told them, he wanted to be clear-headed when he made his vows to the woman he loved so much the next day.
There was no reason for him not to be driving the car that his friends said he referred to as his ‘baby’ and had loved enough to name her ‘Bluebell’.
Luc, on the other hand, had been drinking.
Whisky shots along with his wine, according to the restaurant’s sommelier.
And okay, he was – just – under the limit when he got tested but, according to police and the Serious Collision Investigation Unit, he escaped a potential prison sentence for causing death by dangerous driving thanks to there being no evidence of excessive speed and his instantaneous guilty plea.
He got off with a mere five thousand pound fine and a driving ban for eighteen months.
The Baxter family didn’t pursue prosecution. A source tells me that they wanted nothing more to do with him – in or out of court. His engagement with Hannah Baxter apparently ended that same night and my source tells me that he did not attend Tom’s funeral.
Oh, he had attended. He’d just made sure that nobody could see him.
In the vestibule during the service. Mingling with the crowd as the coffin was carried out to the hearse and only going to the cemetery the next day to stand beside the fresh mound of earth and the wilting flowers, until he sank to his knees, his broken sobbing stealing all his strength.
There was no point going back to bed. Luc was not going to be able to sleep.
He needed to think about what he was going to have to do in the next days to try and repair a fractured dream.
The public backlash to what had been revealed about him could be enough for trustees to back away from having anything to do with the Phoenix Foundation.
Why would anyone donate funds to a charitable organisation that had been set up by someone who had been exposed as nothing more than a dishonourable, totally untrustworthy backstabber? A persona non grata.
What was even worse was that Sophie had been dragged down with him. The insinuations of cheating and betrayal in the last paragraphs of Raven Vale’s blog had cut deep.
But… and this, my loyal Darklings, is the real story, here…
Sweet Sophie, whose own dream of wedded bliss was torn away from her by tragedy only hours before she was due to walk down the aisle, devoted her life to creating perfect weddings for other brides.
Luc Moreau rose from the ashes of his own destruction as Le Phénix and turned up at one of Sophie’s weddings. The very same one that yours truly was at.
And, within days, they went public.
Who had taken that photograph of him and Sophie in that restaurant in Nice?
The thought that Raven might have been stalking him was beyond creepy but how easy would it have been to walk into the restaurant to see if a table might be available and take a shot with his phone?
It looked as though the captured moment was when he’d agreed to buy Sophie time to save her business.
When he was staring into her eyes and had been hit, like a ton of bricks, with the knowledge that his love for her was not dead and buried after all.
And Sophie was staring back. So there they were, looking exactly like the lovers Raven Vale was already painting them to be. The people that had, ten years ago, cheated on the person who was his best friend and her fiancé.
If only he hadn’t agreed to meet Sophie that day.
Or agreed to try and help her.
This was his fault. He’d done exactly what he’d been so determined to never do.
He had hurt Sophie.
He didn’t even know if she’d read this last part of the blog yet and he was too afraid to ask.
How could she not blame him as much as he was blaming himself?
And that was the other thing he’d been determined to never allow to happen again.
He’d hurt himself.
He’d broken the vow he’d made when he’d gone to the cemetery for a private farewell to Tom Baxter.
When he’d lost everything. Tom. Hannah. Sophie.
When he felt more abandoned and more lost than he ever had in his entire life.
The vow to never let himself be in a position ever again where being so close to someone put him at risk of having his heart torn out.
Having to suffer a pain that he knew could well come too close to being fatal.
Luc had only survived that kind of pain because he’d discovered a new purpose in life, to try and help kids like he’d once been himself.
Tom’s legacy. He would never forget the feeling of hearing Sophie tell him how proud Tom would be and seeing the truth of her own pride shining in her eyes.
He had to save the dream if he was going to have any chance of somehow mitigating the pain that was, once again, rushing into his life like an emotional tsunami. He had to do it for himself. For Tom.
And, most of all, for Sophie.