Chapter 1 #2
That’s what I’ve spent the last four months doing part-time instead of sitting beside my cousin full-time in a van painted with Stacey & Son Removals.
Kev wants to change the names on that paintwork to Kevin & Cousin, but after the last four months of finding and restoring antique items, I can’t face it.
Turns out those teachers who thought I was a dull knife instead of a sharp blade just didn’t give me the right material to work with.
The right tools. This winter of intense focus has fired up an interest in learning that I’m not ready to give up.
Now I’m gonna have to, and Harry is right, I do sound like I need some tender loving care of my own as my voice note continues.
“All they left was a bed and my things. They even…”
A pause extends, and I replay the moment I walked into this Kensington townhouse to find strangers had packed up a life that someone smarter might have guessed was only ever temporary.
I sound broken.
“And they even took the desk. The very best piece I found for Flynn. So fucking pretty.”
Jesus.
I’m suddenly glad I got this gobby in the wrong chat—Kev would lose his rag at me confessing this weakness in public, but I did love that little desk.
Stripped layer after layer of paint and varnish to find the dark-red fire of mahogany and the liquid gold of satinwood inlays. Gorgeous. I’m gutted to have lost it.
Harry must hear how much. He winces from his half of my pillow as drunk-me keeps confessing.
“You were right about Flynn, Kev. I should never have moved in here to look after this place for him. And maybe I shouldn’t have cut my hours with you to almost nothing to make this place look swanky as fuck to impress his investors.”
Harry winces again.
My phone spills more. “It’s just that he promised he’d make it worth my while.
” My voice repeats the once-in-a-lifetime chance Flynn had dangled like a carrot.
“He said I could stay here rent free until the lease was up. Look after the place for him and pick up his post until he got back from the project those investors backed. Then we’d auction everything I restored for him and split the profit.
I was gonna use it to get the certification I’d need to set up my own restoration business.
” We both have to hear how strangled I sound.
“How am I gonna do that now he’s had everything taken? He won’t even answer his phone.”
I close my eyes, which gifts me an action replay of finding this place all but empty. Opening my eyes again confirms that I didn’t dream what actually happened. A bare bulb now hangs from a ceiling rose above us, and I hear all about it.
“They even took the light fittings, Kev. The chandeliers I found and bid for.” I must have drunk some more booze. I hear gulping and a soul-deep sigh. I also hear myself admit, “I don’t know why he did it. Or where I am, Kev.” I sound so smashed. “Come and get me?”
Harry takes a turn at sighing. “You dropped a location pin in the group chat. Blake and I were closest.” His focus is on those horse reins he unravelled from my wrists.
Now he rolls up that black leather, slow and careful.
So is what else he asks me. “You said you were looking after this place for Flynn. You two… you weren’t together? ”
“Together? No.”
“You were working for him?”
“I wasn’t on Flynn’s payroll. He said we were business partners.” I feel stupid as soon as that slips out.
Harry lets the horse reins unravel like the timeline he verbalises. “Since last October?”
“Yeah. Flynn turned up at a meet-up.” One that I’d hesitated to enter, hovering at the window like a moth drawn to much brighter beings. “He stood outside with me. Asked if you’d be coming. I told him you were—”
“Away at a boat show.” Harry nods. “Then what happened?”
“He asked what I did. We ended up talking furniture, and I showed him some pics that matched the vibe he was looking to furnish his new place with. He said I had a good eye for quality pieces and asked did I want to skip the meet-up.”
“Did you?”
“Yeah. He brought me back to this place. It was empty. I filled it for him.”
Harry squints. “Then he left London?”
“For his project? Yeah.”
“We must have just missed each other. It’s February now. You’ve been expecting him to come back for you this whole time?”
“Not for me. To sell up and split the profit on everything I restored to make him look…”
I don’t say like you, but that is what Flynn had wanted—to pass for Harry’s kind of old money that comes with land and titles.
“He—” I don’t know how to describe someone who made me feel like the smartest person on the planet each time I found hidden treasure for him.
“It was good timing, that’s all. I couldn’t stay where I was living, and he needed someone to…
” Again, I don’t have the vocab to describe someone who now feels as solid as smoke between my fingers. “He made me…”
Harry presses his lips together, then breaks his silence to describe Flynn in perfect detail.
“He made you feel like you could take on the world together, and nothing and no one could stop you. That anything and everything would be possible if you just listened to him. He talked you into putting your life on hold based on a future promise. Did you get any of that in writing?”
“No.” I can never let my cousin find out that I might as well have rolled over and shown Flynn my bare belly. “We shook hands on it. Like I would with any friend.”
“Oh, darling. I’m not sure Flynn knows how to be one.”
“I thought you said Charles was a good judge of character.” I scrub at my face.
Scrub at my chest too, which helps my itchy skin but doesn’t do much for an ache under my ribs that shows no sign of easing.
“He must have liked Flynn to tell him about our meet-ups, yeah?” That has happened a few times over the years, long-lost Heppel Exes added to our ranks by our common hookup denominator.
Harry was the first man Charles Heppel added to that group. Now he runs a hand through sun-bleached hair, tugging on it as if he’s tangled. “About that—”
Blake interrupts with the bark of a drill sergeant. “Carpet Burns, where are you hiding the coffee?” We leave the bedroom behind to find Blake freshly showered in the kitchen. All three of us are in our boxers, and he notices that I can’t stop scratching. “What’s brought on those hives?”
“Red wine. It hates me.” I scratch some more.
“Some antihistamine will sort it.” I have to settle for ice.
“Call me Vincent, yeah?” I rub a cube over raised welts while Harry hunts for mugs, which is pointless.
Apart from a few pans, anything kitchen-related is long gone.
So is any coffee, but Harry turns his back to root through another cupboard, and I let out a sound that reminds me of my cousin—Kev huffed like someone had punched him hard in the gut the day he visited me in hospital when I was a nipper.
My reason for wheezing this morning is a swarm of scars covering Harry’s back. They sting me into silence.
Those scars do the opposite to Blake. He swings into action again, this time by getting chatty, which I wouldn’t have guessed from the few meet-ups I have attended.
“What’s that?” He doesn’t point at those godawful scars, thank fuck.
He gestures at the only proof left in this building that Flynn ever lived here.
For once, I can summon an instant answer. “A vision board.” Images of tropical islands and shipwrecks surround the kind of whiteboard most people use for shopping list reminders.
Harry touches a bullet point written at the top of this one. His finger drags down past more checked-off boxes, and he huffs. “Well, at least he was up-front with you about his plans.”
Blake confirms he heard my drunken voice note. “You mean that dick Flynn?” He tilts his head to one side. “Looks like a drunk spider wrote a to-do list.” He looks my way. “Can you read his handwriting?”
I shake my head.
Harry has no problem with it. He lists what was always in plain sight. “Stage the flat. Set up a photoshoot. Secure the funding for the wreck dive.”
Blake frowns. “Wreck dive? Isn’t that what you used to do before you started selling speedboats?”
“Yes.” Harry pauses for so long I think he’s done reading.
He isn’t.
He reads out the sole unchecked box, Flynn’s ultimate goal, much more quietly.
“Get back what I lost.”
That’s what I think about for the rest of the day while lumping other people’s belongings up and down staircases with my cousin—getting back what I lost, and what I loved from the first moment I found it.
It’s still on my mind when I get back to Flynn’s place and that pretty little mahogany desk is still gone.
I get another reminder of loving and losing later that evening outside a restaurant full of Heppel Exes. None of them would have let Flynn walk into their lives and then walk off with what they valued.
I can’t face them.
Harry must spy me thinking that through the restaurant window. He comes outside to join me. “Having second thoughts?”
If he was a couple inches taller, we’d be shoulder to shoulder. For once, I feel like the smaller of us. The window reflects my quick nod. “About coming inside? Yeah. Yeah, I am.”
“Don’t. Because every single Ex here tonight has already asked how you’re doing. You haven’t answered any of their messages in the group chat. Did you read them?”
This time, the window reflects my headshake.
Harry pulls out his phone to do it for me, and with each nickname he voices, my gaze finds the man inside who wrote me a message.