Chapter One
Elena
Twenty years later
Rory came back into the house carrying a large glass tank. Mouth open, Elena moved out of the way, unaware that this eyesore would be the least of her problems by the end of the evening.
Her colleague had already dumped two suitcases and a bag of outdoor gear in her hallway, whistling as if he’d lived here all his life. The crisp air tried to reach in, but Elena swiftly closed the door on the inky November night. At a recent work party, a few gins had loosened his tongue about the hell of living in an apartment that was being renovated. He hoped it would be finished by Christmas. Elena had a spare room in her detached house, and in a rare show of impulsive behaviour, she had suggested he crash at hers. After all, how weird could it be living with someone from the office?
Perhaps very , now she thought. Elena jerked her head towards the glass tank. ‘You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.’ She tried to look annoyed, but a sheepish look had crossed Rory’s face, so unlike the assured one she was used to.
‘We need to get going, I’ll tell you everything later. The fireworks venue opens soon,’ he said swiftly and shivered. ‘Unless we stay in, fire on, a cosy movie playing, and get takeout, my shout. Amazing as it was, I can still feel the breeze going right through me from this morning’s skydive. It’s a while since I did the last one. I’d forgotten what it was like in winter.’
Inwardly she rolled her eyes. Why did he have to jump out of an aeroplane to have a good time? ‘Rory Bunker, it’s Bonfire Night. It’s actual law to stand out in the cold and wish you were anywhere else.’
Rory gazed around and shook his head. ‘How have I never visited your place before? Wow. Who were the previous owners? The Kardashians?’ With his floppy curly hair, Rory gave that cute, boyish smile that might have been irritating on a grown man, but somehow he got away with it. He leant against the wall. Average height, slim, with the casual confidence of a cowboy movie star, blowing on his gun after a shootout in a corral. ‘Talk about palatial, and what with being in a private cul-de-sac with fake sentry boxes at the entrance to it…’
‘Palatial, my arse,’ she muttered and blushed. However, his words reminded Elena of when she’d first moved in, unable to quite believe the property was hers. To the left was the lounge, airy in mint and cream, with the welcoming wide arms of a comfortable oat-coloured sofa, and an unassuming television in the corner – reading was more her thing. A dining room ahead had French patio doors that looked out onto a large, sensible square of lawn. To the right was a kitchen with a breakfast bar in the middle, surrounded by marble work units. On one stood a coffee machine and rows of biscuit packets. A mini fire extinguisher hung from the wall in a prominent position – safety first, with Elena. The hallway was spacious, with the nut-white decor and ceiling high above the second floor. Dark wooden banisters curved upstairs, passing bedroom doors as they reached the top. As for the sentry boxes, the property developers had insisted they added class to the street. The residents took themselves a little less seriously and had put scarecrows in them for Halloween last week.
Not that she’d tell anyone, least of all Rory, but those sentry boxes gave Elena’s home a much appreciated, added sense of security.
‘It’s not like you couldn’t afford a place like this,’ she said.
‘It’s not like I’ll give up my exhilaratingly expensive hobbies for mere bricks and mortar.’
Their relationship was an honest one that suited the cut and thrust of them both being marketing executives for a large, dynamic manufacturer, Bingley Biscuits. However, the common ground between them was sparse, apart from their choice of career. Sensible Elena led a life that was adventurous only vicariously, through book characters. Whereas Rory mountaineered and whitewater rafted for real – he found any spectator sport, like League football, boring. And at work Rory focussed on facts and statistics, packet format and colour, consumer trends, footfall areas in supermarkets. Whereas Elena was more inspired by the story a product could tell its customers, in order to become an impulse buy or their regular favourite.
She took the heavy glass tank from him, trusting that Rory knew better, by now, than to ask if she could manage. Elena disappeared into the kitchen. After washing her hands, she returned to put on her belted plum trench coat, matching scarf and wool-felt beanie. The Wheatsheaf pub was the site for the fireworks display and it backed onto a field. It was thirty minutes away on foot, the other side of the Cariswell, a south Manchester village that thought it was better than everywhere else. By walking, both of them could enjoy a drink. Once at the end of the drive, Elena nipped back to check she’d locked up properly and then the two of them set off. Her elderly next door neighbour tapped the inside of his front window and waved.
‘Fantastic.’ Elena groaned and waved back. ‘By the end of your stay, Tahoor will have us engaged and the wedding breakfast menu chosen. He’s horrified that I’m thirty next month and not even courting .’
‘Don’t worry, I won’t do a single thing to encourage him.’ Rory waved at Tahoor and linked his arm through hers, leaning in. He increased their pace as she went to glare, but couldn’t help smiling instead, even though he was more annoying than fog on Bonfire Night. The humour between them, despite their differences, had more than once saved the day when they’d clashed over a project. They were halfway to the pub, in the village, when the aroma of garlic and seafood wafted out of a bistro with subtle lighting and no prices on the menu. Cariswell prided itself on not having a single branded high street store. A real shame, in Elena’s opinion, she’d have loved a Superdrug or The Works. The shops were upmarket, such as the designer boutique, herbal emporium, and organic cheese and meat deli. Even the charity shop shouted high-end, with its antique books, vintage garments and collectible porcelain pieces.
A group of young women passed by, Rory oblivious to their appreciative glances, with his pink scarf, the jaunty baker boy hat and bell bottom jeans. The refined way he moved underplayed his sporty strength. Rory dressed as he liked, from the beaded necklace he’d worn to the staff Christmas party, to the denim trucker jacket when the heating failed and the office became chilly. A fluid style, a fluid mind, a carefree attitude – everything Elena lacked. Looking at him sometimes felt like seeing the Elena she should be. He’d worked freelance for Bingley Biscuits during the last year, and formally given up contract work and joined the company officially at the end of the summer. Their professional clashes shouldn’t have been unsurprising. Her leisure time involved reading cliffhangers, unlike his, which saw him scaling cliff edges. And her nightlife involved dinner with friends or cinema trips, whereas he’d recently dated a trapeze artist.
Elena didn’t do dates. Not often. Certainly not serious ones.
A coldness wrapped around her bones, as if the November chill had found a way through her coat.
Falling in love wasn’t an option, not for Elena, not until after her thirtieth birthday, in six weeks’ time. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck because of the reckless promise she’d made, twenty years ago, that foreboding night, on the common near her parents’ house; the promise that guaranteed terrible repercussions for her big three-o.
A shiver ran down her spine.
When they arrived, the pub was packed. Rory ordered two hot chocolates, Elena declining a shot of rum in hers. Whilst fact-lover Rory chatted to the server, passing on the essential information of how drinking chocolate had been traced way back to 1700BC in Mexico, she sipped her drink, enjoying the cosy atmosphere. They headed outside and found a space right at the front, directly behind a thin line of rope at the edge of the field. Elena breathed in the sweet cocoa steam. Most people avoided the wintry air until the giant bonfire was lit. It stood a car length away, with gnarled branches sticking out next to straight, manmade furniture scraps.
‘That glass tank…’ Elena stared Rory straight in the face and raised one eyebrow.
‘Brandy and Snap live inside.’
‘Who? All I saw was a bundle of twigs.’
‘Two Indian stick insects. Female. You should be impressed – they don’t need men to reproduce. How’s that for women’s empowerment?’
Slowly Elena looked him up and down. ‘More like wishful thinking.’
He laughed, softly.
‘No one told me three of you would be moving in, and that’s aside from the prospect of dozens of babies. What if they get out?’ Her brow furrowed.
‘Julian, my neighbour, who you met when I had those drinks at mine to celebrate joining the company permanently…’
‘The vet? Hasn’t he been ill? How’s he doing now?’
‘Yeah, much better. Well, someone abandoned over a hundred of them on his surgery’s doorstep… Imagine having to re-home that many? He showed me the tanks. I put my hand in one to straighten a twig and these two crawled onto my fingers. They swayed from side to side and clung on tight, as if their lives depended on me. I swear they gave me puppy eyes.’
‘Emotional manipulation of the highest degree? Brandy and Snap have gone up in my estimation. But wouldn’t it have been kinder to release them into the wild?’
‘Nope. Indian stick insects are non-native to the UK.’
‘Do they bite? Release poison?’
‘Elena! Thousands of children across the country look after them. They are more likely to sing nursery rhymes or knit booties. In any case, Julian’s illness was stress-related, so if I could help in any way…’
She lifted up her mug, took another sip, and the smooth chocolate froth stroked her taste buds. ‘How did you arrive at those names? Talk about having the biscuit business on the brain.’
‘Because they kind of look like brandy snaps,’ he said.
‘Rory, stick insects so don’t.’
He shrugged and smiled like he did, at work, when they disagreed over something small. ‘In all my twenty-seven years, I’ve never done pets, although I’ve always thought an insect would be cool. These can even grow back broken legs. Snap is missing one at the moment. At least they won’t be scared by all the noise tonight, like a dog would.’
A bang went off in the distance and Elena jumped.
‘Elena Swan, my gutsy colleague, full of drive, known for never giving up on a pitch…’
Too right. Neither did Rory. Derek, their boss, said it was great to have two team members coming at projects from different angles, as it meant they covered all the bases.
‘The office’s appointed first aider who doesn’t faint at the sight of blood,’ he continued, ‘the organiser of many a staff trip out to a noisy nightclub – don’t go pretending that you’re scared of fireworks?’
Deep breaths. He was right, even though those booming dance nights out were more for her hardworking colleagues’ sake – she preferred the quiet. Elena stood taller. Her thirtieth birthday was looming, but a woman like her surely had nothing to fear? She swallowed. That promise would never be called in. It wouldn’t. She’d made it as a child. Adult Elena wouldn’t have to keep her side of the deal. She was being stupid still worrying about it, all these years later. She took a large gulp of reassuring hot chocolate as Rory swayed to music pumped out by a local DJ. He transitioned smoothly from one move to the other, not spilling so much as a sip of his drink, in a world of his own for a moment, or so it seemed. Rory lived his life as if no one was watching.
Whereas the nearer her big birthday came, Elena lived hers under the close gaze of the past.
It was tough working alongside someone who reflected back at you the type of life you might have led if it hadn’t been for one chance meeting, when you were ten, with a stranger in a purple shawl.
The bonfire blazed, releasing soot, as if sending a smoke signal to ticket holders to gather around. Rory tapped into his phone, reeling off event-appropriate statistics to the family standing next to him, their faces glazed, such as the average sparkler burns at one thousand degrees centigrade and fireworks are able to travel up to one hundred and fifty miles per hour. Didn’t he realise how much he sounded like a mansplainer? His commentary was halted by a loud cheer as the organisers announced the display was about to begin. Elena drained her mug and gave hers and Rory’s to one of the bar servers trudging past with a tray.
Bouquets of colour, bursting stars, falling fireflies… Elena was rapt, as if she was little again and lost in a Disney movie – unlike numbers man Rory, who was googling how light travels faster than sound and that’s why the sky lights up before you hear the pop. As the show came to an end, she went to suggest they dart off early, to avoid queues at the bar and then…
Her eyes narrowed.
Oh no! A sparkling object flew, out of nowhere, across the field.
Past the bonfire. Thank goodness it missed that man in the hi vis jacket and…
What? Now it… No… no, no, no! It was heading towards her.
A voice shouted, ‘Watch out!’
Too late. A thud. Pain. She went numb. The object had whacked her in the chest.
Elena gasped as a sense of panic sucked the breath from her lungs. Rory stared at her in horror. A firework had lodged itself in a gap at the front of her coat. As sparks continued to travel along the fuse to the firework’s main head, people screamed and backed away, dragging children by hands and dogs by leads.