CHAPTER TEN #2
Raina checked out while the three of them performed this strange, insincere ritual.
No one had any interest in speaking to her, no matter how hard she tried to make eye contact.
She watched all of the other people in the room instead.
A group of friends sat in another corner, laughing loudly while one tried to down an entire pint.
Raina could tell by looking at them that they’d all been friends for a while, but hadn’t found much time of late to see each other.
They were all fully animated and delighted by every second in each other’s company, laughing genuinely at each joke as though it were the funniest thing they’d ever heard.
A middle-aged couple were drinking sherry by the fire and the woman had taken her shoes off. They had a beautiful Labrador asleep at their feet with a bowl of water that had obviously been brought from home.
Then Raina’s eyes fell on a pair leaning up against the bar.
The woman had spilled a drink on the man and was apologizing with nervous giggles, while he dabbed at himself with paper napkins.
He jokingly pressed the wet serviette into her neck, causing her to shriek in faux mortification.
He crumpled up the napkin and pressed a forgiving kiss onto the spot on her neck, and her arms slid around him.
And Raina just felt so sad. She felt so out of place and far from everyone.
A feeling that had been with her for as long as she’d known she was different.
She’d worked hard to get to the contented, confident version of herself she now presented to the public.
Yet sometimes, the neurotypical world would hit her with strange moments of déjà vu.
Moments that took her back to sleepovers, school dances and weekends spent reading at home.
Déjà vu which reminded her that although she could put on a good show and play pretend, she would never be one of them.
Not only because of unspoken, unconscious prejudice, but because she always sensed, on nights like this, like a part of her was missing.
She suddenly didn’t feel like celebrating any more.
She was about to say as much to Pepper when she spotted something else. A little further down the bar stood a young girl, only a few months over eighteen. Perhaps not even that. She was the kind of girl Raina would have ID-checked when she worked here.
An older man was invading the girl’s space and wetly whispering in her ear, causing her to grimace and flinch. She seemed to be frozen to the spot, too nervous to tell him to desist but also too shocked to move.
Raina got to her feet, not even bothering to excuse herself from the group. She marched towards the girl, sweeping into the crowd with ease and determination.
‘Babe!’ she cried with pretend recognition, pulling the girl away from the leering older gentleman and giving her a universal smile that said ‘I’m here to save you’. ‘There you are! Sorry, we were sat down already.’
‘Oh, no worries,’ the girl said, playing along and smiling at Raina with barely contained panic mixed with gratitude.
‘Anita, this is my friend Abbie. Can she have – what do you want, Abbie?’
‘My friend Abbie’ had been a code that Anita and Raina used to signal that a woman was being harassed in the bar. Anita’s eyes filled with understanding and she waited for the girl to shakily order a white wine. She locked eyes with Chris, the bouncer, and he made a beeline for the bar.
‘Put it on our tab,’ Raina told Anita, authoritatively moving the girl away from her harasser while Chris sternly suggested he move on to another pub.
‘Thank you so much,’ gushed the girl after the man eventually loped off. ‘I didn’t know what to do.’
‘No problem,’ Raina said, and she meant it. ‘You going to be okay? You’re welcome to sit with us.’
‘I’m all right, my friends are almost here.’
‘Offer’s there if you change your mind.’
The girl nodded enthusiastically and thanked Raina profusely. Raina waved away the appreciation and was about to head back to her party when she saw him, standing over by the entryway.
Tom Branimir. Across the room. Staring right at her.
Tom didn’t enjoy the White Horse when it was busy.
He was waiting behind an enthusiastic group of underage boys, who were now being stopped at the doorway of the pub by the bouncer.
When they fumbled their excuse for not having ID with them, the bouncer told them in no uncertain terms where to go and they started to protest. Tom closed his eyes.
He was about to slip around them and step into the warm hubbub of the pub when he spotted a scene unfolding at the bar.
The bouncer suddenly moved to intercept said scene, redirecting a lustful and somewhat creepy man away from two young women. When they moved away from the bar and into the centre of the room, he recognized her at once.
She was always prettier than he remembered, and she was damn gorgeous in his memories.
They gazed at each other in astonishment for a few seconds, both clearly wondering how on earth the other had found them.
Tom knew he was innocent; he’d come to meet Seb and Ottie. Nothing had suggested she would be here. Not that such a thing would have stopped him from coming – quite the opposite – but he needed her to know he was completely blameless.
Her email had been abundantly clear. Don’t contact me any more. It had torn a chunk out of him but he was respectful. He hadn’t even replied, setting the requested boundary straight immediately.
Maybe this was some sort of test and she wanted him to walk right by her as if she were invisible. An impossible test. He had to know how she was, how she’d been over these last few weeks.
To his relief, she moved towards him.
To his greater relief, there was a reluctant smile on her face.
‘I have no issue about getting a restraining order,’ she said teasingly.
‘This is my local, young lady. If one of us has to leave, it should be you.’
Please don’t leave, he thought.
‘I think the people you’re meeting are sitting with us,’ she told him, jerking her head towards a table in the far corner.
Tom followed her direction and grimaced. Seb, Ottie and Pepper Cousins, all sitting together.
‘Got here just in time then,’ he said, giving her a knowing look.
‘I was thinking of sneaking out the back but they’re your friends, not mine.’
‘Well, you know all the ins and outs of this place.’
‘Sure do.’
‘Tommy!’
Tom closed his eyes for a brief second at the sound of Seb’s voice. They were certainly a consolation prize to a one-on-one with Raina. He nodded at her, smiling tightly, then made his way across the room to the group.
His friends greeted him, and Pepper watched him with deep distrust. But he felt something inside him settle when Raina sat down at the table.
‘We’re celebrating my wonderful friend tonight,’ Pepper said, already a little buzzed. She squeezed Raina and handed her a fresh flute of champagne. ‘She’s an icon.’
Ottie looked Raina up and down but said nothing. Seb was scrolling on his phone, oblivious.
‘Celebrating what?’ Tom asked. He was instantly concerned it could be a new relationship. Or a move. Perhaps she was relocating to a sleepy town where she could afford more space.
Both possibilities filled him with horror.
‘Raina’s been nominated for two Monday awards,’ Pepper told him curtly.
Tom channelled the pure relief he felt at her words into his genuine congratulations. ‘That’s fantastic. Well done.’
‘You can put it in your feature,’ Pepper said sneeringly. ‘How’s that going, by the way?’
Raina closed her eyes in mortification, and Tom found himself feeling a little heated. ‘Not really your business.’ He turned back to Raina, softening his voice as he repeated, ‘Well done. That’s amazing.’
Raina blushed slightly and opened her mouth to respond, but Pepper interjected once more.
‘It absolutely is my business if you’re going to try and trap my friend in some tedious hit piece that will trend on social media and get all the little bad faith losers to attack her and send death threats.’
Tom frowned. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever endorsed death threats. And I would never let that happen to Raina.’
‘Every think-piece that winds up on social media ends in death threats,’ Pepper retorted sharply. ‘So, be very careful what you write about my friend.’
‘I wouldn’t imagine there’s too much of a story,’ Ottie chimed in, topping up her empty gin glass with some of Raina and Pepper’s champagne. ‘No offence, babe.’
She was addressing Raina.
Seb smirked and Pepper’s eyes darkened as she looked in Ottie’s direction, all fragments of the friendly facade gone.
Tom glanced at Raina, afraid to see her hurt by Ottie’s words.
But there was no chance. Instead, her face was completely unreadable.
She was staring into the distance, taking her time.
‘How did you two meet?’ she finally asked, changing the subject completely and smiling genuinely at Tom’s two friends.
‘We met at university,’ Seb said. ‘Cambridge.’
‘Oh, well, I’m from Oxford,’ Raina said teasingly.
To any well-adjusted couple, this casual and harmless remark, clearly meant to break the ice, would have worked wonders and bonded the group. To Seb and Ottie, who both worshipped at the altar of appearances, it was a slight.
‘Cambridge regularly beats Oxford,’ Seb said archly. ‘At just about everything.’
‘I just meant the town,’ Raina said gently. ‘I never went to university.’
Ottie and Seb shared a glance, as though Raina had just cavalierly mentioned that she had a grenade tucked into her cleavage. Tom felt embarrassed for them.
‘I suppose you don’t need a degree to run a podcast,’ Ottie said slyly, smiling at Raina.
Raina beamed back, like a bird taunting an indoor cat. ‘You sure don’t.’
‘And what do you even talk about? Autism? Do you have a special talent like the guy who counts toothpicks?’
‘You and that film,’ muttered Tom.