Chapter 36
36
After another busy day, and with the help of her friends, it looked as if Libby was actually going to make her deadline for the large order of truffles. There was only a small amount left to do after everyone had clubbed together to get the order fulfilled.
‘I never had any doubt that you could do it,’ said Katy, beaming from ear to ear as she packaged up a box of glossy truffles with a red bow.
‘I did,’ said Libby, with a brief grimace.
Thankfully, her throat was entirely free of smoke damage and she felt much more like her old self.
She concentrated on rolling up the truffle she was holding in the tray of cocoa powder that she had placed on the kitchen table.
‘So, what next?’ asked Flora, sitting down at the table whilst she began to stick the printed labels that Katy had produced on each box.
‘I sleep,’ said Libby, with a smile.
‘And then what?’ asked Harriet. ‘You’re not going to give up making chocolate, are you?’
Libby laughed. ‘Never! But I may just decide not to try to burn down any more kitchens,’ she added with a grin.
‘Let’s hope not!’ laughed Katy. ‘Not that Ethan seems to have minded about that too much.’
‘He never did where Libby was concerned,’ murmured Flora.
Libby looked at her. ‘What are you getting at?’ she asked.
‘Is there something you want to tell us about you and Ethan?’ said Flora, in a pointed tone.
‘Your eyebrows are telling all,’ replied Libby. ‘And yet there’s nothing to tell.’
Harriet rolled her eyes as she dried up a couple of trays on the draining board. ‘You always do this,’ she said.
‘Do what?’ asked Libby.
‘You don’t really tell us anything,’ Harriet told her. ‘Not anything deep anyway.’
‘And look how that turned out!’ said Katy with a grin.
Libby blushed. She didn’t think she’d ever get over almost burning down the old schoolhouse.
‘So let us in,’ urged Flora.
Libby shrugged her shoulders but could feel the blush spreading across her cheeks. ‘I told you, there’s nothing really to tell.’
‘Yes, there is,’ said Harriet.
Libby took a sharp intake of breath. Was it possible that they knew about her and Ethan’s secret marriage in Las Vegas?
‘The prom,’ added Flora, to Libby’s semi-relief. ‘You always say he ruined it, but you’ve never really explained why.’
‘All we know is that one minute you were as close as we all are to each other, the next you hated him with a passion,’ said Harriet. ‘Any time we asked you, you just brushed it off.’
Libby hesitated. Perhaps she could just give them the truth for once.
In the end, she decided to just go for it. After all, these were her best friends and she trusted them.
‘Okay,’ she began. ‘So I was all dressed up, but when he came to pick me up, he was completely and utterly miserable. Snappy and cold. It was so unlike him.’
‘Why?’ asked Katy.
‘No idea,’ said Libby, shaking her head. ‘He wouldn’t tell me. But it carried on like that for the first hour of the prom. No dancing. Not even any conversation. He was just morose and sulky and nothing I could say could bring him out of his bad mood.’
She certainly hadn’t had the first kiss with him that she’d been wishing for and dreaming of.
‘That’s not much to go on,’ said Katy, still frowning.
‘Exactly,’ agreed Harriet. ‘So he was just in a bad mood?’
‘Worse,’ Libby told them. ‘He got steaming drunk and then just left me there. Alone! At the prom!’
There was a short, shocked silence.
‘Why didn’t you come and find me?’ asked Flora, looking upset.
‘I didn’t want to ruin your night as well,’ Libby told her. ‘So I danced my high heels off, snogged the captain of the football team and then threw up in a bush on the way home.’ She grinned at her friends. ‘Epic.’
Harriet was still looking confused. ‘But how can it be epic if you said he’d ruined it for you?’
‘He did ruin it for me!’ replied Libby, hotly. ‘Because he shouldn’t have left me. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. It was supposed to be the start of something…’ Her voice trailed off and she looked down to stroke Paddington the dog, who was lying under the kitchen table as usual. Anything to avoid the eye contact from her friends after she had said too much. In reply, Paddington thumped his furry tail on the floor in delight.
‘It’s us,’ she heard Harriet murmur. ‘You should have said something.’
‘I agree,’ added Flora. ‘We were, are, your best friends. You’re supposed to tell us everything.’
Libby took a deep breath as she straightened up. ‘Well, I didn’t see him for a couple of days after the prom because I was in a strop with him, quite rightly so in my opinion. And then Mum began to get ill and other things were more important.’ She paused before carrying on. ‘He came for the funeral.’ She recalled a hug from him but nothing more. ‘Then he disappeared off to college, barely came home in the holidays either, so that was the end of a beautiful friendship.’
Katy looked at her. ‘So you were close one day and not the next? Didn’t you want to know what happened?’ she asked. ‘Why he was so upset that evening?’
‘No.’ Libby shrugged her shoulders. ‘Anyway, I know what happened. He’s the same idiot he always has been.’
It was the first lie that she had told her friends since starting the story. Her biggest fear was that he just didn’t care for her the way she’d always cared for him. That she’d misread his feelings and it had been all regret on his part for even asking her to go with him. That perhaps he had wanted to take someone else.
‘Maybe you could ask him?’ asked Flora.
‘Or not,’ Libby told her. ‘It’s ancient history, isn’t it? Bloomin’ prom. Those things are so lame anyway.’
Flora smiled to herself. ‘Yeah, that’s why you got all dolled up in that gorgeous dress.’
‘Oooh!’ Katy’s eyes gleamed. ‘Colour?’
‘Dark blue,’ Harriet told her. ‘Like a midnight blue. And it sparkled under certain lights. I was with her when she bought it.’
‘She looked amazing,’ added Flora, nodding.
‘Says the prom queen,’ said Libby, giving her a nudge with her elbow.
Katy looked at Flora delighted. ‘You were the prom queen?’
‘Her dress was red,’ said Harriet, misty-eyed in memory. ‘She was so beautiful.’
‘She still is,’ said Nico, coming into the kitchen.
Flora blushed and the conversation moved on.
While her friends chatted with Nico about the progress of cleaning and painting the school, Libby waited for the inevitable regret about finally telling her friends about what had happened at the prom, after all these years. But the regret never came. Only the warmth and support that true friends could bring.
And perhaps they were right. Perhaps one day she would find out what had actually happened that evening to make Ethan so upset as to break up their close friendship. Then maybe they could begin to heal the past and move on at last.