9. Chapter 9
Jack, at Lucy’s urging, led the way across the function room towards the French doors. He held open a door just in time for Lucy to canon through it, cake and drink in hand.
‘Ah, thank goodness!’ Lucy flung an arm wide as she barrelled out onto the terrace. ‘It’s so much cooler out here.’
The hotel gardens were quiet at this late hour, with just a handful of guests scattered around tables on the terraces. A young couple tucked into a dark corner draped with clematis only had eyes for each other. Across the lawn an elderly, overweight Labrador ambled slowly along, nose to ground, pursued by its elderly, overweight owner.
Jack followed as Lucy wandered down the steps onto the lawns. It was darker down there, away from the lights cast from the windows of the hotel. She eventually came to a stop and perched, a little wobbly, on an old stone wall in front of a shrubbery.
‘Isn’t it nicer out here?’
She beamed at Jack as he sat down beside her, her face luminous in the moonlight. He felt a sudden lump catch in his throat.
‘And look at this…this…um.’ Jack waited to see what she’d come up with, knowing full well Lucy knew little about plants. ‘This…bush thing. Isn’t it pretty? Such pretty…leaves.’
She grinned happily at him and gestured a little too enthusiastically with the hand holding the cake while clutching her glass of champagne with the other. Awash now with a little too much bubbly, she overbalanced and fell backwards, off the little wall, into the unnamed bush. The cake flew off behind her into a hedge.
‘Oof, no, help!’
Lucy flailed her arms, trying to keep her balance. Jack tried to grab her and keep her upright, but Lucy, who was convulsing with giggles, was now as heavy and impossible to lift as a bag of wet cement. He grabbed onto the wall to try to stay upright himself as Lucy slid backwards.
Lucy, who had hung onto her champagne glass (but not the champagne), was now lying on her back, her head under the bushes, laughing uncontrollably and clutching at her dress to try to preserve some modesty. Her legs were at right angles, her feet still on the wall, and her head was lying under the bush she had been wittering on about moments ago.
‘Argh, my pants!’ she gasped as she tried to one-handedly cover her underwear.
‘Help me!’ she wheezed between bouts of laughter.
She tried to roll over, but laughter and champagne sapped her of all strength, and she lay there like a fish on a boat deck. She clutched her stomach and waved an empty glass, emitting squeaks and gasps of laughter. Jack burst out laughing at the sight of Lucy stuck on her back, like a beetle that couldn’t flip itself back over.
He wiped his eyes and looked down at her, hair-do all askew, mascara running and eyes watering from laughing. She looked happier and more relaxed than she had all day.
‘You look pretty,’ he said, smiling.
The words almost caught him by surprise. Jack knew Lucy was attractive, but it didn’t usually elicit more than objective appreciation from him. Tonight, as she giggled and wiped tears of laughter from her eyes, it tugged at something deep inside him. He shook his head and pushed the thought from his mind.
‘What?’ Lucy puffed. ‘Help me up!’
She tried to sit up but, exhausted by laughing, could only raise her head and shoulders. She fell back down, her hair fanning out behind her.
Jack, half on and half off the wall, lowered himself down, feet propped on the wall beside Lucy’s.
‘What are you doing?’
‘If you can’t beat ”em... No need to rush back.’
‘I’m out of champagne, though.’
Lucy waved her empty glass.
‘Yes, I think most of it went on me.’ Jack prodded his damp shirt. ‘I smell like a winery.’
‘Ooh, my favourite smell. Winery, by Lucy.’
‘Okay, well, we’ll sort out your terrible thirst for booze in a minute.’
From their newly horizontal position, Jack could see up through the leaves of the shrubbery to the clear night sky.
‘It’s nice here,’ Lucy said, gazing up.
Jack pointed to a cluster of stars in the sky.
‘Look, that’s Orion there.’
Lucy squinted at him suspiciously.
‘Pfft, you don’t know anything about the stars,’ she scoffed.
‘I do!’ Jack retorted. ‘I had a book about the night sky when I was a kid and I learnt all the major constellations. Look, over there, that’s Big Bear.’
Jack jabbed a finger at the sky.
Lucy followed where he pointed.
‘Which one?’
‘See that group of stars there, with the brighter one at the top?’ Lucy nodded. ‘That’s it.’
‘Oh yes. Wow!’
‘And that one is Baby Bear.’ Lucy followed his arm, nodding. ‘And that one over there, in the distance…that’s Goldilocks.’
Lucy burst out laughing and prodded him with her empty glass.
‘I knew it! You don’t know any more about the stars than me.’
‘Wish I did,’ Jack said. ‘There’s always someone in a film where they find themselves hanging around at night for some reason, who seems to casually list off all the major constellations. Look at all that out there. You know,’ he adjusted his position under the bushes, ‘we’re spinning through space at a thousand miles an hour.’
Lucy frowned at him.
‘Now that one’s true. You can look it up.’
They fell quiet, contemplating hurtling through space at speed. Lucy sighed and fidgeted.
‘Yes, spinning through space at high speed and here I am hiding in a shrubbery to avoid my family.’
Jack shrugged.
‘It’s growing on me.’
There was a pause, then Lucy burst out laughing.
‘Oh no, that’s an awful dad joke!’
They heard footsteps, then voices grew louder as people approached. They fell quiet and Lucy gripped Jack’s arm.
‘Shhh!’ she hissed in Jack’s ear.
The footsteps drew closer, just the other side of the wall, then paused, and the voices became hushed. Lucy, trying not to laugh, snorted into Jack’s shoulder. After a moment, the footsteps picked up again, and the voices faded away.
Jack prised Lucy’s fingers off his arm.
‘I think they saw us but were too embarrassed to say anything,’ he said. ‘I mean, how do you approach a couple of pairs of feet and ask about what’s going on?’
‘We might be in trouble down here,’ Lucy protested. ‘We might have fallen and can’t get up. There might have been a moider.’
Lucy said murder in her best New York cop accent.
Eyes wide, she gripped Jack’s arm again.
‘And they just walked past the bodies. We might be decomposing down here. Vital evidence is being lost. The killer is getting away, and they just want to get back to the canapes!’ She wagged her finger. ‘They’ll rue the day, mark my––’
‘Stop killing us off!’ Jack said, elbowing her and laughing at the leaps her imagination took. ‘I think they heard you snorting. I don’t think there’s any doubt we’re alive.’
‘Tsk, but for how long?’ Lucy grumbled. ‘You might have it in for me.’
‘I might,’ Jack agreed.
‘And the police will ask if anyone saw anything suspicious, and they won’t be able to give a full account, because all they saw were feet.’
‘And shoes.’
‘Yes, feet and shoes. And they’ll be on the news saying, If only we had stopped and looked at what was going on.” Lucy pressed her hand to her chest. ‘That poor, beautiful, gifted girl wouldn’t be lost the world.’
Lucy sniffed.
‘Wow,’ Jack said, smothering a laugh. ‘But so long as I make a clean getaway, I think I’m okay with that.’
‘With the world losing me and all my gifts?’
‘I think the world will keep spinning. At a thousand miles an hour. With or without you.’
‘Wow,’ Lucy said, ‘Good to know you’d miss me.’
‘You just created a scenario in which I was the person who murdered you, but now I am supposed to miss you, too?’
Lucy shrugged. ‘You’re conflicted. I drove you to do it—’
‘That’s easy to imagine.’
‘––but later, you are wracked with guilt. You keep a picture of me in your wallet and look at it every day for years, shedding a tear.’ Lucy rolled over slightly and stared at him. ‘You can’t sleep because there’s an enormous hole in your life.’ She elbowed him. ‘That’s me, by the way. The huge gaping hole in your life is because you miss me.’
‘I think I’d be too busy evading capture and trying to live off-grid to miss you,’ he said.
‘Your one moment of madness has robbed the world of all this,’ Lucy swept her arm over herself. ‘But no one,’ she intoned in a deep voice, ‘will suffer more than you.’
‘Exactly how much have you had to drink?’
‘Why?’ she eyed him suspiciously. ‘Are you hoping I’m incapacitated so you can overwhelm me and do away with me?’
‘It’s an increasingly appealing idea.’
They fell quiet and lay side by side in the shrubbery, feet and calves still balanced on the dwarf wall.
Their arms were almost touching, and Jack could feel the warmth from Lucy’s skin. He could make out the smell of her shampoo from all the other smells, of the damp soil, the crushed leaves, the night air. He shifted slightly, so that their arms were gently pressed together and their hands touched. Lucy lay still, gazing up through the bushes at the coal black sky.
‘You know, I really appreciate you doing this for me,’ she said.
‘What, lying under a bush with you?’
She chuckled and propped herself up on one elbow and looked down at him. ‘No. Coming all this way, doing this mad thing I’ve asked you to do.’ She was leaning into him now, her breasts pressing against the side of his arm, her hair falling onto his shoulder. Jack felt like his awareness had shrunk to just him and Lucy. He could smell the champagne on her breath when she spoke. He fidgeted and concentrated on a branch above his head.
‘Of course’, he cleared his throat and kept his eyes fixed on the branch. ‘What are friends for?’
‘My family are hard to take. Well, Mum and Heather, really. It’s intense.’
Lucy flopped back down and picked leaves from the shrub above their heads. Jack let out a slow breath as a little space was restored between them.
‘It’s nice to have someone to escape with for a minute. Catch my breath.’
Lucy was quiet as she shredded leaves and flicked the bits onto the surrounding earth.
‘I’d do the same for you, you know.’
‘What, come to a wedding as my fake girlfriend?’
‘No. Murder you in a heated panic and then spend the rest of my life mourning you.’
‘That’s sweet.’
‘You’re welcome.’
Lucy looked back up at the sky and let out a long breath.
‘I quite like it here,” she said softly.
New York City flashed into his mind. He suddenly missed her as if he was already gone. He could feel the gap these nonsense-filled conversations would leave in his life, and the quiet where there used to be snorting-laughter. Who would he tell when something funny happened at work? Who would listen to him over brunch when he needed to talk to someone to break the loneliness of running a business? Who would stop him from taking himself too seriously?
Jack turned his head and looked at Lucy, soft shadows playing across her face as the light from the moon and the hotel filtered down through the bushes. He felt the softness of her fingers where her hand brushed against his. He inhaled and pushed the thoughts from his mind.
‘Me too,’ he said. ‘Me too.’