Chapter Twenty-Two
‘Have you seen Carole?’
Uncle Bryan pounced from behind the candy floss cart, wearing an upsettingly short pair of denim cut-offs.
‘Sorry, no.’ I scoured the crowd for Carole, more for my own benefit than his, but I couldn’t spot her fortune-teller’s silk turban anywhere. ‘Maybe she’s in the loo?’
‘Looked in there,’ he said with a sulky snort. ‘Not like her to leave me alone at something like this. She knows I don’t like …’
‘People?’ I suggested.
He looked so sad, I almost felt sorry for him. Then I remembered what a terrible person he was and got over it right away.
‘You stay out here and I’ll check the house,’ I suggested, spotting Anthony Khan out the corner of my eye. To get through the evening with my sanity intact, I needed to be where he wasn’t. ‘If I find her, I’ll send her down to you.’
‘Tell her I’ve got the hand sanitiser!’ he called after me. ‘Don’t let her touch anything!’
For one second, I considered licking my hands and wiping them all over his face but that didn’t play well with my plan not to ruin Dad’s party. I gave him a thumbs up, turned around and took myself off into the house.
I definitely deserved a prize.
A small crowd had collected around the downstairs loo and there was the usual, small party overspill in the kitchen but I couldn’t see Carole anywhere. I tiptoed upstairs, drawn by the strange sound of voices coming from one of the bedrooms. One was Carole but she sounded distressed and she wasn’t alone.
‘Aunt Carole?’ I called quietly so as not to scare her. ‘Are you all right?’
No answer. I stopped outside her room and pressed my ear against the door.
‘It’s not that I’m not flattered but really, you don’t know me. You don’t know what you’re doing.’
Unless I was very much mistaken, and I definitely wasn’t, my aunt was in her bedroom, behind a closed door, with Joe.
‘Yes. I do.’ A strange quiver elongated the end of Carole’s sentence. ‘And I do know you, like you know me, inside and out.’
‘I know you’re Sophie’s aunt,’ Joe replied, the sound of panic in his voice. ‘You were in the conservatory at lunchtime, weren’t you? You’re the one who asked if I was … oh Christ.’
‘No more talk.’
Carole growled and I pulled back in horror at the echo of creaking bedsprings. ‘Your book has changed me, Joseph. When I started reading it, I expected nothing but mindless smut but I’ve never been so turned on in my life.’
I fought back a retch, very glad to have passed on the prawn toasts after all.
‘Now my eyes have been opened. You can’t expect me to let you slip through my fingers when we’ve been brought together by the forces of the universe.’
‘It was not the universe, it was Hugh Taylor’s birthday,’ Joe said over the scuffling sound of small items of furniture being moved around the room. ‘Please, you really don’t understand the situation and you don’t want to do this.’
‘It’s the only thing I want to do!’
A guttural and frankly terrifying groan carried through the heavy wooden door and, for a second, I considered calling the police. Joe was not safe and if I opened this door, I didn’t know if I was physically or mentally strong enough to help him.
‘I want you to make love to me the way Eric made love to Jenna on the rooftop, and at the lake, and in the woods, and—’
‘Yes, I get the point,’ Joe replied. ‘But it’s a hard pass from me.’
‘The things you wrote,’ Carole moaned. ‘The things you could do to a woman like me …’
‘I could do no things!’ Joe asserted in response, footsteps still moving around the room. ‘It’s just a book. I’m very glad you enjoyed it but — no, don’t take off your cardigan – but it doesn’t mean anything.’
‘Stop talking!’ she shrieked. ‘Take me, Joseph, take me now, and make me feel like a woman!’
‘Fucking hell, I’m very sorry but would you mind putting your top back on?’
It was time to intervene.
‘Aunt Carole?!’ I bellowed, banging on the door. ‘Are you in there?’
‘Sophie?’ Joe yelled. ‘Help!’
Taking a deep breath and preparing for the worst, I pushed open the door. Joe was up against the wardrobe, Aunt Carole pinning him in place with two surprisingly muscular arms and the room in complete disarray. Someone had been working out. She was down to her matronly bra and pleated tartan midi-skirt, her face sweaty and red, and she was looking at Joe the same way I looked at a Greggs steak bake the morning after a heavy night which couldn’t possibly be a good thing.
‘Run along, Sophie,’ she instructed without moving. ‘Joseph and I are having a little chat.’
‘Yes, that’s absolutely what it looks like,’ I replied, keeping my gaze firmly on her feet. ‘If you’re finished traumatising your favourite author, Uncle Bryan is looking for you.’
Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, Joe dipped out from between her arms and bolted past me onto the landing. Without him in sight, whatever had possessed her fell away and Carole staggered backwards and sat heavily on the bed.
‘I don’t know what happened.’ She plucked her cardigan up from the floor and slung it around her shoulders, eyes still glazed over. ‘It’s that book, Sophie, it must be. The thing is wicked.’
‘It has caused more than its share of problems,’ I agreed, backing out the room. ‘Anyway, I’d better be getting back to the party.’
‘It would be much appreciated if you didn’t mention this to your uncle,’ she called after me. ‘Or anyone else while we’re at it.’
‘Your secret is safe with me,’ I promised, silently wondering who would believe me even if I did try to tell them.
‘Then she asked me to help her get something down off the top of the wardrobe,’ Joe said, looking pale and ghostly when I found him in the kitchen, washing his hands and splashing water on his face. ‘The next thing I knew, she was bouncing across the bed and claiming we were twin flames with her hands on my—’
‘Please don’t finish that sentence,’ I said, smiling politely at the other partygoers glancing our way with concern. ‘You’re safe now.’
He shuddered and pumped the handwash again.
‘You’ve created a monster. What if there are other women out there, launching themselves at unsuspecting men?’
‘The unsuspecting men should be so lucky.’
Turning off the tap, I passed him a hand towel. ‘I’m sorry, that must’ve been really …’ I paused and revisited the scene in my mind. ‘Well, from my perspective it was mostly very funny. But I am sorry.’
‘I’ll never be clean again,’ he muttered as he rubbed his hands violently with the towel. ‘Is there any bleach around here?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘but there’s alcohol outside. Let’s get you a drink.’
He followed obediently, completely silent as we passed through the party in search of booze. It was later than I’d realised and night was finally drawing in and the rain thankfully holding off. Dad’s string lights glowed brighter by the second against a pinky-purple sky as darkness fell, and that soft, hazy, only by night feeling of possibility sparkled inside me as we poured ourselves large measures at the trestle table Mum had kept well stocked with booze.
‘Thank you for the save,’ Joe said, clutching his glass for emotional support without actually drinking. ‘That was scarier than the time I got trapped in a lift with Courtney Love.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ I replied. ‘Please, I mean it, never mention it again. I’m just glad I made it before you did something you might regret.’
He stepped around me to block my view of the rest of the party, as though I could see anything but him in the first place. ‘At the risk of sounding like a cliché, we need to talk.’
My head dipped low and my hair slipped over my shoulders to frame my face. ‘About the book, I know.’
‘Not about the book,’ Joe said, one hand raising my chin so I could see the raw desire in his blue, blue eyes. ‘We need to talk about you and that dress and whatever the fuck it is you did to me this afternoon because I haven’t been able to think straight since.’
A wave of need rolled through me and my lips gently parted. I wasn’t expecting it. I wasn’t prepared.
‘Joseph!’ Gregory’s voice cut through the night like a rusty bread knife, sawing away at my last nerve and shattering whatever fragile thing was between us. ‘Get over here, I want you to meet my old pal!’
‘Saved by the Brent,’ I murmured, Joe’s shoulders sagging at the sight of his dad, arm around the shoulders of a world famous and incredibly uncomfortable fantasy author.
‘I’d better …’ he said, letting his words trail off as he accepted defeat.
‘You’d better,’ I agreed even though I didn’t want to let him go. ‘He looks like he’s had a few and the last thing we need is him pitching a Butterflies/Coraline crossover.’
With every step away from me, Joe’s long, confident stride returned, the easy-going smile sliding into place for everyone to see. He only paused once, to glance back over his shoulder at me, his expression flickering for just a split-second.
‘He doesn’t do relationships,’ I told myself unnecessarily and when I saw CJ approaching with a sickly-sweet grin on his face, added, ‘And you don’t get involved with wankers.’
‘Who’s a wanker?’ he asked, sidling up beside me in his impossibly skinny black suit.
‘You,’ I replied with fluttering eyelashes. ‘What do you want?’
He looked genuinely put out.
‘What? A man can’t say hello to his ex-girlfriend at her dad’s birthday party?’
‘Think about what you just said then answer your own question.’
I started to walk away but he placed a hand on my shoulder and my whole body shivered with revulsion. It felt wrong and painful, like stepping on a slug with one foot only to stand on a piece of Lego with the other. Looking up to the sky, I tried to remember the name of some ancient rain god and begged for divine intervention.
‘You were missed this afternoon,’ he said as I shrugged him off. ‘I hope you weren’t hiding away because of me.’
‘Colin, please,’ I begged. ‘It’s been a long day and I don’t have the energy for your particular brand of bollocks right now.’
‘CJ, please. And calm down, I only wanted to congratulate you on your book.’
‘What book?’ I stepped back, confused.
‘Butterflies,’ he replied, pushing his little wire-framed glasses up his nose. ‘Walsh didn’t write it, you did.’
All I had to do was deny it.
Or laugh in his face, roll my eyes or turn around and walk away. But there was something about the smug look on his face that stopped me from doing the sensible thing.
‘What makes you say that?’
His mouth curved up into a wicked smile and I knew I’d given the game away.
‘You forget how well I know you,’ he replied, flipping a strand of hair off my shoulder, making me involuntarily gip. Did everyone feel this way about their exes? We’d been so intimate for so long but the thought of him touching me now made me want to run inside and take a shower with a bottle of bleach and a scouring pad.
‘That book has got you written all over it, the references, the jokes, the lead character’s obsession with Nutella. I only wish you’d been so forthcoming with your fantasies when we were together, maybe things would’ve worked out differently.’
‘Happy to confirm they wouldn’t,’ I replied, pulling my hair away and very much wishing I had my cardigan with me. My cardigan, a used bin bag, a dead badger. Anything to cover up my bare skin.
‘Sometimes we have to go through great heartbreak to unlock our art,’ he mused, rubbing his designer stubble and looking up to the sky. ‘I had to end things between us so we could both achieve greatness, I’m sure you understand that now.’
‘I understand you wouldn’t know humility if it kicked you up the arse and I understand my book has outsold yours by more than ten to one.’
‘So you’re keeping check on my sales.’ He lowered his gaze, aiming for sultry but landing somewhere closer to extremely short-sighted, then took my hand in his. ‘Sophie, I’ve been thinking. What if we were to give it another try?’
Just when I thought my day couldn’t get any worse.