Chapter Forty-Nine
I’m sitting on the front steps of the castle with Megan, Artie, and Rani, waiting for Megan’s dad to come and pick her up.
I’m buzzing with a delicious kind of tiredness that I’ve never known before. It’s a sort of fizzing and popping kind of exhausted,
peppered with flashbacks of moments from last night that quietly thrill me as we sit here on the step, under the summer sky.
A secret only I know. Or almost only me, anyway.
I’m not sure how much sleep we got, but I think it was just about an hour before I was woken up by the sound of Artie playing
next door, singing to her stuffed animals a made-up song about the life of a Viking. Forrest stirred, rubbing his eyes open,
smiling sweetly.
“Hello, you,” he said softly as I climbed out of bed, his hand outstretched. “What are you doing?”
“Daddy?” Artie called from next door. “Me and the teddies are invading Paris today, so we need a big breakfast, K?”
“Okay, love, give me a minute,” Forrest called.
“I thought I’d best get going,” I whispered as I pulled my shirt on, with a shy smile. After all that nudity and scenes of a sexual nature we engaged in last night, I felt suddenly shy and a little bit like we only just met.
“Probably for the best,” Forrest agreed. “See you later . . .”
“Yeah, sure,” I said as casually as I could and I left, running up the hallway to my room before anyone saw. I went straight
over to Cecily and Eliza’s portrait as if somehow it might have been altered by the events of last night. But it was exactly
the same, mother and daughter caught in an eternal moment of love. I hoped they were happy together now wherever they were.
Then I took a shower, where I began what I think might be my new hobby for the foreseeable future. And that is obsessively
thinking, on a continuous loop ever since, about the last thing Forrest said to me before I left. He said, See you later. But what did he mean?
“I’m not gonna lie,” Megan says, interrupting my train of thought for a second. “I could get used to castle life. It certainly
makes a difference from Dad and my place.”
“Oh, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” I tell her. “The heating bills are enormous. And people are always coming round.”
I nod at a group of day-trippers who are walking across the lawn in shorts and sun hats.
“But the outfits.” Rani sighs. “There aren’t that many settings when you can get away with really beautiful outfits just to
sit on some steps.” It’s true that she looks resplendent in a hot pink silk kaftan that billows around her like the sails
on a ship. But I know Rani, and I know that she would wear exactly that dress to take some packages to the post office.
“I like living in a castle. I played with a ghost and saw fairies,” Artie tells us.
“Sure you did, kid,” Megan says, patting the top of her mop of dark curls. It seems like Artie doesn’t hear teenage sarcasm, as she takes this as an affirmation of her exploits with a satisfied nod.
“Alex took me out to York for late cocktails last night, after the reception wrapped,” Rani said. “We went to this gorgeous
little secret bar, with a rooftop garden that has views of the cathedral, and drank negronis. Then we just strolled around
York talking and talking for half the night. It was the loveliest evening. I’m really enjoying this taking-it-slow business.”
“How do you take it slow?” Artie asks. “Did you go bleeeoooaugh like a snail?”
Artie accompanies this description with her impression of a snail.
“Yes,” Rani says. “Exactly like that.”
“You know George, who came to the party?” Megan says. “He asked me to go to prom with him, man. And prom ain’t even until
next May.”
“To be fair to George, you are a catch,” Rani says.
“Are you going to say yes?” I ask Megan.
“Nah, don’t think so,” Megan replies. “I mean like, you know, it’s not for ages anyway and in any case I’d rather just hang
with my girls and have a laugh.”
“Girl power!” Rani says, raising a fist.
“You’re too young to be so nineties,” Megan says with a chuckle.
“But you’re right though, Megan,” I say. “Boys just get in your head. You don’t need that. How are you going to make groundbreaking
art or invent cutting-edge technology if all you can think about is a boy?”
Megan and Rani each give me a long, curious look.
“Apparently,” I add.
“Anyway, I saw Jess this morning,” Rani says. “We watched your video, giving marital advice to the newlyweds like seventeen times, and it is the funniest thing I have ever seen.”
“It’s hilarious,” Megan chuckles, grinning at me. “You are hilarious. What is love? Is it a dream?”
“I did not say that. Please tell me I didn’t say that,” I plead. “Anyway, how did you see it, Megan?” I ask.
“TikTok,” Megan and Artie say together. I drop my face into my hands. I don’t have regrets about the champagne, or even the
stupid things I said out loud; if I regretted all the times that happened, I’d never open my mouth again. It’s more that until
now I’d never really cared what anyone thought of me, outside of Rani. Maybe Forrest saw the video. Maybe that’s what he meant
by See you later. And no, I don’t know what I mean, either. I’m extremely sleep deprived.
“There’s Dad!” Megan stands up, waving, as the front half of an articulated lorry, minus its load, rattles up the drive. It
creaks to a halt in front of the steps.
“Cool truck,” Artie says. “Can I drive it?”
“All right, pet.” Megan’s dad gets out. “Been living the high life, have you? Won’t know yourself, will ya. Be all lahdy-dah
and that.”
“Yeah, I want caviar on my chips!” Megan says, flinging her arms around her dad and hugging him. “Not really. Would kill for
a frozen pizza. Well, bye, Ava.” Megan gives me a hug. “Bye, Rani, and thanks again for the dress.”
“Anytime, kid, and you know where to come if you need a job after school,” Rani tells her, to Megan’s delight.
“Or in STEM,” I reply. “I’ve always got a lab coat for you, Megan.”
“Right.” Megan gives me a thumbs-up and then looks past me to the open door. “I thought Forrest might come and say hi to Dad.”
“Daddy’s very tired,” Artie says. “It’s because of the ghost and the fairies.”
“Here I am!” Forrest calls as he trots down the steps barefoot, in jeans and a T-shirt. He doesn’t look at me as he walks
straight to Megan and her dad. What does it mean that he didn’t look at me? What does he mean by See you later?
“So, you’re the feller that got her into her English and her art, then?” Megan’s dad says. “Cheers, mate, she’s really enjoyed
herself.”
“I mean it was okay,” Megan says, rolling her eyes.
“She’s a bright kid,” Forrest says. “She deserves the best.”
Megan hugs Forrest and then climbs into the truck, waving at us through the open window as her dad pulls away.
“Funny how you never can know when you’ll meet someone who will make you see everything differently,” Forrest says, giving
a final wave as the truck rolls out between the gates. “Right, come on, Artie. It’s Sunday. Want to go swimming?”
“I do!” Artie screeches. “Rani and Ava too?”
“Oh, I’ve got some more prep to do before tomorrow’s big finales,” I say, trying to be all casual and offhand and that it’s
no big deal to me that I had sex or anything.
“And I’m like a cat, I don’t like getting wet,” Rani tells Artie. “But you have fun though.”
“Come on, then, cow warrior.” Forrest scoops his daughter up under one arm, carrying her like she is a sack of potatoes. Artie
squeals with laughter as they disappear back into the castle.
“What. The heck. Happened?” Rani asks me at once.
“What are you talking about?” I ask her, trying to be nonchalant.
“Why are you being so weird?” Rani demands.
“I’m always weird,” I defend myself.
“Weirder,” she qualifies. “Why are you being even weirder around Forrest?”
“What? I didn’t even speak to him or look at him, or touch him.”
“I knew it!” Rani’s eyes widen. “The sexual chemistry between you just then was off the chart. What happened? I need to know,
and I need to now.”
“Nothing really,” I say. “Well, except that we had to go and look for Artie in the middle of the night, because she’d gone
on an adventure, but the ghost of the Blue Lady showed us where she was, and then we helped her reconcile with her lost daughter,
and after that we put Artie to bed and then after that we had really, really, really, really, really hot sex. A lot. But that’s all.”
“WHAT?!” Rani shouts so loudly that the ravens scatter from the cedar trees, and a nearby peacock shrieks in terror.
“Shhhhh,” I tell her, motioning for her to keep her voice down. “It was nothing. It was just a casual, spur-of-the-moment
sort of thing.”
“Uh-uh, nope, no way I am buying that line from you, Ava Green, the woman who hadn’t even kissed a boy until the day before
yesterday or something and even then it was with her sexbot. How has this happened? And why am I the last to know about it?
What the hell, so this is what happens when I stop having sex. You start having it. Well, I didn’t know we had a one in, one
out system.”
“Rani, shhhh,” I tell her again. “Calm down and I’ll tell you. But not here. We need to get farther away from the chances of being overheard.”
Despite her best efforts to make me talk, I refuse to say anything until we are a decent distance away from the castle and
the emerging wedding guests, who are starting to leave. I seem to home in on the cedar trees, from where I can see the little
chapel, sitting in the morning sun. Standing here in broad daylight, it’s hard to believe that anything that happened last
night was real, and maybe I would think I had dreamt it all if it wasn’t for Forrest’s stubble rash between my thighs.
“Go on then,” Rani says. “No one can hear us now.”
So, I tell her how Hal and I decided that we were not meant to be together romantically, but that before that I drank a lot
of champagne, which maybe made me a bit less inhibited than usual, but also how I was completely sober by the time I got woken
up by Cecily, and Forrest, Artie, and I had a midnight supernatural adventure.
“And anyway, he didn’t have a top on, and I wasn’t wearing any knickers so . . .”
“What, you fell onto his dick?” Rani asks.
“Are you cross with me?” I ask her, concerned.
“No, no.” She hugs me. “No, I’m just over here practising abstinence and maybe slightly regretting it. But I am not cross
at you, I think it’s brilliant. So you just like went for it?”
“I think it just felt like the right time for both of us to get back in the saddle. Or in the saddle, in my case.”
“OMG, are you okay?” Rani asks me. “Do you feel different?”
“I feel tired, but yes, I am okay,” I tell her. “I am. It was . . . great and he was . . . great. There is one tiny problem.”
“What?” Rani asks me.
“I think I’ve fallen in love with him,” I tell her.
“Fuck,” Rani says. “You never could do things by halves.”