Chapter 9
CHAPTER
NINE
Four houses down, Sev loitered up against an all black souped-up VW Polo with tinted rear windows. Waiting for us. Not exactly patiently.
“Every second you two stand there not moving, is one second of weekend I am never getting back.”
Like I was the one who desperately wanted to be zooming off to Richard’s country pile to film a dodgy video with the guy I was in lust with, to get him off the hook for screwing someone else. In fact, that sounded exactly like my perfect weekend. How foolishly I had been wasting my life.
Simon yanked open the passenger door, tilting the front seat forward and gesturing at it with a pointed nod. Of course I got to go in the back like the child. I was sweet, wasn’t I?
Strapping into the middle seat, one hand on each headrest, seemed like the best option, except Sev fed her car rocket fuel. I wouldn’t like to say she took the corner too fast or anything, but I definitely centrifuged back against the seat. G-forces came into play. Quite a few of them.
The engine roared like a fighter jet, and I swear flames shot from the exhaust as she gunned us down the road.
Simon took his life into his own hands, tugging slack into his seat belt and twisting around to peer back at me. He was probably into extreme sports too.
“Sev had plans this weekend. She’s being incredibly gallant.”
Why did she get gallant?
“Don’t butter me up, Simon.” She darted a look, turning to him so her face was visible, and I cringed as the traffic lights ahead turned red and she slammed on the brakes. “I am not even close to approaching happiness and light about this situation.”
“She’s meant to be helping choose wedding flowers.”
“Oh. Nice.” I forced enthusiasm. “Who’s getting married?”
In the rearview mirror, Sev Medusaed me. Funeral flowers, I would definitely go to her for.
“I am. Remember? Why do you sound so surprised?”
“What? No. I’m not – I wasn’t.” Shit. “Congratulations. Again. It’s wonderful, isn’t it? Really great.”
“Is it? Wonderful?”
My mouth hinged open. This was one of those traps.
Anything I said would be the wrong thing.
If I wasn’t careful, this whole conversation would rearrange itself until I was inadvertently mansplaining menstruation with no idea how I got there.
And it would absolutely be my fault. “You’re… not all that sold on it then?”
Clearly amused, Simon glanced between us like he was spectating at Wimbledon.
“Oh, I’m over the fucking moon. But I don’t need congratulating for enshrining a perfectly good relationship in a misogynistic, outdated cage with thirteen dozen pastel pink roses and a whole bunch of gender-conforming hoo-ha.
It’s not a wedding; it’s a civil partnership.
We’re not doing the Big Fat Turkish Wedding bollocks.
” Sev floored the accelerator. “And I fucking hate roses. They’re not going to change anything other than that when she divorces me, she can get a lawyer to chainsaw my camera equipment in half, are they? ”
“Do lawyers actually chop—?”
“Sev,” Simon soothed, “if Jo wanted to chainsaw your camera in half, she wouldn’t wait for a lawyer to do it.”
“She definitely won’t if I keep trashing our weekend plans to sort out your cock-ups. Can’t believe we’re doing this.”
Simon’s grin spread wider, showing his teeth. “It’ll be good for your CV.”
“Funnily enough”—Sev shot him the most withering look I’d ever seen in my life, changing gears with a skilful wrist snap—“my aspirations to be a soft-porn producer are entirely non-existent.”
Changing lanes so sharply the wheels screeched, Sev darted in and out of the traffic like we were in a high-speed chase and I white knuckled the seat because I didn’t want to die.
We hit a tail-back ten minutes onto the M25. Like every time I’d ever been on it. The three of us stared at the sat-nav as it recalculated the journey time. And recalculated it again, and the road ahead on the map turned red.
“Oh good.” With a heavy exhale, Simon pulled his laptop out of the work bag he had stashed in the footwell.
His fingers pitter-pattered over the keys like rain on a window.
The ring on Sev’s thumb clacked as she drummed the steering wheel, and I sagged against the back seat.
The air conditioning roared. Through the mirror on the side of the car, I could see the lines in Simon’s forehead wrinkle.
His face was set to concentration. Do not disturb.
Sev flicked the radio on—
…vestigating a toxic gas cloud from a water treatment plant halting traffic on the M25 this morning. The large volume of chlorine gas appeared earlier today after a mixup at the plant and police are working–
“Did they say gas cloud?” Sev shook her head, visibly weary. “This weekend has to be cursed.”
She wasn’t wrong.
Sev scrolled through half a dozen stations of adverts. Not a single song came on the radio. She clicked it off and started drumming the wheel again.
Twenty minutes later, the threat of small talk shimmered through the heat haze rising off the road, ever more vibrant with every glance Sev shot at me in the rear-view mirror. The traffic on our side was crawling. It’d be hours before we got anywhere if this kept up.
My phone buzzed – what a saviour of a thing – and I fumbled it out of my pocket faster than I could say socially avoidant.
Gran Calling!
Damn it.
“Who’s that?” The clacking of Sev’s rings slowed as she rubber-necked to see.
I pinched the side button to silence it.
“No one.”
But my phone flashed at me, the backlit screen calling me a liar.
Gran Calling! Gran Calling!
“You should probably pick up.”
Oh, déjà vous. Why did everybody have a vested interest in me not sending my calls to voicemail?
“It’s only my gran.”
“And you don’t think the poor dear should know you’re about to spend the afternoon filming a sex tape with your boss?” Her eyes sparked with mischief. No wonder Simon and her got on.
“Wasn’t planning on telling her that, no.”
Sev’s shoulders visibly shook with her rolling chuckle. “Out of interest, why did you say it was you and Simon in the film?”
I tugged the collar of my t-shirt. Next to her, Simon was plugged into his laptop, tapping away, oblivious to becoming the conversation topic.
My guts slithered talking about him. Even with his hearing aids in, Simon needed mouth-shapes to understand.
Moral and professional duty said I should loop him in – make him aware of the conversation at the very least.
I already knew I wasn’t going to. Which made me a total shit.
“Quite fancied keeping my job, didn’t I?” Guilt twisted my stomach. Or maybe I was getting car sick again.
Technically, I was off the clock. Probably the ethics committee would have more to say about the sex tape we were about to film anyway. He was busy, and me being here wasn’t really part of my interpreting work. So why did all that feel like so many excuses?
“Hmmm.” Sev coloured the syllable with a surprising amount of incredulity. “So, you’re not worried you’ve made it really easy for them to keep going at it while you play alibi?”
Well, fuck. I hadn’t been.
“C-ourse not.” I full-on choked. Why hadn’t I been, this was the question.
Sev made a face at me spluttering all over her upholstery. “Easy Spartacus. Don’t go dying on my back seat. It’s just a possibility. Because Simon – love him to bits – but he’s a bit of an indiscriminate man-whore, you know?”
I sucked in a breath. Next to Sev, Simon’s fingers stilled on the laptop keys, but he didn’t look up. In the wing mirror, the visible half of his face stayed passive. Fully zoned in on his work, he hadn’t heard her.
That didn’t make anything better.
Never mind talking about him, if Sev found out I’d been unhealthily obsessed with Simon forever, it would be game over. No one wanted an interpreter with an agenda. I didn’t even have one, really. I was only waiting for my doomed crush to die. But no one was going to believe that now.
“He can— fuck Richard all he likes. No skin off my nose.”
Sev snorted another laugh. “Really? Because, if it was me, pining after my boss—”
“Honestly”—liar—“I’m not.”
“If it was me, I’d want to know the score before I did anything else idiotic.”
My denial beached itself in the back of my throat. “What, like agree to be filmed half naked?”
Bit bloody late for that. Line me up for the Nobel Prize for screwing yourself over in the most spectacular way possible. Or was that more of a Darwin Award skill set?
What had I been thinking?
The car in front crept forward, and Sev rolled us on, still watching me far too closely in the mirror.
“Oh, babes.” She stopped drumming her ring against the wheel, looking at me through the mirror with something terrifyingly close to sympathy. “It’s only going to be a bit of skin on skin. You’ll survive.”
Easy for her to say. She hadn’t spent the last three years inventing scenarios in which I might get to see Simon Azie’s upper arms.
My phone buzzed again and a message pinged through.
Gran
Nearly out of milk. And tea. Don’t get the nasty cheap stuff again. Biscuits. Not own brand. They don’t taste the same. You’ll have to...
I locked the screen without reading the rest. Own brand biscuits were the very last of my problems now.
Sev skidded the car to a halt, spraying an arc of pea-shingle against the sprawling expanse of sandy-coloured stone in front of us.
Heybourne had actual wings. Legitimate columns. A clock tower. And that was probably a stable block in the distance. Fuck me with a bar of gold bullion. I hadn’t remembered it being this big when we’d come for the photoshoot with Beau Monde.
Wrenching her door open, Sev scrunched to the boot of the car, unloading her gear onto the shingle before I unclipped my seat belt.
Simon flipped his laptop closed, smothering a yawn with the back of his hand.
The bags under his eyes were breaching the hand-luggage limit.
Any self-respecting airline attendant would slap a label on him and conveyor belt him off to the hold.
Which was none of my business, was it?