Chapter 32
CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO
SATURDAY
The slow creak of my bedroom door swam me to consciousness even though I didn’t want it to.
Step.
Step. Step. Step.
Swish.
Sunlight daggered into my cocoon of mellow darkness.
“Jesus!” I darted upright, gasping at the unwelcome shock of daylight. Matt stood by my open curtains. Et tu, Brute.
“What are you doing?” I flapped at him like an angry bird, signs going wild. “Get out of my room!”
“Why?” His lower lip jutted, signs blunt and bored. “Hiding someone under the covers?”
“Fuck off Matt.”
Too soon. My desiccated heart constricted with a painful pinch.
Didn’t he know my future stretched forward from this point into an infinity of failed hook-ups with guys who thought they were being risky getting with a knuckle-dragging brute like me and women who wanted throwing about?
I’d almost believed Simon cared about me.
Saw me the way I wanted to be seen. What a joke.
All that time listening like he gave a damn, and he’d been mining me for something personal enough to justify the holes in our story.
Or at least distract from them. And I’d bloody-well delivered.
I bet he’d had it all planned out from the beginning. Christ.
Ramming my tongue up against the roof of my mouth did nothing to tranquilise the sting behind my eyes.
“You need to get up.”
“No I don’t.” I tugged my duvet higher. Didn’t Matt know I had moping rights for at least three days? Getting dumped and fired had to earn me that. Even if it was only sex. Which it was. And Simon had never really cared. Which I’d known. And I didn’t care either.
“Your phone’s been going off all morning.” Matt slapped it down on my bedside table, wilfully ignoring my decision to stay as far away from it as possible.
“I left it downstairs on purpose.”
“Look at it.”
Such a Deaf thing, Matt coming in here like my business was his business.
“This is not a communal experience.”
“I bloody wish it wasn’t.”
“What does that mean?”
15 Missed Calls from: Simon.
Christ. As if cancelling every recurring booking he had didn’t make his position crystal bloody clear. What could Simon possibly want to talk to me about?
The lie was over. He’d put up the clip he’d recorded at Possimus, justifying our silence with all of my First World family trauma. He didn’t bloody need me hanging around anymore.
I stalked away from the bed to stop Matt rubbernecking over my shoulder. My hands weren’t shaking – the air was much cooler than under my covers, that’s all. Chills rose along my arms as I scrolled notifications. The temperature did it.
Matt rapped on my bedside table to get my attention. “Wouldn’t go too close to the window without a top on.”
“...Why not?”
Matt sucking a breath in over his teeth had my stomach Fosbury flipping.
Sunshine glimmered through the window with deceptive innocence. The sky was blue. White fluffy clouds raced by. As I stepped closer, the houses across the street came into view, and—
“Oh shit, seriously?”
Either we had half a dozen journalists milling in a snaky knot around our front gate, or we had a flash-mob going on.
What fresh hell was this?
My phone burbled. Right on cue.
Beau Monde: Whittaker the All Rounder. Ex-rugby player spills all on his (bi)sexual past.
Cultur’d: Borrowed and Blue. Phoebe Huntley-Templeton on eco-conscious choices for bridesmaid’s dresses.
The wedding train was unstoppable.
Gossip!: This is Definitely a Horse. L Cunningham’s on a quest for the truth.
Bingo.
Luke had run with his article then.
I sank onto the edge of my creaky mattress, ignoring the world wobbling out of control. “That’s it. I’m emigrating.”
Thanks to Luke the whole internet thought I’d lied so Richard bloody Whittaker could stay in the closet, and he still managed to come out on top. Why had I ever thought getting muddled up with this was a good idea?
Matt snorted. “You planning on retraining?”
Oh balls. “There’s got to be a Deaf British diplomat somewhere in the world in need of a new interpreter.”
See-sawing his hand, Matt wrinkled his nose. “Probably doesn’t want one who’s been recently embroiled in a sex scandal. Maybe you should talk to Cathy. She’s got students trying to double-book her to cover lectures.”
Fuck my life. No one who cared about integrity would hire me without a seriously glowing reference after this. Especially not into an educational setting. Slumping heavily onto the mattress, I keeled sideways like a felled tree, hitting the pillow face first, not even bothering to break my fall.
Why would Simon give me a decent reference?
My gallant white knight attempt had been sheer delusion.
I’d been prancing around with a saucepan on my head clip-clopping along with a pair of coconut shells, thinking I was on a medieval warhorse.
Everyone else had known I wasn’t rescuing anyone from anything.
Simon had never needed me to stand up and lie about the sex tape.
Between him and Richard they could have had it all nicely in hand. All I’d done was make everything worse.
And then sleep with him, and act like it meant nothing. Because I thought he didn’t want it to.
But now every time I closed my eyes, there was Simon with that closed-off look flooding through him, after I’d said it was convenient. That dry twist of a laugh echoing against the bathroom tiles, rumbling round and round my head.
I had thought that. Yes.
I had thought that.
I had thought that.
Which one had he said? Was there even a difference, if it all came to meaning the same thing? We weren’t on the same page at all.
He didn’t like me. We’d never been friends.
The flickers of who he was, when he wasn’t spinning the truth like a bloke in Covent Garden with a dozen plates whirling, were my delusions.
So what if I’d made him laugh a hundred times, and learnt his pulse, and he’d niggled and pushed and gritted in under my skin, telling me kind, beautiful things I’d always known better than to trust. I never belonged in the shiny world he wanted.
Where he tried on hats and sought out old fashioned watches that sat in your hand like a kiss, and drank cocktails out of delicate glasses, and didn’t care what anybody thought.
He’d used me. And then he’d drawn a line under it all, and taken it away. Just like that.
He’d never wanted me really.
A razor-edged ache strangled my throat closed. I hauled the duvet up over my head. Screw daylight. Screw holding it together. I was done with all of it.
Darkness lasted three point seven-five seconds before Matt whipped the covers off.
“Get up, Ben.” His signs were large and loud enough to make me wince.
Bloody teacher – far too used to standing in front of a room full of people who did exactly what he wanted. I sniffed hard, pressing the heels of my hands against my eyes, tensing everything until the ache passed.
Matt was still standing there when I looked up.
“Come on,” he coaxed. “What are you going to do about that lot out there?”
I shrugged limply.
Missed call from: Simon.
“Hide. Obviously.”
Matt vetoed that plan. But I ignored him.