Chapter 7
‘How pleasant it is to spend an evening in this way!’
Luke and his family inhabited the old red-brick rectory in Upper Lymfield. It stood grandly at the edge of the village, right beside the church.
We turned in through the wrought-iron gates. Dom surveyed the long line of parked cars snaking up the drive, then slammed the Mini into reverse and squeezed us in between a Ford Fiesta and a rose bush.
I clambered out of the back. Laughter, music, and the unmistakable smell of barbecue came wafting through the air. Summer had officially peaked.
‘Right, let’s unload and head in,’ said Dom, opening the boot. He slung two bulging carrier bags of booze and crisps over one shoulder, and with his towel and sleeping bag under the other, led the way like a seasoned house party veteran.
Alice and I teetered across the gravel in our rope-wedge sandals, overburdened and off-balance with our duvets and bags. Inside, we dumped our belongings on a growing mountain of bedding and backpacks in the dark, wood-panelled entrance hall.
We followed Dom down a cool flagstone hallway, through to the other side of house, and out into the garden.
The light was doing that thing it does in midsummer, turning everything gold and hazy. Smoke drifted lazily upward. Someone had rigged up speakers, and music floated across the garden.
People were lounging on rugs and cushions that had been scattered across the lawn – Persian rugs, kilims, things that looked like they’d been dragged from ancestral rooms and flung casually onto the grass.
A makeshift outdoor bar had been fashioned from two wooden planks and a couple of barrels.
Gin and vodka bottles were lined up next to an old metal bucket that was stacked with wine bottles in ice, condensation dripping down the sides. Everyone had a drink in hand.
It looked like a photograph. Like something staged for an article about bohemian youth and golden summers that would never end.
I counted at least fifty people and knew maybe five.
My chest tightened.
Everyone looked older than me and Alice. Everyone looked way cooler.
Not cool in the way people at school tried to be cool with their carefully calculated, studied indifference. This was something else entirely. Effortless. Lived-in. The kind of cool that came from never having doubted you belonged somewhere.
Girls in slip dresses and vintage band T-shirts.
Boys in shirts they hadn’t bothered to iron, sleeves rolled up, cigarettes dangling from fingers like accessories.
They sprawled across the rugs like they owned not just the space but the very air around them, laughing at jokes I couldn’t hear, trading glances that spoke of a shared history I wasn’t a part of.
‘Wow. Next level,’ whispered Alice.
‘Hey, you made it,’ said Luke, breaking off from one of the clusters to greet us.
He was wearing cut-off jeans, a red bandanna knotted around his neck, and a white shirt open to the waist. He clapped Dom on the back with genuine enthusiasm and gave Alice and me a warm hug that smelled of cigarettes and expensive aftershave.
‘Come on, grab a drink. Meet the crew.’
The knot in my chest loosened slightly. Luke remembered us. Luke was pleased to see us. That had to count for something.
He was doing an art foundation in London.
We were introduced to his creative posse.
He’d got a girlfriend called Vicky. They spoke in shared half-sentences, finishing each other’s thoughts, their hands constantly finding each other – a touch on the arm, fingers intertwining, that easy physical intimacy of people who’d mapped each other’s bodies.
Dom handed me a glass of wine, before disappearing with Alice for a cigarette, the two of them wandering off towards a pond at the edge of the garden. I watched them go – Alice laughing at something Dom said, already absorbed into the fabric of the party.
I lingered, clutching my glass like a life raft, listening to Vicky and one of Luke’s course mates – a boy with spiky, bleached hair discussing something involving fabrics, fur, and anti-capitalist symbolism.
I caught maybe one word in three, but it didn’t matter.
They were zany and animated. The conversation was easy, flowing around me like water around a stone.
I could just stand, nodding occasionally, looking interested, and no one seemed to mind that I wasn’t contributing.
The wine was doing its work. Each sip was loosening the tight coil of anxiety inside me. The evening was warm, the light was beautiful, and I was a part of this real party scene.
Someone turned the music up. Laughter got louder, more raucous. A girl shrieked with delight at something.
I took another sip.
And then–
‘Florrie?’
A hand touched the small of my back.
Every nerve ending ignited. The glass nearly slipped from my fingers. I knew that voice. I’d know it in a thunderstorm, underwater, or in a dream.
I turned. Jamie.
He stood beside me, tanned to a glossy, Marbella golden brown. His hair was artfully windswept, his shirt a pale sky-blue linen, open at the neck. Cream linen trousers. Navy espadrilles. He looked like someone who’d accidentally wandered away from a yacht in Cannes.
He looked devastating.
In my wedges, we were the same height. Eye to eye.
For a moment I forgot how to breathe. Those grey-green eyes were fixed on mine.
‘Hello,’ I managed, feeling heat bloom across my chest.
‘It’s been a while,’ he said, smiling, and leaned in to kiss me on both cheeks. His stubble grazed my skin. He smelled of a long hot summer. The kiss on the left cheek, then the right – the kind of greeting that probably meant nothing to him and everything to me.
I all but melted into the grass. Dom hadn’t told me Jamie was coming. Of course he hadn’t.
‘Ahem?’ Vicky and her friend had turned to full attention, arms outstretched for introduction. Their eyes were like saucers, as if a film star had entered our midst. Jamie obliged, full charm mode activated.
He chatted to them easily, way too easily, and I watched, frozen, as Vicky sparkled under his attention.
Within seconds, others had noticed. Luke appeared, then Marcus, along with another girl.
Soon we were engulfed. A ripple of excitement moved through the crowd as word spread through some invisible network: Jamie Stonehill was here.
I was nudged further and further out until I found myself on the edge, no longer part of the inner circle.
I retreated towards the barbecue where Toby was wielding a pair of tongs like a samurai at the grill.
‘I didn’t know Jamie was coming,’ I said, picking up a spare set to help rotate the sizzling sausages.
‘Yeah, last-minute. Straight from the airport,’ Toby replied, dabbing sweat from his brow with his T-shirt. ‘Spain for the past month. Lucky bastard.’
Spain. A whole other planet. The closest I’d ever been was a soggy campsite near Biarritz.
It had rained for most of the two weeks of our annual family holiday.
Our ‘waterproof’ tent developed its own internal ecosystem.
The only saving grace had been a British family next door who owned a caravan, the Luxe Cruiser, which was a five-star palace in comparison.
I turned sausages and nodded at Toby’s running commentary, but my eyes kept drifting back.
Jamie was standing under the tree now, talking to Vicky’s friend. She kept touching his arm, leaning in whenever he spoke, laughing that laugh. The laugh designed for proximity.
I wanted to run over, shove her out of the way. She’d known him for ten minutes. I’d known him forever. I’d written us into dozens of imaginary futures. I’d cast us in every version of my life. Jamie and Florence, Florence and Jamie. It had rhythm. It had meaning.
I sighed.
Toby followed my gaze and snorted. ‘Don’t let it get to you. That’s just how it is with Jamie. People lose their minds a bit.’
‘I know,’ I said, stabbing a sausage with enough force that it rolled off the grill and landed in the grass.
Toby raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment. Just handed me another sausage to replace it.
We stood there in silence for a moment, the smoke swirling around us, the party continuing in its golden haze behind us. Jamie’s laugh carried across the lawn again, and I didn’t let myself turn around.