Chapter 13
‘I hate to see you standing about by yourself. You had much better dance.’
The Stonehills went silent. Lily checked into a clinic.
The flat in London stayed empty. I stayed in the attic, watching dust settle around me.
Jamie’s ring hung on a thin gold chain around my neck, the metal resting cold against my skin.
Like Miss Havisham in pyjamas, I waited for time to give me back what it had taken.
It didn’t.
My mourning period for Jamie lasted exactly twelve months. Three hundred and sixty-five days of staring blankly into mugs of instant coffee, eating toast without tasting it, and silently replaying the moment Dad had sat on my bed and broken the news.
I’d finished college and thrown myself into work at the family firm.
I managed construction projects with such robotic efficiency that Dad promoted me to oversee all the local sites.
He only stopped short of handing over the national portfolio because I flatly refused to travel.
‘I’m not doing Leeds in February,’ I told him, to which he sighed and muttered something about ‘bloody modern women and boundaries.’
Social life? Minimal. The occasional pub night if Dom and his first serious girlfriend, Nikki, drove up, bringing London energy and stories that made my world feel smaller.
Long, meandering phone calls with Alice, now living in a poky flat in Clapham – she and Dom had ended things amicably not long after the funeral – full of gossip, work rants and cautious check-ins on how I was really doing.
When my parents threw dinner parties I was summoned like a ghost to the feast. I’d appear for the drinks part of the evening, scrubbed up and making polite conversation. The guests had clearly been briefed: Do not mention Jamie.
Instead, they gave pitying smiles and overcompensated with small talk. They looked at me as if I were something quietly tragic. A girl with a sad story and no ending.
And then came the Saturday that broke the spell.
I was lying in bed reading, Spike curled beside me, the smell of bacon wafting up from the kitchen where Dad was on breakfast duty. Then – slam! – the back door banged, Mum shrieked, and I heard the unmistakable boom of Dom’s voice.
Dom didn’t do spontaneous visits. Dom was London – tailored suits, espresso on demand. So finding him in our kitchen on a Saturday morning was like discovering a flamingo in the bathroom.
‘Pack your bags, I’m taking you to a party,’ he said, mouth full of bacon sandwich.
I stood in the doorway with a mug of coffee, suspicious. ‘Have you just driven up from London?’
‘Yep. Did it in under two hours.’
‘So… eighty the whole way?’
‘Eighty-ish.’ He grinned.
Mum looked oddly gleeful, like she was in on a secret. ‘Nikki’s left your brother,’ she offered, far too brightly for such a sentence.
If it had been socially acceptable to cheer, Mum would have shouted to the rooftops.
‘Sorry,’ I said to Dom. ‘You okay?’
He shrugged. ‘She’s run off with someone from work. I told him he was welcome to her.’
That was Dom-speak for ‘I’m not talking about it.’
‘So,’ Mum interjected in her best hostess voice, ‘Dom has a spare ticket to a ball tonight. At the Dorchester!’
‘Thanks,’ I said flatly, ‘but I’ll pass.’
‘No. I want you to come with me,’ Dom said.
‘I don’t want to,’ I replied, teeth gritted.
A silence fell, like a storm cloud creeping in. Dom’s nostrils flared. He leaned forward. ‘Flo, when did you last go out? Like, out out?’
I bit the inside of my lip.
‘You’ve been up in that attic long enough. You’ve got to live again.’ He slammed his mug down.
I slammed mine too. Coffee sloshed out across the table like war paint. ‘Don’t tell me what to do,’ I hissed. ‘You have no idea what this feels like.’
Dom leaned in closer, voice lower now. ‘He was my friend too. Everyone’s on eggshells around you. Mum and Dad tiptoe around, treating you like you’re some glass statue. They love you. But you’ve frozen the house.’
That hurt. Mostly because it was true.
I looked at Mum. She dropped her gaze. Dad just nodded solemnly.
Fine.
‘Right,’ I snapped. ‘If it gets everyone off their bloody eggshells, I’ll go to the bloody ball!’
I thundered upstairs, threw clothes into a backpack, stomped down again, slammed the car door, and sat silently, refusing to acknowledge anyone.
Dom took half an hour to join me. When he finally slid into the driver’s seat, he didn’t speak. Just turned up the radio and pulled away. Mum and Dad stood waving us off.
We didn’t say a word until we hit the motorway services. He filled up with petrol, climbed back in and handed me a massive bar of Dairy Milk.
That did it. I burst into tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ I sobbed. ‘I didn’t realise I’d made everything so miserable.’
Dom hugged me. ‘You haven’t. But it’s time. We go to London. We party and resurrect your joy.’
We arrived at his flat, which bore the interior scars of Nikki’s influence. Fussy florals, cushions with sequins, a large print that read Live! Love! in scarlet script.
He extracted a bouquet of fake tropical flowers from a vase on the hallway table and dumped them in the kitchen bin.
‘Come on. We’ve got gin to drink and sorrows to leave behind.’
By the time we left, I was wearing one of Nikki’s designer dresses. It was a black-and-white silk number that made me feel like a flamenco dancer.
The ball was at the Dorchester. Dom had bought the tickets back when he thought he and Nikki were forever. They cost more than a second-hand car. We arrived like we owned the place.
‘Promise me,’ Dom said, as we stepped through the revolving door, ‘we’ll drink everything and dance to every song.’
‘Deal.’ I grinned.
We were seated with strangers, but Dom shattered the ice immediately by announcing his break-up, the ticket situation, and declaring our intention to ‘drink and dance until we fell over.’
By midnight, our table was a riot of laughter and lipstick-smeared glasses. We danced, flirted, toasted lost loves and new beginnings.
The rhythm of the band washed through me, a pulse of sound and light. And, just for a little while, I stopped thinking about Jamie.
Not because I’d forgotten him – never that – but because, in that gilded room under the golden light, I remembered what it was like to breathe without holding back.
And it felt like flying.