Chapter 12 #2
We turned to see a little girl, her rainbow-tights-clad feet glued to the floor as she twisted her little body from side to side. It bothered me that I couldn’t remember her name, just that she’d lost her brother six months ago. Leukaemia. As though that were her identity now.
‘Of course not.’ I smiled, shimmying free from Luca’s grasp and squatting down to her level. ‘We were just playing a game.’
‘And Miss Thompson lost,’ Luca added smugly, tapping the back pocket of his jeans into which he’d slipped the incriminating photograph. I rolled my eyes at him, quickly attempting to straighten my shirt.
‘Miss Thompson, are you a fan of The Jungle Book ?’ Luca asked loudly as I made to leave, spinning to look at me with the utmost seriousness as he swung his guitar across his chest. From across the room, ten pairs of excited eyes blinked expectantly up at me as Luca began strumming the tune of ‘The Bare Necessities’.
‘Oh, well, I should really be going—’
‘You don’t like The Jungle Book ?’ little ginger-haired Harry frowned, his mouth falling open in disbelief as though I’d just told him that Santa wasn’t real.
Nine more gasps echoed around the hall like a sudden gust of wind, an uncomfortable silence descending as Luca’s fingers stilled on the strings.
‘No, I love it! Huge fan. The biggest!’ I corrected myself quickly, glaring at Luca until he started playing again.
‘You’re doing that annoying lip-twitching thing.
Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,’ I hissed at him, taking the wooden stick with bells on it that Kiki ran to give me with a shy smile.
Luca walked back over to the children, dropping to his knees, and tapping out a beat on the pair of bongos for Harry to take over before waltzing back over to me.
‘It’s called a smile. You should try it sometime,’ he said dryly, his scent – warm and surprisingly familiar – wafting over me as he came up behind me, close but not quite touching.
My breath caught in my throat as his fingers wrapped around my wrist, and I tried to resist the urge to step back into him.
‘Like this.’ His voice vibrated right through me as his fingers interlaced with mine until I wasn’t sure where I ended and he began, shaking whatever instrument I was holding in time with the beat.
His grip loosened, leaving my skin peppered with goosebumps as he began a conga-style procession around the hall, a chaotic trail of percussion-wielding infants behind him.
They were each playing their own tune and yet somehow, it all seemed to belong, weaving together to create something beautiful.
Perfect, not so much. Following the script, definitely not. But beautiful none the less.
‘There you are. I was about to send out a search party.’
I glanced at my watch. Had I really been here over an hour?!
‘Sorry, I didn’t realise the time.’ I grinned sheepishly at an approaching Jacob, noting a scattering of crumbs stuck to the front of his crochet knitted t-shirt.
‘I see you helped yourself to the emergency bag of crisps in the glove compartment. You do know those have been in there for over five years?’
Jacob turned a delicate shade of green, brushing most of the incriminating evidence over the floor.
‘I’ll just go grab my stuff,’ I added, leaving him chatting to Luca as I went to retrieve the shoebox . With my back to them, the hairs on my arms stood to attention, bristling at something despite the sun beating down through the windows.
‘Sorry we kept her so long, mate,’ I heard Luca mutter faintly.
‘Ah, no bother. It’s nice to see her this passionate about something again. I’ve not seen her like that since before the accident,’ came Jacob’s voice.
‘Accident?’
‘Yeah, Joe’s accident.’
‘Joe, as in Jenny’s fiancé, Joe?’
The box slipped through my fingers, landing on the floor with a thud as my head snapped up just in time to see the confusion on Luca’s face. I waved my hands frantically in the air, trying to get Jacob’s attention, to signal to him to stop, but he wasn’t looking my way. Shit.
A mix of adrenaline and something else flooded through me, propelling me across the room before I could even register what was happening.
But by the time I reached them, everything about Luca’s face told me I was already too late.
His eyes, heavy with a cocktail of sadness and pity that I knew all too well, found mine, full of questions I couldn’t answer.
Like why I’d never corrected him whenever he’d mentioned Joe.
How I’d let him believe we were happily engaged. Gone along with it, in fact.
‘Wait a second, you didn’t know?’ Jacob frowned, looking first at Luca and then at me. I stared at the shoelace of my left trainer, unsure of what to say.
‘No, I didn’t know.’ Luca breathed out. ‘I thought—’ But his voice trailed off.
I watched his eyes land on the third finger of my left hand where my engagement ring hung heavier than normal.
Confusion, realisation, sorrow all swirled across his features as I watched him rearrange the pieces in his head.
I blinked, looking away, having no desire to see the final picture.
‘ Shit . I’ve fucked up, haven’t I? Jenny, I’m sorry.’ Jacob blushed, swivelling to face me. ‘I thought he knew, I thought you – God, me and my big mouth.’ He smacked his palm against his forehead, silently berating himself.
‘It’s fine,’ I said, forcing a tight smile.
But it wasn’t fine. Luca knowing meant that I couldn’t pretend any more.
At least not around him. It felt as if the walls were steadily closing in, the space in which Joe still existed getting increasingly smaller, the prospect of it disappearing completely looming ever closer.
I kept swallowing even though my mouth was bone dry, as if that would help keep my feelings inside.
The silence stretched on, awkward and uncomfortable, broken only by the occasional squeak of Jacob’s Vejas against the varnished floor as he bounced anxiously on the balls of his feet.
Luca’s mouth parted and then closed again like a goldfish.
Jacob cleared his throat.
‘I’ll just—’ He gestured vaguely over one shoulder, one hand gripping his upper thigh as though physically having to restrain himself from legging it straight for the exit. ‘Meet you at the car?’
I nodded, keeping my chin glued to my chest to avoid catching Luca’s eye as I hurried towards where my bag was slumped by the piano stool.
I needed my bag to go home. And I needed to go home to see Joe.
Home. The word jarred in my head, echoing round and round like a broken record caught on repeat.
When had I started calling the pub home?
Mine and Joe’s flat was home. He was home.
My Joe. A daydreamer, an eternal optimist, the last person who still used full-blown punctuation in text messages. And forever, the love of my life.
My left hand fished my bag out from under the stool, my right hoisting the cardboard box clumsily under one armpit.
But my hands were clammy, the lid slick against my palm and the bottom gave way, falling with a loud thump to the floor, black-and-white photographs scattering in all directions.
One lodged itself under the battered toe of a black leather boot that appeared in my line of vision.
I knew even without looking up that it was Luca’s.
He must have followed me across the hall.
We both dropped to our knees at the same time, taking it in turns to return the photographs to the box in silence.
His fingers hovered over mine for a second, as though contemplating taking my hand in his. But he didn’t.
‘Jenny.’
My breath caught at the back of my throat and I looked up to see Luca kneeling before me, dark straight lashes framing his wide eyes. It was the first time he’d called me by my name. Normally, I was just Thompson to him. But hearing my name in his mouth made my heart leap into a full gallop.
‘I’m sorry about what I said before – about you not knowing what it’s like to lose someone.’ His voice was soft, a deliberate slowness to his words indicating that he was choosing each one very carefully, his face twisting with something resembling embarrassment. ‘I never would have said that if—’
‘If you knew my fiancé died?’
He recoiled as though I’d just slapped him.
But I didn’t have the energy to choose my words with the same care that he was.
I just wanted, no needed , to see Joe. Snatching the final photograph from Luca’s hand I shoved it into the box and ran for the door, my shoulder ricocheting painfully against the doorframe as I went.
I heard Luca calling after me but I didn’t turn back.