Chapter Seventeen
‘Well, well, well. What a surprise. Who’d have thought I’d run into the two of you here,’ declared Jackson. His acting was appalling, but you couldn’t fault his timing, nor the fact that he was carrying a tray bearing a fresh round of cocktails.
‘Budge up,’ he said, getting Mel to scoot along the bench. He set down the tray and then took a seat, beaming widely at both of us. ‘I see no blood, nor contusions. I take it my cunning plan went well.’
‘We thought we’d save the GBH until you got here,’ I said sweetly.
Jackson frowned. ‘You knew I’d turn up?’
‘Your meddling is infamous,’ Mel said, rewarding him with a none too gentle jab in the ribs. ‘You’re like a criminal who can’t resist returning to the scene of his crime.’
Jackson hammed another overly dramatic sigh. ‘Is this the thanks I get for finally getting you two talking again?’ His voice sobered as his eyes went first to me and then to Mel. ‘You are talking again, aren’t you? Is everything going to be alright?’
There was an almost boyish anxiety in his voice.
Jackson never spoke much about his own younger years, but from the little he’d mentioned, I didn’t think his home life had been particularly harmonious.
It explained why he’d always shied away from conflict.
I often wondered if that was part of the glue that had held us together over the years; that we’d all had less than perfect childhoods.
Mel’s had been destroyed by losing her mum, Jackson’s had been filled with arguments, and mine .
. . well, mine had been a mixed bag, spent with a woman I’d always loved but had never properly understood.
‘We’re good. Or we will be,’ I said, double-checking my reply with Mel, who gave me a gentle nod.
‘Thank the Lord. No, thank me,’ Jackson cried delightedly. ‘Because I have a secret ulterior motive and a very good reason why I didn’t want the two of you at each other’s throats.’
‘We were never that,’ Mel said softly.
The thread I’d carelessly allowed to fray was still strong enough to bind us into something stronger than just friends.
It had withstood challenges before: new relationships, lost jobs, and unexpected detours in life plans.
But what bound us together was constructed out of something like elastic.
You might pull against it, or stretch it so tight you nearly broke it, but when the tension was as its greatest it still held, and then it pinged you right back in again.
Thank God.
I will not let these people down again, I silently vowed. Not ever.
‘Are you caught up on Mel’s news?’ Jackson asked, his eyes going in concern to the woman sitting beside him.
‘She is,’ Mel confirmed, her eyes overbright.
‘Great,’ Jackson exclaimed. ‘Then are you ready to hear mine?’
He was fidgeting on his seat, which probably should have alerted me to the fact he had big news to share.
‘Soooo . . .’ he said, drawing out the word for maximum impact. ‘Lars and I have locked down the wedding venue. But there’s still one important detail outstanding.’
He waited until we were both looking his way.
‘I want you to be my Groom’s Woman.’
My eyes went to Mel’s, because misinterpreting this was going to be embarrassing.
‘Which one of us?’ Mel asked, which was so much better coming from her than me.
Jackson flopped back against the velvet banquette as though he’d been shot.
‘Both of you, of course. I’m not having a best man. Why would I when I have two of the best women ever in my life already?’
His eyes danced happily between us, clearly waiting for a reaction. I’m not sure he got the one he was expecting when we both burst into tears.
‘I’m sorry, it’s these bloody hormones,’ Mel declared, grabbing a wodge of serviettes from the table and passing half to me.
I couldn’t borrow that excuse, and I think we all knew why I, the friend who never cried, was suddenly teary-eyed.
‘I don’t deserve this,’ I whispered in Jackson’s ear as I got up and hugged him tightly.
‘Yeah, you do,’ he said, before releasing me to embrace Mel.
‘So, what’s going on with you, Ells?’ he asked. ‘Given that we have about nine months of news to catch up on, perhaps you’d better lead with the headlines.’
A burst of laughter from the other side of the bar momentarily distracted me, or perhaps I was looking for anything to delay the moment when I stepped out of my comfort zone and straight into Mel’s wheelhouse.
I determinedly pulled my focus away from the far end of the bar and back to the booth where my two friends were looking at me expectantly.
‘I guess the most notable event was being struck by lightning.’
A pause, slightly uncomfortable, as though they were both waiting for the punchline of a joke which was sure to follow. Only it didn’t.
‘You mean metaphorically?’ asked Mel, with a slightly nervous laugh.
Very slowly I shook my head.
‘No. Literally.’
Mel’s expression was a hazy fog of doubt, but Jackson’s showed a slow-dawning shock.
‘Oh, my God,’ he said, his voice scarcely more than a whisper.
Mel’s eyes flashed his way before settling back on my face.
‘Are you one of the Park People?’ Jackson asked. It was an expression some of the local media had coined when they hadn’t been able to uncover our identities. I didn’t much like it. But in answer, I simply nodded.
‘Fuck me.’
Mel was staring at us both; Jackson, with his frankly astounded expression, and me with my vaguely uncomfortable one.
The intrusive sound of a champagne cork popping seemed incongruous when you were telling people you cared about that you’d almost died.
‘Will one of you please explain what you’re talking about. What Park People? What’s going on?’
Jackson blew out a long breath, and although he answered Mel, he didn’t take his eyes off me. ‘Of course, you were in New York when it happened. I guess it wasn’t big enough news to travel that far.’
‘I think it happens over there more than it does here, anyway,’ I said.
‘What happens?’ Mel asked, so obviously frustrated that I wished I’d found a different way, place, or time to tell her.
But Jackson had already picked up his phone and after a moment or two of rapid scrolling, he passed it to Mel.
The familiar video of two figures lying on the grass, receiving life-saving emergency treatment beneath the oak, began to play.
Mel’s eyes grew wider and wider until I felt sure the skin could stretch no farther.
She zoomed in on the video, enlarging the grainy image.
‘It’s you,’ she said, her lower lip trembling as her fingers expanded the footage as far as it would go.
‘Those are your red stilettos.’ I’m not sure why that brought tears to her eyes – perhaps because she’d been with me when I’d bought them.
‘Oh my God, Ellie,’ Mel breathed. ‘Why didn’t you tell us? ’
I gave what I hoped looked like a casual shrug, which is hard when there’s a yoke of guilt weighing down on your shoulders.
‘I’m telling you now.’
‘Weeks after it happened.’
‘Well, this was the first opportunity to tell you both together.’
‘That’s a rubbish excuse,’ Jackson said. ‘Total BS.’
He wasn’t wrong, but I was running low on courage by this point and wasn’t sure if I had enough left to say, Actually I wasn’t sure you’d even have cared.
The fact that I’d been so wrong about their reaction was almost a cause to celebrate. They cared. They still cared about me.
I answered all their questions, including the obvious ones that I knew everyone wanted to know. What did it feel like? How much did it hurt? Have you made a full recovery? That last was from Mel. And Has it left you with any superpowers? which could only ever have come from Jackson.
‘Apart from some pretty serious memory loss issues, I was lucky. I came out of it fairly unscathed,’ I said.
The relief on both of their faces was heartwarming.
I almost wished I could stop right there, but then the story would only be half told.
‘Except for some weird stuff that defies any logical explanation.’
I know I didn’t imagine the flare of interest in Mel’s eyes. We were venturing right into her home territory here.
‘What kind of stuff?’ Jackson asked, leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees as though craning closer would make me reveal the answer even quicker.
‘There’s a really powerful connection between me and the other survivor that I can’t explain. At first, I thought it was just because we both understood what we’d been through in a way that other people never could. But it goes deeper than that.’
‘Weird,’ said Jackson.
I licked my lips nervously. ‘I just can’t seem to get this guy out of my head.’
Mel’s neatly plucked eyebrows rose in perfect unison.
‘And our paths keep crossing, and there’s something really potent there, like the electrical current in the lightning is still arcing between us.’ It was a nonsense explanation but neither of my friends laughed.
‘This man,’ Mel began.
‘Rhys,’ I supplied.
Mel’s focus didn’t falter. ‘Is he tall and good-looking? In his late thirties or thereabouts? And does he have really piercing bright green eyes?’
I shook my head in amazement. How had she seen all of that from the shaky bystander video?
‘Because if he does,’ Mel continued, her voice dropping a little lower, ‘he’s making his way over to our table right now.’
‘Ellie?’ The voice I secretly yearned to hear whisper good morning to me every day, from now until forever, was right behind me. ‘I thought it was you.’
I swivelled on my seat, and he was standing beside our booth, looking truly devastating in a formal suit. It couldn’t have been more different from the jeans and t-shirt he’d changed into yesterday, but it affected me just as viscerally.
I looked back across the room towards the party he’d left. They were the champagne-drinking group whose arrival had set off a silent proximity alert in my head.
‘What are the chances of us both turning up in the same bar?’
‘About the same as being hit by lightning,’ I said, adding – because it felt like it needed to be said – ‘I’ve actually never been in here before.’
‘Me neither.’ Rhys’s green eyes darkened in puzzlement. ‘The work colleagues I’m with suggested dropping in.’
I stole a quick glance past him to the people he’d come with.
Two women in sharp business dresses – the kind I used to favour – were perched on bar stools.
Three other men in smart suits were clustered around them.
One of the women laughed, really loudly, and it sounded like fingernails running down a blackboard.
I was slow to realise I was being rude, and that behind me Mel and Jackson were practically champing at the bit to be introduced.
‘These are my friends, Jackson and Mel,’ I said, trying to ignore the appreciative ooh well done expression in Mel’s eyes. ‘Mel, Jackson, this is Rhys Davies.’
Rhys extended a hand first to Jackson, who shook it politely, and then to Mel, who totally ignored it and instead sprang to her feet to give the man she’d only just met a brief and totally unexpected hug.
Rhys good-naturedly hugged her back and did a fairly decent job of pretending that her impulsive behaviour was entirely normal.
‘Forgive her. She’s drunk,’ I said, perfectly aware that she wasn’t.
Rhys didn’t stay for more than a minute or two. One of his male companions pantomimed tapping the watch on his wrist, and Rhys turned to me with an apologetic smile.
‘I’m sorry. We’ve got early dinner reservations.’
‘Go,’ I urged, and yet he still didn’t move.
‘I’d love to have stayed and chatted,’ he apologised to my friends, his manners as ever impeccable. ‘But we’re meeting up with some other colleagues at the restaurant.’
‘Looks like you’re celebrating,’ Jackson said, referring to the two upside-down bottles of champagne in the ice bucket on the bar.
‘Something like that,’ Rhys said, looking genuinely torn that he had to leave, which was rather pleasing.
‘I’ll speak to you soon,’ he said, bending down to me.
I schooled my features not to react to the kiss I felt sure he was going to leave on my cheek. Mel would read way too much into my reaction if I did.
But as Rhys bent lower, his lips didn’t graze my skin at all. But he did whisper in my ear, so quietly I had to strain to catch his words.
‘You look really lovely tonight.’
No one said anything as Rhys rejoined his group and the women slid off their stools, picked up bags and jackets, and headed en masse for the door. They began to file out, with Rhys bringing up the rear.
Turn around. If this thing I feel is there for you too, even just a tiny fraction, then turn around before you leave.
‘Why on earth did you hug that guy?’ I heard Jackson ask Mel.
Even though it was a wrench, I pulled my eyes away from the exiting group to glance back at my friends, because I was curious to know the answer to that one too.
Mel looked unperturbed and a little smug, in an I know more than you ever will kind of way.
‘Because I predict he’s going to be in our lives for a very long time, and I wanted to make a welcoming first impression.’
Jackson mimed a swirling finger beside his own temple and said knowingly, ‘Ignore her. It’s the hormones again.’ That earned him a shove that almost made him lose his balance, but I scarcely noticed because I was staring at the door once more as the last person was about to leave the bar.
I was holding my breath, and I truly had no idea why.
And then Rhys turned around, his eyes finding mine across the room.
And I knew.