Buuuthe did just break up with his girlfriend, and for innumerable reasons, I feel guilty, so I fetch him another bottle and together we rejoin everyone else inside the marquee. All I can do now is mind him, and make sure he doesn’t accidentally cause a million pounds worth of damage or give himself alcohol poisoning.
After he polishes off the second bottle, I coax him into downing a pint of water before he moves back to yet more prosecco.
“Is he okay?” Gadget asks from the edge of the dance floor.
Pi’s currently “dancing” with Owen’s daughter and her partner to “The Rhythm of the Night” with a bottle of fizz in each hand.
I see-saw my hand. “His girlfriend dumped him.”
Gadget narrows his eyes at me. I’ve long suspected him to be the only teammate with any inkling of what Pi and I get up to, but Mathias has never said anything. He’ll just quietly observe from whatever corner of the room he’s sequestered himself into. “Didn’t you guys all arrive together?”
“Yep.” I swish around the dregs of my Diet Coke and knock it back like it’s neat whiskey and I’m in an old frontier saloon relaying all my troubles to the barkeep.
Corona finishes playing, and the DJ loops up Darude’s “Sandstorm.”
“Fuck yeah!” Pi yells, jumping on the spot, thrusting a bottle into the air by its neck.
“What happened? Why did they break up?” Gadget asks. He’s looking at me again with that slightly too understanding sparkle in his eyes.
“Uhh . . .” Shit. It’s all going to come out, isn’t it? “That . . . I am not sure of.”
Georgia’s going to tell Megs. If she hasn’t already. They’ll compare notes, piece in the gaps. Other people will find out. The other Cents boys are going to know that Pi and I have been rearranging each other’s guts on the regular for over a year.
Everyone will know. Everyone’s gonna fucking know.
Will they fire us? Transfer us?
What if the press get wind? Pi won’t cope well under that kind of sudden scrutiny.
And what if he doesn’t want anything to do with me after that? What if he leaves? Goes back to Oz?
Oh, great, and now I’m having a panic attack.
“You alright, mate?” Gadget says, placing a hand between my shoulder blades.
“’Scuse me.” I need some space to think—and spiral—in peace. “Can you keep your eye on him for a bit?”
“Um . . .” Gadget looks around the tent. Probably for a more suitable stooge to babysit my drunken friend, but he doesn’t find anyone.
“I just want to get some air. I’ll be back in two minutes, promise.”
“Okay,” he says, finally agreeing, but his eyes are still searching for some way out of the arrangement.
The pergola where Pi and Georgia broke up earlier is now filled with people, mostly smokers, and I don’t feel like chatting to any of them, so I make my way deeper into the grounds of Abs’s ex-boyfriend’s dad’s mansion. There’s a crooked wooden gate sandwiched between an arched bush of some kind. I push it open and walk down a dirt path. It’s illuminated not by theoverhead festoon lights that stretch across the event space, but by small solar lanterns staked into the soil. I get the distinct impression that I’m in a private part of Mr Oakham’s garden, and that party goers are definitely not meant to be here.
I find a bench under a willow tree, sit down, and square breathe for a minute, two minutes, three. I need to hurry up with my panic attack so I can get back to Pi and relieve Gadget of his duties. It’s his wedding day after all, but my feet won’t budge.
It’s the crushing realisation that nothing will be as it was. The impending sense of doom. It almost feels as though by breaking up with Pi, Georgia’s also ended my relationship with her boyfriend.
I lean forward, place my elbows on my knees, and pillow my face in my hands.
Maybe things could be different. Maybe we could . . .
What if we . . .
I wonder if . . .
What if we just fucking ran away together?
