‘Thank you, Brian.’
For once Kate felt he was a boyfriend she could be proud of.
Everyone went into a daze as the DVD rolled on. Kate saw herself leaving with Will and, shortly afterwards, Carmen and Lorcan were slinking off together. As the camera zoomed in on Owen doing shots with Auntie Iris, Kate noticed the strange girl –Una her name was – who had had her eye on Freddie. She was snogging someone but they were hidden by a pillar. Kate thought how funny it would be if it turned out to be Freddie. Then Una said something and a disembodied hand grasped hers. Kate’s blood froze as Brian emerged from behind the pillar and led her out of the ballroom.
Kate felt sick. Hardly able to breathe, she wondered if anyone else had noticed, but there was no indication that they had.
‘Auntie Iris is looking well, isn’t she?’ Conor said, confirming that they were focused on the foreground.
‘It’s the booze,’ Jack said. ‘She’s preserved in gin.’
Then Kate caught Will’s eye and, from the way he was looking at her sympathetically, she knew he had seen Brian too. She couldn’t bear it – she was about to burst into tears. She wanted to howl and scream. She had to get out before she lost it.
‘Speaking of booze, does anyone want another drink?’ she asked, getting up. Rachel and her mother raised their glasses and she collected them, then shot off to the kitchen as fast as her wobbly legs would carry her. She kicked the door closed behind her and turned on the taps full blast, blindly rinsing glasses through a blur of tears.
How could he? How could he?She slumped against the sink. It had been her first day back and he had seemed so pleased to see her. Why did this always happen to her? Why did she never bloody learn? She had really thought Brian was different. She had never imagined he would hurt her in such a crass, banal way. She’d thought he had depth. But despite all his consciousness-raising and third-eye gazing, all the loving-kindness meditation and chakra-balancing, he was still just another bloke who couldn’t say no to an available shag.
He had asked her to marry him the next day, for fuck’s sake, she thought, kicking the cupboard furiously and stubbing her toe –not a good idea in bare feet. She sucked in her breath as pain shot through her foot. The glass she was holding slipped through her fingers and fell to the floor.
‘Shit, shit, shit!’ she wailed, tears streaming down her face as she bent to pick up the pieces.
A shard slipped in her hand and sliced painfully into her finger.
‘Ouch!’ She waved it in the air as blood oozed from the cut.
‘Kate, are you okay?’
She jumped at the sound of Will’s clipped tones, hastily wiping her eyes on her sleeve.
‘I broke a glass,’ she sniffed. ‘And cut my finger.’
She heard Will cross the kitchen and then he was standing beside her. She bent forward to continue picking up the glass, letting her hair fall over her face to hide it.
‘Leave it!’
‘I’ll just get the big bits,’ she said, straightening and making for the bin.
‘Don’t move,’ Will ordered, eyes on her bare feet. ‘There’s glass all over the place. You’ll get cut.’
Kate stood stock-still as he took the glass from her hand and threw it into the bin, the crunching under his feet confirming that there were tiny fragments all over the floor. Then he put an arm around her back and bent to pick her up.
‘What are you doing?’ she shrieked, her body rigid.
‘I’m going to carry you over there,’ he said, nodding to the other side of the kitchen.
‘You’ll do your back in!’ she protested. She had suffered enough humiliation this evening without having Will crumpling under her weight.
‘I’m not as feeble as I look.’
‘Still…’
‘Okay, hop on,’ he said, nodding at his feet.
‘What?’
‘Stand on my feet and I’ll walk you over. Come on.’ He grabbed her hands.
Standing face to face with Will as he walked her across the room in a strangely intimate dance, Kate thought she should have let him carry her. At least she wouldn’t have been eyeballing him. Her heart was skipping so many beats she thought she might pass out. In an effort to appear calm, she fixed her eyes on the broad, tanned column of his throat. She was by no means petite, but Will was so tall that, even standing on his shoes, she could have tucked her head easily under his chin. She had an almost overwhelming urge to lay it on his chest and bawl her eyes out. God,she thought,Freddie was right.I’m not over you at all – not one little bit.As long as she didn’t see him she could tell herself it was just a teenage crush, a first love she’d grown out of. But five minutes in his company and she was right back to square one, sixteen all over again and as much in love with him as ever.
