“I can demand it. Your contract specifies no drugs, and you know that you’ve been taking them, even without Robbie’s actions. You fell off the runway in Milan.”
“It was very slippery,” I say sulkily.
“I don’t want to invoke that contract clause. I need you to get yourself well becauseyouwant to get well.”
“Just a couple of months,” Pip says quickly. “We want you to go somewhere where you can relax and get better.”
“Like rehab?” I say acidly.
“Do you think that’s the right option?” he says in a calm voice.
I consider that and then shake my head. “No. I haven’t got a problem.” I haven’t got a habit, but the truth is that I might possibly develop one if I keep going. Drugs were a shiny extra to a night for me once—something to liven up the boredom and make me feel free and easy. But lately they’ve become something much scarier—a crutch I can’t be without. “Not rehab,” I say again.
“Then where?” Jonas asks.
“He’ll come with me,” Reuben says, breaking into the moment with his usual sledgehammer tendencies.
“I bloody will not,” I say immediately. There’s no way I’m going anywhere with him with my resistance so lowered. It’s a disaster in the making.
He raises one eyebrow. “Yes, you will.”
“I’m sorry. Who died and put you in charge?”
“Idecided.”
Jonas sighs at our rising voices. “Stop it, the pair of you. Reuben, I’ve told you that I cannot agree to this plan. Xavier is a grown man and perfectly capable of making his own decisions. You can’t just take him off somewhere because you say so.”
“I can, and I will.”
Jonas looks up as if praying for patience. I could tell him it’s hopeless. The heavens have never answered that plea for me. “You do not have the right,” Jonas says.
Reuben straightens, and I can almost see the words form on his lips.
“Ohshit,” I breathe, but it’s no use.
“I have every fucking right, Jonas. Xavier is my husband.”
“That’s done it,” I whisper. I lower myself back into my pillows and close my eyes as the room fills with noisy voices. I consider joining the argument, seeing as it’s about me, but I think I’m coming down in favour of just letting Jesus take the wheel for the time being.
past
Five Years Ago
I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say.
Daphne du Maurier
Rebecca
chapter 5
. . .
Reuben
I climb out of the Porsche and glare at my best friend as he does the same. “Since when are we competing on the Brands Hatch circuit?”
Jez rolls his eyes. “You’re like an old lady.”
