I couldn’t respond. My thought processes had completely short-circuited.
Lily’s heels clicked against the floor as she walked across the room and settled herself on the stool in front of the green screen, crossing her ankles and hooking them around the crossbar. She was wearing the most ridiculous dress I’d ever seen: bright yellow, the colour of a daffodil, with sleeves that sat just off her shoulder. It was short at the front, secured by a wrap tie, but the back was ludicrously enormous, with a train so long that it puddled around the foot of the stool.
She took her compact out of some hidden pocket in the masses of skirts, the same one she always carried, the one Jeff had given her. She looked at herself briefly, then snapped it shut and glanced down at her train. ‘Could someone straighten my dress? I don’t think it’s being shown to its full effect.’
‘Everybody out.’
‘Murray,’ Saurav said quietly, ‘I know this is a lot, but if we don’t get this now, we’ll eat into the shoot time.’
‘Out! Everybody! Right now!’
The crew didn’t make me tell them again.
One corner of Lily’s mouth curled upwards. She was wearingBlood of My Enemies,same as always. ‘The First Night Party hasn’t even started and you’re already behind schedule?’ she said. ‘Standards are slipping.’
‘Lily, what the fuck?!’
People usually started backing away from me when I used that tone of voice, but her smile just deepened. ‘Nice to see you too, Murray.’
I wanted to scream at her.
I wanted to throw my arms around her and bury my face in her hair and crush her so hard to my chest that she’d complain that she couldn’t breathe and that the cheap material of my polo shirt touching her skin was a human rights violation.
‘Lily,’ I said, fighting to speak in a more controlled tone, ‘what the fuck are you doing here?’
She shrugged, one mostly bare shoulder rising and falling. Years of reading contestants’ body language had taught me that a shrug was usually a passive gesture, an abdication of thought and responsibility, a physical I-don’t-know-it-just-happened – but not when Lily did it.
‘After how hard we fought to get this season off the ground,’ she said, ‘did you really think I would miss it?’
I stared at her.
She raised an eyebrow.
Blood was rushing in my ears. I could hear my own heartbeat, like there was someone with a hammer inside my head, pounding against my skull.
‘Do you like the dress?’ She smoothed a hand along her enormous yellow skirt. ‘It’s one of Thuong’s designs. She made it for me a few years ago and I’ve never had the opportunity to wear it.’
‘It’s ridiculous.’
She clutched at her heart in mock horror. ‘How dare you?’
‘Stop,’ I bit out.
I was not a man who lost his composure easily. I got angry, and frustrated, and had definitely been known to lose my temper – but when push came to shove, I kept it together. No matter what was happening, I thought my way through. I solved the problem. I figured it out. I was a master at compartmentalising. No one was better at setting aside their feelings and getting the job done than I was. When I’d been going through my divorce, none of my colleagues had a single clue how raw and rough and vulnerable I was.
Except for Lily.
Lily.
Lily washere.
Looking at her, sitting there, with that fuckingsmileon her face, my brain stopped functioning.
And then it started racing, ricocheting between two images faster and faster, trying to reconcile them.
A year ago. The night of Jeff’s funeral. After everyone had left, after even Thuong and Michael and their new baby had left, when it was just her and me.
Her agonised, broken sobs, like someone had put a hook down her throat and was yanking the sounds out of her.Don’t go, don’t go.Don’t leave me alone.
