AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The temptation to press the screen and reveal the rest of Sally’s message was so strong, I literally had to sit on my hands to prevent them from invading his privacy. It was a huge relief when the car door finally opened and Mitch slid back onto the seat beside me. His face immediately creased into a smile as he spotted the message and I twisted in my seat, feigning a sudden fascination in Pump Number 4 outside my window, as he opened the text and read it.
The rest of the journey passed uneventfully until my stomach interrupted the twanging guitar music with a chorus of unladylike growls. ‘Sorry about that,’ I murmured, glad the backlit dashboard wasn’t bright enough to illuminate that for onceIwas the one who was blushing.
‘Hungry?’
Another growl from my stomach answered his question. I’d skipped lunch so I could help Mum eat hers, but I was fast approaching the point where gnawing on my own arm was starting to sound appetising.
‘What do you say we get a takeaway when we get back to yours?’
The suggestion and the easy companionable way it had been made felt as though a reset button had been pushed and we had been catapulted back onto familiar territory. Mitch and I were friends, really good ones, and anything that got in the way of that was like a troublesome weed that needed to be plucked out before its roots grew deeper.
I had less than fifteen minutes between the time Mitch dropped me at my front door and then hammered on it, his arms laden with two bulging bags of Chinese takeaway and a bottle of wine. I had spent most of his absence dashing through the flat like a mad woman, throwing things into cupboards that I’d struggle to find again. It left me with barely enough time to brush my teeth and tug a comb through my hair. But as Mitch had seen me looking far worse on numerous hospital visits, I wasn’t sure why I was worrying so much.
He had easily bought enough food for four, and yet a short while later every single carton was empty apart from the odd prawn or elusive bean sprout. We’d eaten on the floor of the lounge, with our feast spread out in cartons on the low coffee table. I couldn’t help wonder if Mitch’s grandmother was somewhere looking down on us, tutting in disapproval. He laughed when I said this.
‘She’d be fine about it,’ he assured me. ‘She’d have liked you.’
‘How can you be so sure?’ Three glasses of wine had released the tension knotting my shoulders, which was good; and also my tongue, which was less so.
‘I know she’d have liked you, because I do. Very much,’ he said simply.
The room suddenly seemed unnaturally quiet. The only sound was the metronome-like ticking of his grandmother’s carriage clock, marking one awkward minute clicking into the next.
Mitch had opened a door that ought to be kept shut, but before it swung to a close there was a question I needed to ask. ‘Why did you keep this flat for me for all those years I was in hospital? The doctors must have told you they had no idea when I’d wake up again – or evenifI would.’
Mitch had drunk far less wine than me. Perhaps that’s why his courage to meet my gaze failed him at the last moment. ‘Because I couldn’t let it happen to you for a second time. I couldn’t have you wake up and find your entire life had been packed away in storage boxes. Again. You deserved to know that there’d been at least one person who’d never stopped believing you’d come back.’
‘How could you possibly have been that sure?’ I asked, my voice little more than a whisper.
Mitch finally lifted his head. His dark brown eyes looked strangely bright.
‘Because you’re Maddie Chambers. The Miracle Girl. It’s what you do.’
CHAPTER 5
‘This is weird, isn’t it?’
‘No. Not really.’
I turned to the woman standing beside me, who might possibly be the very worst liar I had ever met. She flinched under my scrutiny.
‘Okay, it’s alittleweird,’ Chloe conceded. A light spring breeze was ruffling her hair, but my attention was on the twin frown lines between her eyebrows. This was not her relaxed face.
I came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the pavement, earning atskof complaint from a man walking behind me. We were still two hundred metres from our destination.
‘Let’s forget it. I can come back another day on my own. Let’s just go and find a wine bar or something.’
‘No,’ Chloe retorted with unexpected determination. ‘I circled that bloody car park four times before I found a space; and I know you, you won’t come here again, and besides it’s only half past ten in the morning, so we’re nowhere near wine o’clock.’
I laughed, but the sound was fragile, and the breeze whipped it from my lips. ‘It is still the weirdest thing we’ve ever done,’ I muttered.
‘Weirder than helping me shower in the hospital? Or aiding and abetting my escape from the ward? Or the wheelchair race?’
I laughed, and this time it sounded far more natural. ‘You make a good point. We specialise in weird.’
‘Come on then,’ Chloe urged, lifting one hand to use as a visor as she looked down the length of the street. ‘Let’s go and get your wedding dress.’
*
