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Are they all here to gossip about me?
Could I blame them if they were?
Right now, they simply look sorry for me, and like they care. They’re just being my friends; I want to let them.
‘No! Don’t let me stop you. It’s fine, honestly. Come on in.’
Behind me, Lloyd clears his throat, seeming to draw everyone’s attention to himself for the first time. (Which would be funny, under other circumstances – that he has, for once, managed to fade into the background.)
‘I’ll get out of your hair, guys. See you round the office, yeah?’
Dylan starts to say, ‘Mate, what’re you talking about? Stay! You’re –’
But Monty elbows him in the rubs, with a sharp and very obvious jerk of the head in my direction. ‘Dude.’
Dylan flushes, deferring to me awkwardly.
‘Um, it’s … okay,’ I tell Lloyd. ‘You can stay, if you want.’
He can’t leave. We haven’t even had a chance to talk.
Was he going to kiss me again? Or did he just get caught up in the moment and is relieved he didn’t?
Stay. Stay, please.
But he’s already shaking his head. ‘Nah. Seriously, I’ll leave you guys to it.’
He smiles around at everyone – his usual hundred-watt smile. He claps Dylan on the arm as he passes by and calls the lift, and the rest of us file into the flat, the chatter starting back up. I turn to look over my shoulder at Lloyd, and he offers up a shrug and a small, sorry sort of smile.
It’s okay, he seems to say.We lost our moment.
So I let him leave, and join the others in the flat. Louis offers some tea to everyone – Elaine, only half-joking, asks if I want something stronger.
‘I’m kind of sick of cups of tea today,’ I laugh, having lost count of how many times one has been placed in front of me like it will fix everything. ‘Just some water is great, though.’
‘They tell you about Tasha yet, Anna?’ Monty says.
This time, Dylan elbows him. ‘Dude!’
‘What?What?She’s gonna find out eventually! Wouldn’t you want to know?’
‘I haven’t checked my phone, like I said …’
Izzy searches my face. ‘You knew it was her?’
I shrug. ‘It wasn’t hard to figure out. She … said some things yesterday, that weren’t very nice.’
‘I can’tbelieveit,’ Izzy sighs, looking genuinely upset – but not on my behalf this time. ‘She was always so lovely! I can’t imagine why she’d do something like that! You must’ve really upset her.’
Monty scoffs. ‘Or she was just a bitch. Which is definitely the more likely of the two.’
I stare at him in surprise. Who’d have thought Monty was such a kindred spirit all this time? A fellow non-believer in great romancesandnot taken in by Tasha’s sickly-sweetness.
‘Thanks, by the way,’ I tell him and Dylan. ‘For this morning. Collecting all the emails, and stuff. It’s … It means a lot to me. Thanks.’
‘Course,’ Monty says, in his usual bolshy tone, like I said thanks for buying some shots when it was his turn for a round, like he didn’t go out of his way to do me such a massive favour and look out for me. He shrugs, clearing his throat. ‘It’s nothing.’
It wasn’t. It really wasn’t. Not to me.
