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The soft knock on the door at nine thirty a.m. has her leaping to her feet from her yoga mat, yelling, "Eggy benny get in my belly."
So when she opens the door and it's actually a stunning brunette wearing Louboutins and a not yet released Gucci pantsuit, she's actually rendered speechless for once.
"Girrlllllllll. Yousmellof money," she says to Clarissa once she's regained control of money.
Matthias’s fiancée laughs. "That's not money. It's Krigler Eleganter Schwan No. 6."
Peeta whistles low and slow. "Same diff. Are you here to see, Luna?"
“I am.” Clarissa steps into the room, and gives me a soft smile.
I hadn't seen any of them since I'd left the hospital. They’d had come the day before I'd left with some gifts, but I'd asked them not to come back, as kindly as I could. This didn't have anything to do with them, and they'd been nothing but kind to me the entire time I'd known them.
And to be honest, seeing Clarissa made me miss them so much it hurt.
"I just came to see how you're doing. I'm going back to New York for two weeks. But I'll be back for the Jubilee."
I smile, genuinely happy for her. "Of course. You should be. You've worked so hard on it."
"So did you. You had some great ideas. I can't wait for you to see them implemented."
I can't help but snort a little at that. "Yeah, unfortunately, I don't actually think I'm going to be welcome."
She sits down on the couch next to me. "You know what? There was a time, actually not that long, ago, that I was sitting in the exact same place you are now. Without going into too many details, I thought the way to protect someone, was tosacrifice myself. But it's not. Having integrity means being true to yourself as well."
I pick at a seam in the blanket. "I don't know that he'll ever be able to trust me again though. Not with what he believes. Not after what I said to him."
She reaches out and takes my hand. "So, you don't really know all the details of my and Matthias's story. I can only tell you this, if we could come back from what happened with us, then you have hope. The biggest difference between us is that I wanted all the things that I was accused of. I wanted the money and the luxury and the name. I had all the reason in the world to betray his trust. And when the truth came out, and it always does, he still found a way to believe me. You are ten times as pure as me. Kingsley already knows that. He just needs to get a chance to see it."
Kingsley doesn’t come to see me. Or call. Not once.
On his past advice, I hire a beneficiary lawyer, as an intermediary between us.
I send her questions, or some small tentative actions I want taken with my stock portfolio or requests that I have from my cash account and she sends me back his responses. Usually within minutes of my asking. No matter the time of day.
We agree to an increased weekly amount to be deposited into my personal account, so that I can afford my hotel accommodation and start looking for a more permanent residence. And I make two large cash requests, each a few tens of thousands of pounds worth.
He doesn't ask any questions, just sends the same short response every time.
"Approved. Yours, K"
I live and die with those responses. Though they never deviate from those fourteen letters. But when they come through, I know that, at least for the space of time it took for him to type those characters, he was thinking of me. Like I have been thinking about him.
Over the next week, I spend money on things I always wanted to, but never did.
Nothing extravagant, just little luxuries like skin care that from a department store counter rather than the discount bin at the drugstore, organic strawberries, the softest tissues with lotion.
And I buy gifts for friends I've met along the way.
The ones whom I couldn't have taken trips without, the ones who made me microwave cupcakes on birthdays when I didn't know anyone around me in a country where I didn't speak the language, the friends who shared their earphones on overnight bumpy bus rides to towns we couldn’t pronounce, and the friends who broke their protein bars in two when we didn't have an extra quid to our names on spontaneous train rides to dusty music festivals in the desert.
The friends who'd gotten me to where I am today.
Each little envelopes stuffed with cash I sent to P.O. Boxes all around the world healed me a little. And I could just hope that they reached an old friend on a day when they could use an upgrade to a fancy hotel and a soft bed.
Just a little reminder of the laughs we'd had and would never forget.
And then I start to make my own plans.
