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“Ben?” Jack sounds every bit as bewildered as I feel right now. “As in, your ex-boyfriend, Ben?ThatBen?”
“Hey!” calls a familiar voice from somewhere behind me. “Emerald! Hi!”
I don’t want to turn around and face him. I’m not even sure Ican, actually. My entire body seems to have frozen in place, like one of the people of Pompeii, and I think I might just sit here forever, staring hard at Rose’s picnic basket as if it has the power to save me from whatever’s about to happen next. When I was a kid, and something bad or scary happened, I’d close my eyes tight, and pretend I was rewinding the moment, back to before whatever it was happened. It never actually worked, obviously, but it’s all I’ve got, so I give it a quick go now.
REWIND, REWIND.
“Emerald? Are you listening to me?” I open my eyes reluctantly to find Jack standing in front of me, looking angrier than I’ve ever seen him.
“Is someone going to tell me what the hell’s going on here?” he says. “Why is your ex — I’m assuming that’s him? — trying to get onto my boat? Why is he here?”
There’s a dull thud as the side of the pedalo makes contact with the boat. Jack looks like he’s about to explode.
REWIND, REWIND
“Emerald!” roars Jack.
“I don’t know, okay?” I yell, surprising even myself with the force of the emotion that comes spilling out of me. “I don’t know why he’s here. Why are you here?” I scream, spinning around to finally face the man in the pedalo, who’s brought the stupid thing right up to the boat, and looks like he’s thinking about climbing aboard to join us.
“Hi,” says Ben, as if it’s totally normal for us to meeting in the middle of a loch, two years after he dumped me, then disappeared. “How are you, Emerald?”
I look down at him. It’s definitely Ben alright, but it somehow feels like a different version of the Ben I knew. My Ben was slim — almost weedy, really, if you wanted to be unkind — with neatly combed hair, and sharp creases in his trousers.ThisBen, by contrast, is tanned and athletic looking, his blonde hair lightened by the sun, and longer than I remember it. I think I can even see a hint of stubble on his chin, which is so unlike him it almost makes me question if it reallyishim, or one of the evil twins McTavish swears don’t only crop up in soap operas.
Then I remember that for Ben to have an evil twin,he’dhave to be the good guy, and something inside me snaps.
“HowamI?” I say hysterically. I swear, if my voice gets any higher, it’s going to shatter the champagne glasses. “HowamI?”
I stutter to a stop, unable to finish my sentence. Or evenformulatea sentence. I can’t believe he’s here; my brain won’t let me accept it. It goes skittering from one fragmented thought to another, darting fromBen was the one sending those messagestohow on earth does Rose come into it?viaFrankie was right.
“Look,” says Ben, calmly holding up his hand as if to placate me. “I know this must be a shock to you, seeing me after so long. And I know you’re probably angry with me. That’s why I got Rose to set this up: so we could talk in private. It’s… well, it’s not a good idea for me to be seen by anyone right now, let’s put it that way.”
I gape at him incredulously.
“Private? You think a boat with three people on it — one of whom happens to be my fiancé — is ‘private’?”
“No. Of course not.” Ben scowls in a way that instantly takes me back to my life with him. “That wasn’t part of the plan, was it Rose? I thought it was just going to be me and Emerald?”
Rose puts her hands over her face, like a little girl who thinks that if she can’t see us, then we can’t see her, either. “I’m sorry,” she wails, peeping out through her fingers. “I couldn’t think of a way to get Emerald out here on her own. I did try, but then I had this idea about the taster menu, and I thought we could just combine the two, so—”
“Hold on,” interrupts Jack, who appears to be trying very hard to reign in his anger. “You’re telling meyouplanned this, Rose? You arranged to get this… thisman… out here to speak to Emerald? But why? What am I missing here?”
“I can explain everything,” says Ben smoothly. “If I could just—”
He stands up, balancing precariously on the back of the plastic swan as if he’s about to try to climb onto the boat. Before I know what’s happening, though, Jack’s arm appears from behind me and pushes him roughly back.
“Yeah, I don’t think so,” he says bluntly. “You can stay where you are until you’ve explained yourself.”
Ben staggers backwards, in an exaggerated way I can tell is 100% faked for dramatic effect.
“Ah,” he says, regaining his balance and looking shifty — which probably isn’t hard for him, given that “shifty” is his natural state. “I really think it would be best for me to speak to Emerald in private. If you don’t mind.”
For a second, I think Jack’s going to punch him.
“I do mind. And if you wanted to speak to her in private, you should probably have thought about that before peddling out to the middle of a fucking loch, shouldn’t you?” he growls, sounding totally unlike himself.
“I told you, I didn’t expect anyone else to be here,” says Ben, glaring at Rose, who looks like she’s thinking about throwing herself overboard. “It was just supposed to be the two of us. Please, Emerald,” he goes on, turning to me. “We need to talk. At least let metryto explain.”
“Oh, you’ve got a lot of explaining to do, I’m sure,” says Jack coolly. “But if you think you’re going to be doing it without me there, then you’re clearly even stupider than I’ve always assumed you were.”
