It had been so nice to have someone to talk to.
It still was.
She thought of Dillon, of how fluid their conversations had been, and how seen and vital he had made her feel, and felt a pang of regret. Standing with him in his bathroom, his hand feather-soft against her cheek, she’d almost believed there was a way for them. But his eyes had been so bloodshot and unfocused and his masses had been waiting. It had been a cruel reminder of why she’d stepped back.
He’d been a beautiful dance through a world in which she didn’t belong. In time she would be grateful for that fleeting magic, but right now, she was just heartsick. It had been too hard to stand at the back of his fans and watch him perform for his audience. She’d admired his ability to feign sobriety, but then again, she’d first met him during another such performance.
Damaged goods did not belong with damaged goods.
Back in the kitchen, Abigail dragged a gym bag out of the storeroom and uncurled an inflatable air-mattress onto the floor. She pumped it up with her foot as she shook out her sleeping bag, then looked around self-consciously when it was time to change. This was her place of work. Had she ever imagined she’d bare her breasts in this kitchen? Even when things had been hot and heavy with Dillon, this place hadn’t hosted one of her fantasies. It was for food, for Christ’s sake. Not for skin.
She changed her clothes quickly, then rolled her day clothes into a tight scroll and tucked them alongside her fresh clothes for tomorrow. When she turned off the lights and climbed into her sleeping bag, the mattress lurched and squeaked on the tiles. It echoed strangely. She’d never heard the likes of it before in this room that typically hummed and whirred.
She felt the absence of Tolkien and thought of his food bowl. She hoped he would surpass his own idiosyncrasies enough to eat tonight.
It took a long time for her mind to quieten.
Chapter 23
The humble bouquet
Flowers for the lady of bouquets wasn’t the most original idea, but Dillon hoped they would be well-received. They were a thank you. A Joe Average thank you, more to the point. To date, Abigail hadn’t given him the impression that she was much impressed by his money, so he’d kept tonight’s gesture small and cheap. A medium-sized, humble bouquet of in-season long-stemmed blooms, picked up at a local flower market. They were on the passenger seat beside him, a wrapped explosion of colour, and they were filling the Aston Martin with a sweet, rich scent that reminded him of the display window in Boucake.
It was late. Nine o’clock. There were no lights on in her Kentish Town flat, but she might be huddled on the couch watching a movie. More likely she was at the shop, filling orders and prepping for the next day. But he was hopeful that she was here. And hopeful that she was not. He didn’t know how he felt.
Was showing up at a woman’s home considered romantic anymore? He wasn’t sure. Maybe it was just presumptuous and rude. It had been a long time since he’d dated, he only really knew the steps of the meaningless hook-up dance now. But he wanted to learn this slower, more meaningful dance.
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and readied himself to move. He pictured her face, and imagined that the sight of him would make her smile. Maybe her nose would crease. Maybe she’d lead him inside. This could be the beginning of them again. Because it was possible. Despite all the things she’d said in that crappy little restaurant near her bus stop, she’d saved him again. He’d crashed headlong into her life but she’d absorbed the impact, and turned it into an embrace.
Today had given him hope.
Steve had gone on and on about how lucky Dillon was, and how relieved he was that Dillon appeared to be responding to her good influence.
‘I confess,’ he’d said at drinks after the launch, ‘when you weren’t there I panicked. You hadn’t come in for a few days. I thought … But you came. And you were great. And it was great.’
Dillon hadn’t told him he would have slept through the whole thing if Abigail hadn’t swooped in like a bossy fairy godmother. He hadn’t wanted to see Steve’s disappointment.
Abigail had done more than she could have guessed when she’d saved the day. The event had gone brilliantly—although it had swum before Dillon’s eyes for a good half hour before the drugs had kicked in—but more than that, Dillon had kept his team together. He couldn’t fathom what would have fractured had he stood them up, after all that hype and team work. Steve might have quit. He seemed to be wobbling on that fine-edged decision a lot lately. And things would fall apart without Steve.
Dillon shifted in his seat. It was an absurd little dance, but it seemed to loosen the knot of nerves in his stomach. He took a deep breath. Then another. Then he seized the bouquet and stepped out of the car.
He pressed her buzzer before he could lose his courage, then promptly straightened his shirt and checked that his hair was still in place. The cellophane wrap crinkled and hissed against his sports jacket.
Time passed.
He pressed the buzzer again.
No lights came on upstairs. Could she be asleep?
Instinct told him she was out and that this was all for nothing, but his feet didn’t move. Second by second his head became heavier, until he was leaning his forehead against the front door of the block of flats and breathing unsteadily through his mouth.
This was a blessing.
Had she been home, what had he truly expected would happen? She wasn’t going to take back the reasons she had divided them. He was still a joke. Still a drunk and a socialite, and all kinds of broken. What did he have to offer her besides fractured sobriety and an all-access pass to a glamorous, shallow world that would spit him out as soon as take his money? Abigail didn’t care about his fortune. He didn’t care about his fortune. She cared about hard work and integrity, and all the other good stuff that set a person apart from a crowd.
Dillon had been like that once. He’d worked hard to build himself up and he’d backed himself when no-one else would. But somewhere along the line he’d become successful, and shelved everything else. His bank account was full but he was resoundingly hollow inside. He was a husk of a man, and a woman like Abigail deserved the best of the best. Certainly not a Mal, and evidently not a Dillon either.
But she’d liked him once. He knew that in the marrow of his shaking bones. They’d connected, and everything had seemed so full of promise when it had been going right. He’d looked at her and believed that he and his loneliness would part company for good. That he’d been … found.
That feeling was worth fighting for.
Dillon pushed away from the door and turned on his heel. Flowers hanging forgotten by his side, he regarded the night. He had to be the change he wanted in his life. Only then could he stand before her again and offer her something of value. He had to deserve her, yes, but he also had to do this for himself. It was like she’d said, she wasn’t responsible for his sobriety.
Only he was responsible for that, but he’d done a poor, half-arsed job of that too.
His drinking had certainly reduced when he’d been dating her, but it had continued. He’d drank alcohol on their dates when he could have had water or pop, or any number of non-alcoholic options, and he’d dived headlong into a binge each time they’d had a fight as if her good grace was the only thing keeping him sober. That wasn’t fair on her, and it was no way to functionally, happily live his life.
He wanted to be sober for her. But he was going to do this for himself. It was important that he didn’t make her his sole touchstone for good behaviour. That was too much pressure for anyone.
All or nothing.
Dillon whirled back to the door, balanced the bouquet against the knee-high hedge, then hurried back to the Aston Martin. The next step was suddenly so clear to him. Now that it was in his mind, his body felt left behind.
Urgent now, he dropped into the driver’s seat and squealed away from the kerb.
Fourteen minutes later, he bumped into the paved driveway o
f a two-storey terrace home in Mildmay Ward, Islington. He was out of the car and striding up the driveway before he’d thought to truly look at the home of his closest friend and business associate. He rang the bell then stepped back to regard the frontage. Plant pots hung from the overhead window ledges, and contained bursts of colour nestled within each. There were coloured lights in the first floor window on the right—soft, glowing circles of warm blue in what looked like flower buds. The curtains in that window were paler than the other curtains in the other windows, but it was too dark to see more detail than that. Dillon had never met Steve’s daughter. After so long an acquaintance, he probably should have. But he could count on one hand the amount of times Dillon had been presentable after hours. Steve had spared them all that exchange.
There was a small garden ornament in the pot by the front door; a bronze-coloured goose with windmill-like arms that would whir in the wind. Dillon stared at it as he listened to the footsteps inside, and the murmured voices of a man and a woman.
When the door opened, Steve’s wife Claire was not at his side. Steve had probably warned her away, and Dillon was feeling self-aware enough that he didn’t blame him for doing so.
It was a bit of a dice game with Steve’s boss, after all.
That had to change.
The bright light of the hallway spilled onto the front step. It touched the toes of Dillon’s shoes like an uncertain dog sniffing at a stranger. Steve was wearing a loose cotton top and old jeans. His feet were bare and he’d swapped his contact lenses for thin-rimmed spectacles. He looked so familiar and yet so foreign to Dillon, who saw him five days a week but never informally.
Dillon had thought they were friends before, but he wasn’t certain now.
‘Dillon.’ Steve’s surprise was as well-concealed as could be expected for the hour and location.
‘Steve.’
The men stared at one another.
Dillon should have kept the flowers. He should have given them to Claire as an apology for the intrusion. He opened his mouth, but his courage had lost its legs.
‘I, uh …’
The moment stretched.
Eventually Dillon began talking, hoping the right words would come if his throat was lubricated. ‘I’m sorry about the hour. I just wanted to thank you for all your support today.’ Evidently not true, as Dillon had been plenty thankful at the time. ‘It, ah. Hasn’t been sitting well with me that I wasn’t honest with you about a few things.’
Steve glanced over his shoulder then stepped out of the house, into the square of light on the porch. He closed the door behind him.
Dillon swallowed, trying to clear the lump in his suddenly tight throat. ‘Abigail and I broke up. It was mutual. We’re still friends.’ He closed his eyes and pushed a palm over his face. ‘No. Actually that’s another lie. She dumped me. And she kind of completely saved the day today. Ah, she dumped me a few days ago. That’s in part why I haven’t been at work.’
He trailed off. Pushed his hands into his pockets and stared at his feet. ‘The thing is, Steve …’ He cleared his throat. ‘The thing is, I’m an alcoholic. I have serious problems. I … I’m going to straighten myself out and I just wanted you to know. That.’
Steve didn’t respond. His expression was fixed and his eyes were hard and appraising.
Christ, what had Dillon expected? What the hell was he doing here, heaping all of his problems onto the driveway of this man’s family home? He half-turned, then turned back.
‘Look, I … Thank you for everything you’re doing at Wheels. You’re keeping the place going and I don’t tell you that enough. I know you’re stressed and I know you take on more than your fair share, but I promise you that’s going to change.’
More silence.
Dillon opened his mouth wide and licked his lips. ‘Okay. So. This probably could have waited until Monday but I was in the area. I’m sorry for dropping in like this. It won’t happen again. I mean, it shouldn’t have happened now. And listen, everything I just said? It’s not your problem. I’m dealing with it. I’m going to go to meetings and shit, and things are going to get better all round.’ He paused. ‘Have a good night. Enjoy your weekend.’
He turned away, stung by the absence of words but relieved to be on his way.
His words had dirtied him. It felt like he’d opened his mouth and spewed hot, slick oil down his shirtfront. He felt no better for having made the confession and now his feet were just itching to fly. He was going to put this Aston Martin through its paces, and he was sure as hell going to have the window down when he did it.
Dillon was almost at the car when Steve called his name. Steve stepped out of the porch light and closed the gap between them, until they were close enough that they could have shaken hands. Which might be what was coming, Dillon wasn’t sure.
Steve said, ‘I’d like to be your sponsor. If you’ll have me.’
Something hot moved from Dillon’s cheeks into the bridge of his nose, and the pressure made his eyes twitch. He nodded. ‘That would be ...’ Welcome. Humbling. ‘Yeah. Good.’
(Before)
Blue
Blue and black. Everything Abigail did and thought and believed about herself was shroud in a coloured mist of despair and depression. She was a castaway in her home town. Separate from family and friends and lifelong acquaintances. Apart from them, because she was a victim of something unbelievable, and somehow that made her a pariah.
Nothing had come from turning up on Isobelle’s doorstep. Her friend had listened with compressed lips, shown her the posts and texts that had originated from Abigail’s phone—each of them teeming with joy and love—then crossed her arms.
‘You’re cracking up,’ she had said. ‘Because what you’re saying is just not possible. Mal worships you. What’s really going on?’
Something in Abigail had broken then. It was a week later and those broken pieces were still inside of her, sharp shards of imploded friendship that tore at the fragile skin of her heart and lungs. She was carrying them inside of her like shrapnel. And she was definitely bleeding internally.
The police had been compassionate, but far from the cavalry she’d imagined they’d be. She’d had no proof and they’d been acutely aware of Mal’s revered reputation. There was circumstantial evidence against her—messages and eyewitness accounts that contradicted her incarceration. People were convinced they’d seen her in town the day after the engagement party.
Which meant Abigail had somehow mastered astral projection without being aware of it. For hadn’t she been cowering in the kitchen, near knives and an assortment of throwable things, for near-on two days?
The world had gone mad.
On top of all of that—her depression and her despair, her heartache and her fear—she was near-consumed by self-loathing so potent that it had become a taste in her mouth. She kept thinking about how she’d behaved, and how her fiancé had controlled her, and wishing as often as she breathed that she’d been smarter and stronger. It was hard to remember now why she hadn’t managed to leave the house. It might have been the sickness, and the blinding, debilitating headaches. He’d compressed her throat to the point of her blacking out, and it had taken a while to stop seeing triple of her horror story when she’d finally come back into herself. But still. She should have run. Staggered next door, or lay on the street until a car had come and the driver had saved her.
Looking back, she couldn’t rationalise her own impotence.
She’d been so afraid. But she’d stayed. She’d stayed she’d stayed. Why?
How had he convinced her that was her only option?
She’d been ridiculously stymied by the loss of her money and phone. Her keys she’d not cared about so much, although the car would have been a convenient escape. It had been leaving the house with nothing more than the clothes on her body that had seemed so insurmountable. But what was her reason now?
Mal had returned all of her things and life had seemed to lurch forward, stu
ttering and a little out of sync after that brief hiatus. She’d gone back to work. She’d seen Isobelle again. But it was an alternate work, and it had been an alternate Isobelle.
She’d tried to leave. She’d come home from work early and packed a bag, but someone had mentioned something to someone, who’d been passing Mal on the street and mentioned it to him. Well-wishes for her speedy recovery, or some such thing. So he’d shown up. He’d thrown her bag against the mirrored wardrobe door with such force that the mirror had cracked—right along the eye-line, so now it split her face in two. Which seemed fitting.
He’d threatened her. Told her he would never let her go and that she could never leave him. That he wouldn’t accept the stain—the blemish—of a broken engagement. It was her responsibility, he’d said, to fix this. And to find a way out of her latest reputational bruise. Because she was the girl who cried wolf now. And Mal was, of course, the patient, understanding partner, weathering this trying time by her side. But he didn’t want that role for long. He wanted his strong, admirable Abby back. His equal. His lover.
Find her, he’d said, and be her.
The fact that Mal thought they’d ever be lovers again brought literal bile into Abigail’s throat. How could he think in his deranged, sociopathic mind, that she would ever let him touch her again, intimately or otherwise? A scared, vulnerable whisper in the back of her briar-patch mind asked if ‘let’ was even in his vocabulary.
If Mal was determined to touch her, she wasn’t strong enough to stop him.
Her only choice was to run. But how? And to where?
She chewed on her thumbnail and blinked into the middle distance. She was on her lunchbreak, sitting in the small, private courtyard beneath her office building. No-one else was here because it was bitterly cold, which was just as well because Mal had apparently choked her conversation skills right out of her. She just couldn’t do small talk anymore. It was impossible to chat about all things inconsequential when her mind was trying to decide if her life was in danger. She hadn’t spoken to her sister yet. Shame had kept her from setting up a time to talk. Louisa would know—immediately—that something was off and Abigail didn’t know how to explain it all yet. But today it no longer mattered that Abigail didn’t have a script ready. She needed her sister. Someone unequivocally on her side.
Have Your Cake Page 22