by Dani Atkins
If Alex had harboured any doubts about having invited these people to Todd and Dee’s party, they dissipated as soon as Connor spotted Molly. Connor’s face instantly lit up and he rushed across the room like a small Exocet missile. Molly was talking to Dee, but she broke off when a small hand eagerly took hold of hers, his face upturned. Dee’s eyes widened in surprise.
‘Well, hello there, Connor,’ Molly said warmly.
Alex had to blink away his disbelief at the expression on Connor’s face. That look of animation – no, more than that: excitement – had been absent for so long, it took him a moment to even recognise it.
‘So, do you have a favourite type of firework?’ Molly asked, dropping down easily onto her haunches before him. ‘Mine have always been Catherine wheels.’
Connor gave the question some serious consideration before announcing decisively, ‘Rockets. Because they can go up to the stars.’
Before Molly could reply, Connor silenced her – silenced the whole room, really – with a solemn confession. ‘I think that’s where Mummy’s waiting until it’s time to come back for me.’
Molly rose from her crouch, but Alex noticed that her hand remained on Connor’s shoulder, as though it belonged there. Her eyes met his over the little boy’s head and there was a look of sympathy in them that made his throat tighten. Concerned glances ricocheted from face to face, and an uncomfortable silence descended on the kitchen. Surprisingly, the awkward moment was rescued by Jamie, who’d spotted something hanging on the far wall. He loped across the room to examine it.
‘Who’s the musician?’ he asked, his gaze fixed admiringly on the gleaming electric guitar.
‘Todd,’ answered Alex, wondering why Molly had opened her mouth to reply and then snapped it shut again, as though she’d almost spilt a secret.
‘I was in a band at university,’ Todd confirmed, his chest puffing out a little.
Dee and Alex exchanged a glance that dared the other not to laugh.
Todd lifted the guitar from its hooks and placed it in Jamie’s hands. ‘Do you play?’
Jamie shook his head. ‘Not really. Although I picked up a couple of chords when I was working as a roadie.’
This time it was Todd and Alex who shared a look. It seemed an unlikely career choice for someone with Jamie’s slight physique. The only roadies Alex had known were built like brick outhouses, with necks thicker than Jamie’s waist.
‘That must have been an interesting job,’ Dee said, more trusting than her husband or brother-in-law. ‘Did you work with anyone famous?’
It was only when Jamie casually named Coldplay and Muse as two of his roadie gigs that the whiff of rodent reached her nose too. Jamie, seemingly unaware that he’d been rumbled, was happily recounting a series of events Alex was pretty sure had never happened. He didn’t blame the guy for embellishing his life. When you’d spent that long stuck in a hospital bed, waiting for a transplant that might never come, you’d earned the right to be a little creative with the truth.
He caught Molly’s eye, and she flashed him a look so similar to the one he’d have expected from Lisa that for a second the room swam out of focus and he saw not the pretty young teacher but a taller blonde woman with dancing blue eyes and a heart that would always be his. A rush of nausea engulfed him, and his chest tightened as an overwhelming craving for fresh air forced him to his feet.
‘I think I’ll go and make a start on the bonfire,’ he said, already heading towards the sliding glass doors leading out to the patio.
Dee hijacked him with a hand on his arm as he was shrugging on his wax jacket. ‘Should I wait a bit longer before putting things in the oven, as Mac isn’t here yet?’
From the corner of his eye, Alex thought he saw Molly lift her head, like a deer in the forest. Something bitter stirred unpleasantly in Alex’s already queasy stomach, it felt a lot like jealousy. ‘No. Don’t bother waiting. He couldn’t guarantee he’d be free this evening.’ Alex gave an eloquent shrug. ‘Which may or may not have been an excuse. Who knows?’
It was a real effort not to turn and see if his reply had any impact on Molly. But somehow he resisted the temptation.
*
The bonfire was beginning to crackle, tiny tendrils of smoke winding out from between the twigs and branches he’d carefully laid that afternoon. When he was certain it would take, Alex stepped away from the pyre and went to stand beside Todd, who was busily sorting through the fireworks in the metal box.
‘I don’t want you to take this the wrong way…’ Todd began.
The box of matches Alex had been lightly tossing from one hand to the other stilled in his palm. Why did people always say that as a preamble to a comment they knew was going to piss the other person off. Two seconds’ warning wasn’t going to be long enough to make whatever Todd had to say any more palatable.
‘If I was one of your guests, you would definitely be creeping me out tonight.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You keep looking at them,’ Todd replied, his lips a tight line of disapproval.
Alex bristled and his jaw tensed. Only Todd had this effect on him.
‘Isn’t that what you’re meant to do when you’re talking to someone?’
Todd sighed heavily. ‘It’s the way you’re looking.’ Alex was staring at him blankly. ‘Maybe you don’t even know you’re doing it. But it’s kind of like—’ He brought his face closer to his brother’s and adopted an intense, wide-eyed stare.
Alex took an instinctive step backwards, giving in to a snort of laughter. ‘I’ve a horrible feeling that might be your sex face. If it is, Dee has my sympathy.’
When Todd didn’t even crack a smile, Alex realised they’d somehow gone from nought to deadly serious in seconds.
‘I’m not joking, mate.’
Alex shook his head. They were never going to agree on this one. ‘I know you’re not. But I’m not sure what you want me to say here. I genuinely like these people. They feel like friends now.’
Todd stared into the box of fireworks. ‘Just answer me this. Before what happened to Lisa, could you ever have imagined becoming best mates with a little old lady, a young guy with a Walter Mitty thing going on, and a high-flying architect?’
He turned to Alex, holding his gaze like a prisoner. The silence stretched on and on, begging for one of them to break it. Finally Alex did.
‘You forgot one.’
The curl of his brother’s lips told Alex the omission had been deliberate.
‘Yes, I did. And we both know why. Because she’s the one this is really all about, isn’t she?’
23
Molly
This isn’t weird. It isn’t weird at all. It didn’t seem to matter how many times I tried to convince myself. Something peculiar was definitely happening here, and I had no idea how to stop it. More than that, I didn’t even know if I wanted to stop it.
As I stood on Todd and Dee’s lawn, ostensibly absorbed in the fireworks display, my thoughts were all over the place, shooting out like sparks from a Roman candle. Every now and then I would feel a small testing squeeze from the mittened hand gripping mine, as though Connor was making sure I was still there. He had hardly left my side all evening, which was immensely flattering and slightly worrying in equal measure.
I understood little children – or at least I hoped I did. As a primary school teacher, I was frequently a lap to climb onto or a hand to hold, and I’d been mistakenly called ‘Mummy’ on far too many occasions to find it strange any more. And yet with this one child, with Connor, I was feeling things I’d never experienced before.
The biological clock has a tendency to run a little slower in childless primary school teachers. I, for one, had never felt that burning desire to have a child of my own; it was always something Future Me would deal with one day. And then, for a long time, when it looked as though Future Me might not be around to make that kind of decision, all thoughts of babies and children faded, like a memory of something
I’d never known. But suddenly all of that was changing. Tonight there was a pull, which felt almost physical, whenever I looked at Connor.
I gnawed on my lip, already numbed by the cold November air, as I forced myself to admit that there was another pull too, towards Connor’s father, which was wrong on far too many levels. And none of that explained why I felt so drawn to every single person gathered around this bonfire in a stranger’s garden. I kept telling myself that with Barbara and Jamie it was the things we had in common – our illnesses and surgeries – that made them feel so much more than newly made friends. But it was getting harder and harder to convince myself that this was the only reason.
All of this should have been scaring the life out of me. It should have made me want to get as far away as possible. And yet I knew I didn’t want to pull away from these people. Not yet. What I didn’t know was why.
Alex and Todd were working harmoniously together, with no trace of the tension I’d sensed between them when we’d all moved from kitchen to garden for the fireworks. Todd read out the instructions by torchlight, and Alex followed them to the letter. Touchpapers were lit with extreme caution, but that didn’t stop my heart from racing as I watched Lisa’s husband backlit by the flames of the bonfire. I wanted to call out for him to be careful so many times, I practically had to clamp my lips together to stop the words from escaping. It wasn’t like me to be such a panicker. Perhaps the nervousness was contagious or perhaps I really was going a bit crazy, because the intensity I thought I saw in Alex’s eyes when I lit Connor’s sparkler made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Was that watchful look just a father’s natural concern when I steadied Connor’s arm as he swirled the wand through the air or was it something else?
When the last rocket trail had disappeared into the night sky, Dee herded everyone back into the kitchen like a sheepdog on a mission. Trays of sizzling sausages were pulled from the oven and my mouth was already watering as I added my outer clothes to the mountain piled up on a kitchen chair.
I loved the casual informality of the evening, the way no one worried about pedestrian things like cutlery, serviettes or sitting down to eat. Todd lifted Maisie and Connor to sit on one of the kitchen worktops, and for the first time Connor seemed to be acting more like a boy of seven than a sombre little old man trapped inside a child’s body. His gaze was split equally between the night sky, visible through the open patio doors, and me. I told myself his interest was just the fascination of someone new, which was as good a lie as any to try to swallow.
Alex was doing the rounds of the room with a bottle of Merlot in hand. I rarely drank these days, but somehow the ‘no’ that was ready and waiting on my lips turned into a ‘yes’ before I even realised it. I could feel a flush on my cheeks as he steadied my hand with his before filling my glass with a measure far larger than any bar would serve. It must have been the alcohol in my veins that was making my pulse suddenly race faster, I told myself, as I thanked him with a smile.
‘Did you enjoy the fireworks?’ he asked.
‘I did. I thought the whole evening was very…’ The room was noisy, and there were several conversations going on around us. Jamie was laughing uproariously at something Todd had just said, while Dee was looking like she might be regretting asking Barbara about her family of cats. Alex took a step closer towards me, to better hear what I was saying, which was unfortunate, because his proximity derailed my train of thought so effectively that my sentence simply hung in the air between us.
He was waiting, and with every second my heart was racing a little bit faster. It knows him. It knows what it’s like to be this close to his body. I shook my head to dislodge the ridiculous notion, but it was hard to shift.
‘Nice. It was nice,’ I finished pathetically.
There was a slightly unflattering look of relief on his face when he stepped away from me. Dear God, was I was so rusty at this that I now actually repelled members of the opposite sex? For no reason at all a memory of Mac queue-jumped to the front of my thoughts. My eyes flew to the door, which was daft, because it was perfectly obvious by now that he wasn’t coming. Maybe Mac was right though, maybe we were all making a huge mistake continuing this – whatever it was.
I was distracted, my thoughts scattered all over the place, which was the excuse I later went with for what happened next. I didn’t see the moth’s fluttering approach until the very last moment. It was heading straight towards my face, no doubt attracted by the large, vintage-style light bulb in the lamp beside me. One minute I was a slightly flustered party guest, and the next I’d turned into a raving lunatic as the huge silvery-winged insect landed on my arm.
It was an exceedingly large moth, almost the size of my palm, but that was no excuse for my overreaction. I shrieked – possibly for the first time in my life – and, even worse, I also threw my arm upwards, as though to protect myself from the poor, defenceless, light-dazzled moth. A shower of Merlot arced into the air like a red waterfall. Most of it, luckily, landed on me rather than the biscuit-coloured settee I was sitting on.
Not surprisingly, every head had turned at my cry. The bits of me that weren’t red from the wine now turned ruby with embarrassment.
‘What the…?’ began Alex, his mouth dropping open into an O of surprise. For some reason the moth had decided its safest course of action was simply to hang on to my arm, for when I lowered it, it was still there.
‘Hang on, don’t panic,’ Alex said, his voice uber calm as he began to walk carefully towards me, his hands outstretched.
Before he could reach me, I brought my free hand down over the moth, trapped it against my forearm and crossed as steadily as I could towards the patio doors. When I was clear of the house and all artificial light, I shook my arm and released it into the night.
‘I’m so sorry, I’ve made a dreadful mess,’ I said as I re-entered the kitchen.
The Stevens family stared at me with a range of unfathomable expressions.
‘That was the King Kong of moths,’ declared Jamie. ‘I haven’t seen one that size since I was backpacking around Australia.’
It didn’t seem the right moment to remind him that earlier in the evening he’d admitted he’d never visited the Antipodes.
‘Have you got a cloth, so I can wipe this up before it stains?’ I asked, gesturing towards the large puddle of wine on the floor, that I couldn’t help thinking looked horribly like blood.
At this, everyone seemed to come alive again, as though simultaneously emerging from a hypnotist’s trance.
‘I’ll get the mop,’ said Todd, heading towards a tall kitchen cupboard.
Alex tore his eyes from me and went to Connor, whose face appeared several degrees paler than before.
Dee shook her head, ridding her thoughts of whatever had held her temporarily immobile. ‘Oh no. Your poor top.’
It was only then that I looked down at the stretchy white lace top I’d bought to dress up the dark skinny jeans I was wearing. One look at the red blotches told me it was probably the first and last time I’d be wearing it.
‘Come upstairs, I’ll find you something to change into,’ said Dee, taking my arm and leading me towards the hallway. ‘We’re pretty much the same size.’
Could this night get any more peculiar, I wondered as I stood in my hostess’s bedroom while she rummaged in the drawers of a dresser for something I could wear. It was probably going to be more of a challenge than she realised, because I was pretty sure I was a couple of cup sizes larger than her.
‘If you whip off your stained one, I’ll put it straight in to soak for you,’ she offered kindly, unaware of my reluctance to get changed in front of her. She was waiting, hand outstretched, and the pause was growing more uncomfortable with every passing second. This was why I avoided communal changing rooms in department stores and made a beeline for the curtained cubicles at the gym. But Dee was oblivious to that, and short of asking her to turn around, which was too excruciating to contemplate, there was nothing
I could do.
The wine-stained top came off over my head, and with a degree of self-control I didn’t know I had, I managed to stop myself from crossing my hands protectively over my scar.
Her quiet gasp in the softly lit room contained a thousand emotions. Remorse and shock were probably uppermost. Too late, she finally understood my hesitation. She stared at the long vertical line that bisected my breasts, beneath which her late sister-in-law’s heart was pounding away, like I’d just been to a spin class.
‘Oh my God, Molly, I’m so sorry. That was really insensitive of me.’
‘It’s nothing,’ I murmured, very glad she and Todd favoured subdued bedroom lighting, which just about hid the raging blush that was coursing over my cheeks.
‘I should have realised; I can’t believe I didn’t even think of it.’
I plucked up one of the tops she’d set down on the edge of the bed for me, discarding it almost immediately when I saw its scooped neckline.
‘Er… do you have anything that’s not quite so low cut?’ I asked awkwardly.
This time she was the one who blushed. ‘Oh God, I’m such an idiot. I’m so sorry.’ She reached for a dark blue long-sleeved top. ‘Here, try this.’
I took it from her, already knowing it would do the job.
‘It’s just that I wouldn’t want Connor to see this,’ I said, my finger grazing the length of my scar. ‘Or Alex.’
‘No. No. I completely understand,’ Dee said, looking just about as awkward as a person could look in their own bedroom. ‘I’ll just leave you to get yourself straightened up,’ she said, turning hurriedly towards the door. ‘I’ll put this into some cold water for you.’