The Wedding Pact

by Isla Gordon

  Chapter 69

  Flynn

  Though it was morning in England, it was early evening in Japan, and Flynn was struggling to stay awake at his parents’ house, desperate to not let jet lag get the better of him this time. His journey back had been a wonderful contrast from his journey to the UK – smooth, on time, no delays, no turbulence, and by the time he’d touched down he already felt like his work stresses were a million miles away.

  And so was August, but he needed to at least try not to think about her too much while he was here.

  He took a can of iced coffee from his parents’ fridge and padded outside on to their decking to take in the countryside, with Mount Fuji rising in the distance. It was very different from Bath, but every bit as beautiful.

  He felt like he was home.

  Chapter 70

  August

  ‘Morning, Abe,’ August said, approaching the wall in front of the house.

  He looked up and beamed. ‘Good morning. I’m back!’

  ‘I can see that. I haven’t seen you since the Christmas party. How have you been?’

  ‘Good. And you? Happy New Year.’

  ‘Happy New Year to you.’ August sat next to him on the wall, keeping a little gap between them this time, unsure what Abe thought of her even though she had her suspicions. ‘How’s Mrs H?’

  ‘Eh … ’ he trailed off, lost in thought for a moment. ‘She’s okay. She was telling me about your visit to her a few weeks ago?’

  ‘It was nice,’ August replied. ‘She had Advocaat, which I hadn’t had since my gran was alive.’

  ‘She loves Advocaat; her mum – my gran – always had it around too. She mentioned your gran actually, weren’t the two of them friends?’

  ‘Yes,’ August cried. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t realise the whole time I lived here that actually Mrs Haverley, your mum, was the “Windy Day” my grandma brought me in here to visit when I was little. I don’t think they were super close – your mum was a bit younger than my gran, but they were definitely friends.’

  ‘That’s funny. Did my mum remember you coming over when you were little?’

  ‘She says she did, but I’m not so sure, and I wouldn’t blame her, it was a long time ago.’

  ‘It’s nice that you had that connection,’ Abe commented, and drifted into his thoughts for a second before saying, ‘Mum’s got more closed off over the years and sometimes it’s good to remember who you were in the past—’ He stopped, and cleared his throat, as if he was getting a bit deep. ‘So anyway, thank you. Where’s Flynn?’

  He caught her eye again at the mention of Flynn, and August had to look away. ‘He’s away at the moment, in Japan.’

  ‘Japan! Business or pleasure?’

  ‘A bit of both,’ she said, fixing her gaze forward, not comfortable lying to Abe after the truthful moment he’d just shared with her.

  The two of them made their way back inside, and on the stairs Abe said, ‘I’ll be back next weekend. If you need anything while your, um, Flynn’s away just let me know.’

  ‘See you next weekend,’ she whispered after him, looking forward to it already.

  Chapter 71

  Flynn

  Flynn had spent the best part of a week in Japan, relaxing with his family, catching up on sleep, visiting with old friends, before he took the trip into the centre of Tokyo to see one of the main people he needed to reconnect with.

  A Sunday morning in Tokyo can feel as busy as a Saturday morning in other parts of the world, and Flynn loved it. He stood on the pavement facing the tower block where he lived for a year, the bright white January sky glinting off the panes of glass. As he stood still, around him, people went about their days, enjoying their leisure time, wrapped in layers to protect them from the bitter weather.

  It was nice to be home.

  But this particular building wasn’t his home anymore, and with a glance at his watch, he moved on, saying a final, silent goodbye to the window that once had been his, all those storeys up.

  He wondered if Yui still lived there. He’d soon find out.

  Flynn had thought about visiting Yui at home, assuming that was still her home, but had changed his mind shortly before getting in touch with her. It wasn’t about the flat they’d lived in, it was about them, it had always been about them, and he didn’t want to muddy his thoughts by feeling nostalgia for a home that was no longer his.

  Instead he’d kept it simple, and told her he was in Tokyo to visit his family, that he’d really like to talk to her, and could they meet up for a walk in Koishikawa Korakuen gardens, one of their favourite places to take an al fresco coffee. He’d waited a full day and night for her to respond, and when she did, it was in agreement.

  Entering the park, Flynn felt like he had the koi from the pond leaping about in his stomach. For most of their relationship he’d seen Yui every single day, and that had been stripped away to him not seeing her now for over six months. Not speaking with her. Not looking at pictures of her. Would it be like reuniting with an old friend, or a stranger?

  He sat on a bench and pulled out his phone while he waited for Yui to arrive, scrolling back through his photos, letting his eyes fill with images of Bath, and he settled on one of August sitting on the wall outside their house, drinking her morning cup of tea, that he’d taken from their living room window. He wondered what she was doing at that moment.

  Chapter 72

  August

  At that moment, actually, August was sleeping. It was one in the morning in the UK, and August had spent her Saturday doing two things she couldn’t have even imagined doing a few months ago.

  One was that during the week she had landed her first audiobook to record in her new booth – an eerie thriller – and today was the day she’d been planning to get started. Or, get started again, because she only realised after five chapters in the day before that her jewellery was making a load of background tinkles in an otherwise tense scene and she had to remove it all and start over.

  And two was that she spent the day hanging out with the landlady and her son.

  Moments before shutting the door of her booth on Saturday morning and closing out the sounds of the world, August had heard Abe on the stairs with his mum, a full week after she’d last seen him. August dived from the booth, leaving behind the audiobook and oh-so-subtly zoomed from her flat to run into them as they descended.

  Mrs Haverley was slow, gripping the railing with the determination of someone who might bite your head clean off and spit it down the hill if you so much as muttered the suggestion of a chair lift being installed. Abe walked beside her, carrying her bag, holding an arm aloft in case she needed it. Mrs Haverley looked up at the sound of August tumbling out of her door below them. ‘Is that August or Callie?’ she barked, keeping her eyes on the stairs.

  Abe glanced down and met August’s eye, a smile spreading across his face that she echoed. ‘Hello,’ he said, greeting her with a warm tone, like hot chocolate.

  ‘Hey, welcome back,’ she replied.

  ‘Oi,’ Mrs Haverley hissed at her son, not very quietly. ‘She’s married, you know. Now give me that arm.’

  ‘Mum, I know,’ Abe cried, and August held back a chuckle. ‘We’re heading down into town, to the Fashion Museum. Mum wants me to pick her out a funeral gown.’

  ‘I do not, stupid boy.’ She thwacked him one, but August could hear the gentle teasing in both of their voices. Mrs Haverley rounded the staircase onto her landing at that moment and looked her up and down, taking in her lime green leggings, baggy grey sweatshirt with huge Disney castle motif, and neon yellow hoop earrings. ‘You look like a girl who appreciates … fashion … would you care to come with?’

  ‘Oh,’ August tugged on her sweater. ‘I think I’m actually very unfashionable, but what I do appreciate is colour.’

  ‘Then you’ll enjoy the frocks, let me tell you,’ Mrs Haverley said, and without a pause, she continued her descent and barked, ‘Come along.’

>   August glanced at Abe who shrugged and continued after his mother down the stairs, but when she didn’t move he turned back and whispered with a smirk, ‘Come along!’

  She didn’t feel at all dressed for a fashion museum, and she really had some work to do, but after only a moment’s dilly-dallying August grabbed her coat and her ankle boots, and hopped down the stairs after them.

  ‘Were you going somewhere?’ Abe asked as the three of them took a slow walk down Elizabeth Street towards the town.

  ‘When? Now? Am I not coming with you?’ August asked.

  ‘No, before. You looked like you were just leaving your flat before we accosted you.’

  ‘Oh right. Erm. No, I was just going to run outside and see what the temperature was like.’ What a lame excuse – Abe knew full well she had windows in her flat.

  ‘Right,’ he answered. ‘How’s Flynn getting on in Japan?’

  ‘Flynn is in Japan?’ Mrs Haverley shrieked as if she’d never heard such madness. ‘That’s the other side of the world! Has he left you?’

  ‘No, no,’ August replied, keeping her eyes forward. ‘His family lives out there and he was taking a business trip, so … ’

  ‘When will he be home?’

  ‘Another couple of weeks, actually.’

  Mrs Haverley tutted, but didn’t follow it up with any more comments, so perhaps she hadn’t quite known why she’d done so any more than the rest of them.

  ‘Have you been all right?’ Abe asked, seeming to choose his words carefully.

  August waved him away. ‘Yeah, fine. How are you? How was your week in London?’

  ‘All right, same old. I went on a Jack the Ripper walking tour on Wednesday evening.’

  ‘You did?’ asked August. ‘I played one of his victims once, in an am-dram play on the street in Whitechapel. It was quite gory, really, now I think about it.’

  ‘I told you she was an actress,’ Mrs Haverley said sharply to her son.

  ‘I already know, Mum,’ he said.

  ‘Was the walk good?’ August asked. She couldn’t quite imagine Abe, sweet but serious as he seemed, taking himself off for a guided two-hour history jaunt.

  ‘It was great,’ he enthused. ‘Really informative, and so strange to stand on the cobbles where those poor women were murdered.’

  ‘Why were you doing such a thing?’ Mrs Haverley asked, pausing to take a break at the bottom of the hill.

  Abe looked a little abashed. ‘I just felt like it, I was bored.’

  He was lonely, August thought. She knew, because she used to do the same kind of thing. ‘When I lived in London I often had times when I felt a bit … bored, or at a loose end, or whatever. I used to do those walking tours sometimes. They’re so affordable and so good. Another thing I used to do was visit the museums in Kensington. If I wanted to kill an hour or two I’d go with the sole purpose of hitting just one gallery on that visit and doing it really properly. I never got around to doing all the galleries in all the museums though, by the time I left.’

  ‘I like that idea,’ Mrs Haverley gave a nod of approval, and August noticed she raised her eyebrows at Abe much to say, you like it too, don’t you, boy-o.

  ‘Have you been to the Fashion Museum before, Mrs H?’ August asked and then cringed; she must stop calling her Mrs H in public, she didn’t want to sound rude.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Mrs Haverley smiled, the same smile she’d shown when August had chatted with her about her grandma, the one that shined across her whole face. ‘I worked there for many years. I started back in the seventies; it was called The Museum of Costume back then.’

  ‘Did you enjoy it?’ August asked.

  ‘Very much. The fabrics, the detail, the colours,’ she winked at August.

  ‘Did you work there until you retired?’

  ‘Not quite,’ Mrs Haverley answered. ‘I left for a while after this one was born,’ she motioned to Abe.

  The three of them made small talk as they wove their way down towards the Fashion Museum, housed within the beautiful coffee-coloured Assembly Rooms on Bennett Street, which always tickled August’s Austen-loving heart. As they walked around the museum, admiring the collections and after August had insisted that even if nobody else was, she was going to try on the Georgian gown on the dress-up display, Abe held back, putting his hand on August’s arm. Mrs Haverley walked on ahead, lost in thought and memory.

  ‘Thanks for coming to this,’ he said to her, his hand still on her arm, which she was more aware of than all of the swathes of gold and silver threads around them.

  ‘My pleasure,’ she replied. ‘I’m having a nice time.’

  ‘Are you?’ Abe asked, and his eyes fixed hers for a moment, before he slowly removed his hand and lowered his gaze to the floor also.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ said August. And she really was, though six months ago she couldn’t have in a million years imagined being close enough with the battleaxe landlady to be taking a trip out with her and getting along like old chums. Callie had been telling the truth: Mrs H really was kind of fun.

  But also … with Flynn on the other side of the world, possibly reuniting with his ex-girlfriend, being with Abe really felt like it might be a chance for her heart to stop fannying about, fluttering around Flynn like a confused butterfly. She hadn’t been looking for a man to replace Flynn, she hadn’t been looking for a man at all, but it just seemed to be working out that way.

  Except for that one little, tiny detail, that caused her to sigh out loud and Abe to look through his lashes at her again. He thought she was a married woman. And if she told him the truth, that they’d been lying to him and to his mother this whole time, would he still want to touch her arm like that?

  The rest of the afternoon was pleasant. More than pleasant: it was fun. August enjoyed Abe’s company, and, much to her surprise, Mrs Haverley’s as well.

  By the time she climbed into bed that night, and drifted off to sleep, and it reached one in the morning, she was enjoying a dream about playing Harry Potter himself in the stage show of The Cursed Child. And she was nearly, almost, successfully managing to not think about Flynn too much at all.

  Chapter 73

  Flynn

  ‘Ohayo, Fujio,’ a familiar voice said, sounding out his real first name and interrupting his thoughts.

  There she was. Yui stood in front of him as familiar as the day he’d said goodbye, in everything except the expression on her face. She didn’t look pained or angry, she didn’t even look distant, which had been his biggest worry, he now realised. She looked content.

  He stood up, and after a moment’s hesitation on how to greet each other, she made the first move to hold out her arms and they embraced, softly, quickly, and accompanied by a small laugh.

  ‘I bought you a coffee – a matcha latte – is that okay?’ Flynn asked, handing her one of the cups on the bench.

  ‘Of course, that’s perfect, thank you,’ Yui replied, warmly.

  They of course spoke in easy Japanese, something Flynn was enjoying flexing his vocal muscles around again. He was enjoying a lot about being back here, and stealing a glance at Yui, he knew he was enjoying her company again as well.

  ‘How are you?’ Flynn asked.

  ‘I’m good, very well. How are you? How is England?’

  ‘It’s … different.’

  ‘Different? Do you mean different from when you lived there before?’

  ‘Different from here,’ he clarified. ‘Everything feels very, very, different.’

  ‘Are you not happy?’ Yui asked.

  ‘Not really,’ he admitted. He felt foolish doing so, partly wishing he was back here telling Yui that everything was great, that it was the right decision. But he was tired; he’d done a lot of pretending, one way or another, over the past few months. And so he confessed, ‘Sometimes I wonder if this was just one huge mis-step.’

  ‘Why?’ Yui asked, seeming genuinely puzzled. ‘It’s never a mistake if there’s an adventure beside it. Aren’t you h
aving an adventure?’

  ‘There never seems to be time for adventuring because my job is so busy. I had this image of learning all about the history of the city of Bath, taking trips around the UK, visiting old haunts and new roads. Then having weekends away across Europe, seeing all the countries I’d never made it to before in big, bright detail. But I’ve barely done any of it. All I see in detail are legal documents, spreadsheets, the walls around my desk.’

  Yui was silent for a while, sipping her drink, digesting what he’d said, until she said, ‘You were the same here too, you know.’

  This surprised him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘When we first got together, you talked about the excitement of moving to Japan a couple of years previously, how there was so much you wanted to see here. You were going to snowboard in the north and visit your grandmother down in the south. You were going to jump on planes and visit China and Taiwan. You were going to eat at every restaurant in Tokyo.’

  Flynn felt a sadness at all the missed opportunities, all the things he’d never done when he lived in Japan. This was all the more reason to come back, permanently, right?

  ‘Don’t look so glum, that isn’t why we broke up,’ Yui continued, giving him a nudge. ‘You never promised me we’d do all those things, and they weren’t the reason I was with you. I’m just … pointing out that this situation isn’t new for you. It’s not a bad situation because you moved to England.’

  They walked in silence for a few minutes, with Flynn wondering what to say. He had a million questions he wanted to ask her, about her family, their friends, her life, but they all felt like the kind of questions you ask when you haven’t seen someone in a few weeks, not half a year.

  ‘How’s your work?’ he settled on eventually. It was an extremely dull question, and he had the flash image of August swatting him with a magazine for being so beige among all of this colour and beauty in the gardens, and next to Yui.