‘Youdidmake the whole thing up.’ Mack frowned. Then he looked at me, and his eyes glinted silver. ‘I think Mack Macintyre needs to come with you to this wedding, Jenny.’
‘Yes, I’ll send him a text, shall I? Join Sarah’s dating agency and hunt down all the Mack Macintyres until I find one who’ll be my plus one? I can’t bring just anyone. It has to be someone… reasonable.’
He waited for me to get it.
‘You aren’t coming with me.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because as soon as the road’s clear you’re driving your wife’s Mini to London. I don’t think she’d take kindly to you hopping off to Scotland with me a few weeks later to be my wedding date.’
‘Well, I appreciate the vote of confidence, but—’
‘However, if you have any photos, that would be great. Then I can tell them you’re sick, and if everyone spends the whole day thinking I made up a boyfriend, well, I’ve spent more humiliating days.’ I flopped back onto the sofa cushion.
‘Really?’ He looked at me, eyes wide. ‘I’ll swap you a photo for hearing about one of those even more humiliating days.’
‘Okay, deal. But if you really want to hear stories about a woman at her most pathetic, that says more about you than it does about me.’ I rolled my eyes, then elbowed him in what I hoped was a friendly manner. ‘But thanks for offering. That was incredibly kind of you.’
‘Why are you going? Wouldn’t it be easier to stay away?’
‘Yes. But I’m trying to stop taking the easy way out. And I want to talk to my mum about something. Believe me, this will be less torturous than visiting her. Even if I could afford it. Which I can’t.’
‘This something must be important. Can you tell me about it?’
And that took us on to a whole other topic of conversation. Which made us hungry, so we ate cheese on toast and made hot chocolate. And before I knew it, it was one in the morning, my pretend Christmas birthday had finished and Mack now knew my whole life story.
It was only after he’d dragged himself home, and I’d tumbled into bed, I realised I still didn’t even know his last name.
Presuming it wasn’t Macintyre, of course.
27
The only contact I had with Mack over the next week was an emailed picture on my phone. I clicked open the attachment and every nerve in my body sprang to attention. He looked like Mack, but not Mack. Healthy and happy and fun and alive. As if this were the real Mack, and the man I’d met was just the old exoskeleton floating about. A professional shot: he looked slightly off-camera, eyes crinkling as if someone had caught him about to burst out laughing. His beard a faint shadow. Posture relaxed, chin up. This was either a very ancient photo or I was looking at Mack pre-broken heart.
Wowzers.
I wanted to kiss him and slap his stupid, selfish, ungrateful wife round the face.
A message accompanied the attachment:
Thanks for Christmas Day. Your stories were a perfect distraction. Still smiling every time I think about you wrestling your sister onto the buffet table.
Mack Macintyre.
I made that sad, solitary, lovely man smile.
He had been thinking about me.
Yes, Jenny. He said it himself: you are adistraction.
I walked to the Camerons’ house that Friday for a significantly scaled-down, late birthday celebration. I would have driven the Mini, but it had gone.
No bouncy castle or pass the parcel, and Dawson was sleeping over at Lucas and Erik’s, so the magic show would have to wait, but a barbeque with my new friends, sitting out under the stars with a glass of Prosecco and a fudge cake topped with birthday sparklers, a choreographed alien koala fight as entertainment and smashing a bacterium-shaped pinata to smithereens was by far my second-best birthday celebration ever.
I didn’t even wonder for too long how my twin had celebrated our birthday. Or felt too sad that she would not have been wondering about me.
Inevitably, word had spread about the Beast of Middlebeck. Everyone at the party wanted to know if it was true, I’d been attacked. Chased? Fought off a would-be abductor?
