I forced myself to blink. To breathe.He doesn’t know, I reminded myself. But it felt like he’d taken an ice-cream scoop to my chest, a giant, melting chasm where my heart used to be.
‘Well, we’d better make damn sure that doesn’t happen, then.’ I forced a smile, swallowing the razor-sharp lump in my throat, but still my voice had to scrape by to get out. I turned my attention to the photographs in my hands, not trusting that the tears wouldn’t come if I stared for one second longer into Luca’s hooded eyes.
‘Wait, is that you?!’
I squinted at a sepia photograph of a middle-aged man sat cross-legged on a patch of lawn, the image drained of almost every drop of colour in the decades that had passed since it had been taken. An impressive-looking beard covered most of the man’s face and neck, and yet his beaming smile was still the first thing I noticed. The second was the toddler running around in the background. He was holding a tambourine triumphantly in the air, a familiar cheeky grin on his face as if he’d just done something he shouldn’t have. He was also butt naked.
‘Give me that.’ Luca lunged towards me with a horrified look on his face, but I was ready for him, darting to the side and holding the photograph up for closer inspection.
‘Why am I not surprised that you were an exhibitionist even back then?’ I teased, skipping around the opposite side of the piano as Luca made another failed attempt to claim the photograph for himself.
‘I knew I should have checked the contents before giving it to you. That isnotgoing in the paper.’ Luca’s eyes narrowed wolfishly as he slowly circled the piano. My heart raced as the two of us continued this slow, agonising dance, him going right, me going left, until I found myself on the side closest to the door. He held my gaze, unblinking as he followed my eyes to the double doors, a challenging cock of his eyebrow that saidI dare you. I faked right and then made a run for it, but didn’t get far before Luca’s arm hooked itself around my waist, hoisting me off the ground as easily as a leaf on the breeze. He pulled me tightly against him, one of my legs between both of his, all my softest parts against all his hardest. His hand skimmed the underside of my shirt as he grabbed me, his touch rippling like fire across the bare skin of my stomach. I gasped, every single muscle seeming to melt at the sudden contact.
‘Aha!’ Luca shouted, snatching the photograph from my fingers and holding it aloft triumphantly.
‘Are you two fighting?’
We turned to see a little girl, her rainbow-tights-clad feet glued to the floor as she twisted her little body from side to side. It bothered me that I couldn’t remember her name, just that she’d lost her brother six months ago. Leukaemia. As though that were her identity now.
‘Of course not.’ I smiled, shimmying free from Luca’s grasp and squatting down to her level. ‘We were just playing a game.’
‘And Miss Thompson lost,’ Luca added smugly, tapping the back pocket of his jeans into which he’d slipped the incriminating photograph. I rolled my eyes at him, quickly attempting to straighten my shirt.
‘Miss Thompson, are you a fan ofThe Jungle Book?’ Luca asked loudly as I made to leave, spinning to look at me with the utmost seriousness as he swung his guitar across his chest. From across the room, ten pairs of excited eyes blinked expectantlyup at me as Luca began strumming the tune of ‘The Bare Necessities’.
‘Oh, well, I should really be going—’
‘You don’t likeThe Jungle Book?’ little ginger-haired Harry frowned, his mouth falling open in disbelief as though I’d just told him that Santa wasn’t real. Nine more gasps echoed around the hall like a sudden gust of wind, an uncomfortable silence descending as Luca’s fingers stilled on the strings.
‘No, I love it!Hugefan. The biggest!’ I corrected myself quickly, glaring at Luca until he started playing again. ‘You’re doing that annoying lip-twitching thing. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,’ I hissed at him, taking the wooden stick with bells on it that Kiki ran to give me with a shy smile.
Luca walked back over to the children, dropping to his knees, and tapping out a beat on the pair of bongos for Harry to take over before waltzing back over to me.
‘It’s called a smile. You should try it sometime,’ he said dryly, his scent – warm and surprisingly familiar – wafting over me as he came up behind me, close but not quite touching. My breath caught in my throat as his fingers wrapped around my wrist, and I tried to resist the urge to step back into him. ‘Like this.’ His voice vibrated right through me as his fingers interlaced with mine until I wasn’t sure where I ended and he began, shaking whatever instrument I was holding in time with the beat. His grip loosened, leaving my skin peppered with goosebumps as he began a conga-style procession around the hall, a chaotic trail of percussion-wielding infants behind him. They were each playing their own tune and yet somehow, it all seemed to belong, weaving together to create something beautiful. Perfect, not so much. Following the script, definitely not. But beautiful none the less.
‘There you are. I was about to send out a search party.’
I glanced at my watch.Had I really been here over an hour?!
‘Sorry, I didn’t realise the time.’ I grinned sheepishly at an approaching Jacob, noting a scattering of crumbs stuck to the front of his crochet knitted t-shirt. ‘I see you helped yourself to the emergency bag of crisps in the glove compartment. You do know those have been in there for over five years?’
Jacob turned a delicate shade of green, brushing most of the incriminating evidence over the floor.
‘I’ll just go grab my stuff,’ I added, leaving him chatting to Luca as I went to retrieve the shoebox.With my back to them, the hairs on my arms stood to attention, bristling at something despite the sun beating down through the windows.
‘Sorry we kept her so long, mate,’ I heard Luca mutter faintly.
‘Ah, no bother. It’s nice to see her this passionate about something again. I’ve not seen her like that since before the accident,’ came Jacob’s voice.
‘Accident?’
‘Yeah, Joe’s accident.’
‘Joe, as in Jenny’s fiancé, Joe?’
The box slipped through my fingers, landing on the floor with a thud as my head snapped up just in time to see the confusion on Luca’s face. I waved my hands frantically in the air, trying to get Jacob’s attention, to signal to him to stop, but he wasn’t looking my way.Shit.
A mix of adrenaline and something else flooded through me, propelling me across the room before I could even register what was happening. But by the time I reached them, everything about Luca’s face told me I was already too late. His eyes, heavy with a cocktail of sadness and pity that I knew all too well, found mine, full of questions I couldn’t answer. Like why I’d never corrected him whenever he’d mentioned Joe. How I’d let him believe we were happily engaged. Gone along with it, in fact.
