Alanna had half hoped he wasn’t gonna show up. But ofcoursehe had. ‘Hi.’
She turned to Keira and grabbed hold of her hand. Partly to let people know they were a couple, partly just out of gratitude to see her. She looked a bit surprised but allowed it. Alanna wasn’t sure if she’d crossed a line.
‘Oh. Still doing that, are you?’ Benjamin snarked.
‘That?’ Alanna repeated sharply.
‘AmIthat?’ Keira joked. ‘Because if I am, she sure is.’
Alanna, trying not to explode into flames at the mere idea, smiled at Keira, but it came out funny.
She looked at her mother and Ed. ‘So, ten years. Good work.’ She put her thumbs up. She didn’t mean it to be sarcastic. It was pure social panic.
Ed laughed. Her mother smiled in a way no one would ever think was genuine.
‘Ten years? That’s what, diamond or something? I can’t imagine getting that far with someone,’ Keira said. ‘Well, maybe now I’ve met Alanna,’ she added hastily.
‘Oh? Not had many lasting relationships?’ Alanna’s mother asked, her voice dripping with poison. Alanna smelled the trap a mile off. She wondered if Keira did, too.
But Keira answered honestly. ‘No. To be honest, I was pretty casual about all that. I guess I just hadn’t met the right girl.’
‘Met quite alotof wrong ones, though, didn’t you?’ Benjamin said snarkily.
Keira turned to him. ‘I was just having a good time. I wouldn’t expectyouto know anything about that.’
Ed belly-laughed. ‘Ah, to be young. I often wished I’d been a bit sluttier in my youth.’
‘Edward,’ Alanna’s mother cried, appalled. Alanna laughed, surprised and delighted. She hadn’t spent much time with Ed before. She’d met him at the wedding and then only ever in passing since. She liked how much he was embarrassing her mother. It was her own ridiculous fault for being so obsessed with optics. How could you not love a man of seventy using the word ‘slutty’ about himself?
‘Edward, can you check on the kitchen, make sure there are enough crab puffs. It seems those trays are moving quicker,’ her mother said.
Edward nodded. ‘As you wish, darling.’
Jesus, how he shook off her rudeness like it was no biggie. Alanna couldn’t do that. Which was why she supposed she’d finished with Benjamin, who was even now examining an amuse-bouche with slight mistrust. What a near miss that had been. Alanna could have married her mother. The utter horror of it.
Instead, she was here with Keira, the world’s most unavailable person. A person Alanna might just be falling a tiny bit in love with. Thinking of it like that, she wasn’t sure if she’d made as much progress as she’d hoped. From someone whose grip was far too hard to someone with buttery palms.
Then again, maybe that was it? Maybe she had simply overcorrected. If that was true, she could fix that, couldn’t she? She could work through her feelings and let them go before she drove herself barmy. Because that’s what would happen if she kept walking down this road.
‘So, Benjamin? What are you up to at the moment?’ her mother asked the little twat.
‘Oh, well, actually, I was just promoted at work from junior systems admin to systems admin.’
Alanna couldn’t believe how boring that sentence had been. But she raised a glass. ‘Congratulations,’ she said evenly.
‘Oh, thanks,’ he blushed.
‘Yeah, good for you, man,’ Keira added.
‘Keira, I never found out… What do you do?’ Benjamin asked.
‘Writer,’ she shrugged.
Her mother looked at Keira anew. ‘Oh? What kind?’
‘Novelist.’
‘Genre?’ her mother pressed.
