‘Go for it,’ Keira smiled. Once Alanna had disappeared, the smile dropped rapidly. Her mouth set in grim repose. She carried on swiping joylessly. A few minutes later, she matched with someone and not long after that, a message popped up.
Hi, Sexy
Keira had any number of stock responses to that opening gambit, and she thought them over. But nothing sounded right. GoddamnAlanna Hall. She’d wrecked everything. But she’d never find out. Not for anything would Keira ever let that woman know what she’d done to her.
Which was how she found herself in an all-night coffee shop a few hours later, working away on her laptop with a piss poor Americano at her elbow. If she couldn’t hook up, she could at least pretend she was. Meanwhile, she’d pour all the energy that used to go into sex into her work. Because that was her other failsafe. The arranging of words into sentences, chapters, novels, and eventually, money. Even Alanna couldn’t take that from her. She’d taken far too much already. And now she was waltzing out the door with it all. The stability and safety she’d found in life were gone.
But maybe, and this felt like a very thin hope indeed, maybe Alanna had only borrowed these things. Maybe once she was gone, Keira could get it all back.
Keira wished she believed that.
***
‘How was it?’ Keira asked a week later. Alanna had just gone to see the third apartment of the week.
‘Umm, yeah, I think it might be the one?’
‘Oh,’ Keira said, ‘Great. That’s great for you. Cool.’
‘Yeah,’ Alanna said. ‘I think it’s gonna work.’
‘Great, great,’ Keira said, forcing herself to smile. They stood nodding at each other for a while until Keira couldn’t take anymore. ‘Hey, where the hell’s your mother gotten to? I haven’t seen her in a few days.’
‘Take a guess.’
Keira was aghast. ‘Surely she’s notlivingwith him for chrissakes? They only met a week ago.’
‘Love moves fast when you’re financially motivated,’ Alanna sighed. ‘But anyway, better than me being stuck with her. Or you.’
‘When you put it like that… Hey, I bumped into Benny Boy and Kelly in the elevator earlier. She invited us,again, to that bloody party tonight.’
‘You couldn’t drag me to that social mishap with a team of ‘roided up horses.’
‘The thing is, I sort of said that I’d, well, actually, thatwe’dgo,’ Keira admitted.
Alanna’s mouth fell open. ‘What on earth possessed you?’
‘I’m not sure. But I think what happened was that she…’ Keira tittered nervously. ‘The thing was, she sort of implied that we weren’t coming because we were a more boring couple than them?’
Alanna looked confused. ‘Well, as toxic as those pair are, theyaretechnically a couple, which is where they’ve got us beat.’
‘True,’ Keira admitted. ‘I don’t know what came over me. It was all just way too smug in that elevator. If you’d been there, I think there’s a chance you might have done the same. Benny Boy was grinning like the cat that got the cream.’
‘Well, the lie’s about to end soon, anyway. When I’m gone…’ Alanna began gently.
Keira shook her head, embarrassed. ‘I know, I know. You’re right. I’ll make something up and get us out of it.’
Alanna chewed the inside of her mouth for a moment. ‘No, screw it. Let’s go.’
Keira’s eyes popped. ‘What? Seriously?’
‘We can just make an appearance; we don’t have to stay till last call, do we?’
‘Yeah, ten minutes, in and out. Check out the freak show and get the hell out. Great,’ Keira grinned, meaning that word for the first time in this conversation. She didn’t know why she was a little excited to be attending this party with Alanna. It was nothing. One last time pretending to be what they couldn’t and wouldn’t ever be. What was Keira thinking would happen? That Alanna would have a few drinks and blurt, ‘Actually, I’m in love with you and I was too shy to say.’ That wasn’t life. Life was what was going to happen after the party. Alanna was leaving because she was done with all this, done with Keira. That was the thing to focus on. The end.
Thirty-One
‘…And when I went into the room, he was dead,’ said Holly, a new client. They were about twenty minutes in and getting to some of Holly’s trauma.
