Page 93 of All Right No

Apparently, he’d spoken that last part aloud based on Paul’s reaction.

“I think I’d be more freaked over the fact her husband had someone hand deliver you those papers to make sure you got them. ’Cause, you know what that means?”

Nope. “That the regular post didn’t deliver.”

He still didn’t get whatever point his friend was attempting to make.

“None of us are all that hard to track down, and he could reasonably assume that you were wherever Ginny was. She’ll have had copies of these forms and papers too.”

She’d presumably intercepted them to make sure her secret didn’t get out, thus compounding the extent of her duplicity. Ash shook his head. “I don’t want to think about it. Don’t want to think about any of it.”

“Then it’s not beer you need to be pouring down your throat.” He pointed at the half drunk can Ash had clutched within his hand. “If you want to silence the real world voices, then you’d best start communing with the spirits.”

“Vodka,” Ash said, thinking of Xane’s favourite tipple for combating soul-destroying angst.

“Vodka’s for pussies. What you need—” Paul crossed to where his duffle bag rested against the kitchen island, and drew a bottle from it. “—is Te-qui-la.” He grinned. “You’re going to join me, right? I havesangrita, or we can make Bloody Maria’s.”

“Salt and lime?”

“Tourist.”

***

Several hours later, Ash didn’t quite recall how tequila time had turned into a conversation about biting hub caps, or how he and Paul had somehow ended up outside, chasing each other around the field and in and out of the trees and shrubs, duelling with a cricket bat and a rusty garden hoe. What did make a weird kind of synchronous sense was the sharp jab to the centre of his chest that finally took him out. There he’d been, right on the offensive, thinking he had Paul cornered, and then out of the blue, wham! He took a good one. His defences were down, and there was no come back.

He dropped his own weapon so that he could cling to the end of the pole that had speared him through the heart, and staggered theatrically, finally crashing to earth where he gave a few beached fish like jolts before succumbing to the welcome oblivion of death.

Leastways, he flopped on his back with his eyes closed and held his breath for twenty seconds.

Paul applauded, before crashing to the ground beside him, and resting his head on Ash’s middle. “Fucker, you know you’ve drawn actual blood.” He held up his index finger to display a pinprick of red beaded around a protruding thorn.

“Wuss.”

“It could go septic. I could die. You’d be responsible.”

Ash caught hold of his hand and took a few seconds to focus enough to pull the offending splinter of cricket bat free of the wound. Then he sucked Paul’s finger into his mouth.

“Euew, no! Ger-off! Hell knows where your dirty chops have been.” He popped his finger free of Ash’s mouth.

“Locked around Ginny’s cunt,” Ash boasted wistfully.

“Yeah, kind of figured on it being something like that.”

“Why’d she have to have such a fucking awesome cunt, but turn out to be a cunting cunt?”

Paul shook his head. The motion rubbed his hair against Ash’s belly. It tickled, making him curl up his legs.

“Have you any idea what you’re saying?”

Ash wobbled his head from side to side. “Not a fucking clue. I love sucking her ring.”

“I know, mate. It fucking sucks what’s happened.”

“I was gonna ask her if we could have a themed wedding.”

“DM?”

“Yeah. I’d have made you all dress up as villains and such, and we’d have had a red pillar box wedding cake, and one of you would have to be the Baron so you could storm in halfway through and announce how you’ve enacted some sort of diabolical world ending nightmare. I’d fix it with a fan, a cheese sandwich, and an afro comb, and then we’d all carry on with the reception.”