Page 2 of Fangs for the Memories (Budapest Bites #1)

I put the last of my bags on the scales, and the airline operative winds a tag around the handle before handing me back my passport and boarding pass.

“Have a great flight, Miss Spencer,” he says.

I turn and stare directly into five pairs of eyes.

“Doing this will get back at him, the arsehole,” Lydia says with even more fierceness than Kezia, flicking her dark blonde hair over her shoulder.

She’s let me stay on her couch for the last week, fed me ice cream and let me stare at daytime telly until my eyes went square. She’s a trooper in a way I don’t know anyone else would have been.

“I need to get away,” I say rather pitifully. “Yes.” I hold a hand up at Lucy before she says anything. “This is all my fault, and yes, I’m going to pay for it big time, but I’d like to put a pin in it for two weeks while I work out what to do.”

Eliza slides her arm through mine, her big blue eyes filled with tears. “We’ll be here for you, Grace, you know we will. I’m so sorry this happened.” She looks so young, not even close to my thirty-three years on this earth, despite the fact we went to the same school.

“Don’t set her off,” Sophia admonishes Eliza as she takes my other arm. “I think you’re doing the right thing. This will piss Mark off something rotten,” she says in a conspiratorial whisper.

My friends come with me as I make my way through the busy airport to security. My phone buzzes in my bag, and I pull it out, showing the screen to them.

It’s HIM.

“He probably wants you to hand over the tickets so he and his fancy woman can do the trip instead of you,” Lydia growls.

Kezia snatches it from my hand before I can even protest, swiping across the screen to cancel the call and typing in my PIN number to open the phone.

“What are you doing?” I attempt to grab it back, but she holds it out of my reach, tapping on the screen.

“Something you should have done the second the rat texted you.” She gives me back the handset in triumph. “Consider him deleted from your life…and blocked. Permanently.”

If only it was so simple. I flick through the phone. Mark has most definitely been deleted, but then Kezia is a tech whizz, something which pissed him off to no end, given he was the original tech bro who thought he knew everything.

“You really don’t have to go,” Eliza says.

“I do.” I manage to stop my voice from cracking. “I need to do this, for me. Everything else has been about him.”

Lucy throws her arms around me in a huge bear hug, and everyone else piles in.

I do my best to hold my composure in front of my friends. Now I’ve decided on this course of action, I want to stick to it, despite my nerves.

“Then you have the best time. Do everything we wouldn’t do.” Sophia laughs.

“That doesn’t leave me with much in the way of options, given you’d all do everything.”

“I’m sure you’ll find something,” Lydia says, her eyes twinkling with badness. “Perhaps look up some of those famous Hungarian monsters.” She waggles her eyebrows.

Out of all of us, she’s the one who’s been most interested in the monsters who revealed themselves to the human world ten years ago, despite not much having changed and the creatures keeping to themselves since then.

“Mark had a full monster-hunting itinerary planned. I fully intend keeping to it and posting photos on Insta to piss him off,” I announce.

My friends cheer, and it seems like everyone in the airport turns to look at us, causing mass giggles.

It’s the reason I love them. For a second, my resolve wobbles. What the hell am I doing? I should stay here and sort this mess out.

“Go,” Lydia whispers in my ear, “before you change your mind. A whole new city is waiting for you to explore, and you’ve always wanted to travel.”

She is so right. With the wedding planning and a partner who always seemed to be too busy , any travel plans I might have had have been on hold for what seems like forever.

“Okay.” I square my shoulders. “It’s time to do this!”

I head towards the security queue, turning back to look at them all. I get waves and kisses blown to me. They give me the strength I need. If nothing else, I’ll have them when I get back.

Although, as I buckle my seatbelt, attempting not to make eye contact with any of the other business class passengers, I’m wishing I’d somehow wrangled Lucy or anyone else on the flight.

How can I possibly belong here? I’m a now ex-business owner from a tiny Sussex village consisting mostly of three cottages and a cow.

Lucy, out of all of us, has some experience with money, even if it was from her horrible father and her equally horrible job working as a solicitor for a money grabbing law firm.

I’m not used to wealth at all. Everything I have had was from my own hard graft.

The air stewardess puts down a cold glass of bubbly next to me with a smile.

"I love your scarf!" she says.

"Thank you." I finger the bright silk. "Vintage Dior. My grandmother’s,” I whisper conspiratorially.

"Lucky you," she replies before going on to the next passenger.

While the scarf is most definitely vintage Dior, it didn't come from my grandmother, who wouldn't have known Dior if it hit her in the face, even while she was alive.

Instead it came from one of my monthly trawls of flea markets, charity shops, and jumble sales in and around London and cost me all of three pounds.

But no one needs to know that except me.

That’s the way you have to play this game, I think. Fake it. Fake all of it.

My wardrobe, currently in the hold of this plane to Budapest, the clothes I stand up in, and this luxury holiday which would have been my honeymoon are all I have to my name. And I’m going to make the most of it, by hook or by crook.

I signal the stewardess as I down the first glass of champagne and wiggle it at her.

"I'm going to need more of these. Many, many more."