Page 11

Chapter Eleven

Leon

Gemma can’t be gone for more than five, maybe ten minutes at most.

It’s an eternity.

Without her chattering away about the wedding and the venue and the guests, the silence swallows us, made all the more obvious by the clamour of voices and hiss of drinks machines and rattle of suitcase wheels and shouts of ‘Order number eighteen! Eighteen?’ from the food vendors.

Francesca sits quiet. She alternates between fidgeting with her empty cup or the pins on her oversized jacket and checking her phone and looking around, people-watching. She looks my way several times, like she wants to say something, but never does. It’s probably for the best.

I don’t have much to say to her.

The only common ground we have is Marcus, and I’m really not interested in talking about him right now. Especially not with someone who, I’d be willing to bet, thinks the sun shines out of his arse.

I don’t even know why she’s coming to the wedding. Marcus invited a few of his mates from work to the wedding, so maybe he genuinely felt like he had to include her, but …

The whole thing just feels off .

I get my notebook out, pretend to focus on it, but the words swim on the page.

It’s three sides of scrawl about what a prat Marcus is, how Kay deserves better, a very much non- exhaustive list of occasions he’s been rude to the family or affects Kay’s behaviour and she seems not so much like her usual bubbly self …

Kay’s always been well liked. People flock to her – and to Gemma, too.

They both have that kind of charisma that draws people in.

But while Gemma can be a bit blunt and snarky, Kay’s got that softer, sweeter edge.

She’s always been like it; and then Marcus came on the scene and suddenly it was all about him, and their life in London, and her social circle, and her Instagram, and getting the right throw pillows and the right gin glasses; and things like that were more important than making time to come home to see her family.

And when she did, she’d be the Kay we all knew and loved, but there would be these flickers of someone else.

Some stranger who turned her nose up at Mum’s coat or ignored Dad when he tried to talk to her about a new album he’d been listening to, who sat down to a lamb roast and waxed lyrical instead about the fancy lamb shank at a posh restaurant they’d been to recently, and didn’t clear her plate when she used to ask for a slice of bread to mop up every last drop of gravy.

She calls, sure. She checks in. Even remembers, sometimes, to ask how Dad’s doing.

She makes vague plans to visit, promises she’ll be home soon, swaps links to clothes and beauty products with our little sister Myleene …

But she never bothered to visit Nana, all that time she was ill.

Her plans would always fall through at the last minute, laden with apologies and excuses, and it’d sound like Kay, except we all knew it didn’t, not really.

Being with Marcus … It’s not good for her. It’s turned her into someone else. Someone none of us recognise.

Nana’s voice rings loud and clear in my memory. It’s so vivid, I can almost feel her frail hand gripping mine, hard enough to hurt.

‘ It’s up to you to look after them, you realise that, don’t you? I won’t be around forever. Your mother’s an avoider and Kay is too flighty, and Myleene’s too young. And your poor dad … You’re going to have to step up, Leon. You’re going to have to take care of this family.’

Nana wouldn’t have let it get this far. She would’ve stepped in, done something, tried to piece this family back together before it fractured for good.

I thumb through the pages. Can I really say all this to Kayleigh?

And the fact this doesn’t even skim the surface …

‘Is that your speech?’ Francesca asks, her tone pleasant and friendly in a way that she has no right to be. She’s smiling, doing that thing where her head is tipped slightly to one side. I get the sense she’s trying to offer an olive branch.

I close the notebook before she can see, keep my palm on top of it. ‘No.’

‘Oh. I just thought … I mean, Marcus mentioned you’d be giving a speech instead of Kayleigh’s dad, because he didn’t want to—’

‘He gets stage fright. And he’s not well. It’s not that he doesn’t want to.’

‘Oh! Well, that’s …’ She fumbles, falters, tries again. I grit my teeth, wishing she’d shut up. We really don’t have to pretend to be polite, here. We just have to … coexist. In silence, preferably. ‘That’s very generous of you to step in.’

‘Kay asked me to.’

Her smile strains around the edges, muscles quivering in her cheeks with the effort to keep it in place. ‘So have you got your speech sorted? If that’s not it, I mean. How are you feeling about it?’

‘Fine.’ I still have to write the damn thing, hopefully won’t even need it at all, but … ‘It’s fine.’

She nods, looking a bit put out, but unfortunately for me, not entirely deterred. Then she points at my bag and says, ‘You must travel a lot.’

‘Huh? Oh …’ I see what she’s noticed: all the patches sewn into the bag, covering the front, the strap. It’s not so different to the pins all over her denim jacket, except – ‘It’s my dad’s. They’re his. He used to travel a lot. It’s … This is his bag.’

She smiles, a little brighter this time. Her head ticks sideways towards her shoulder. God, I wish I didn’t find that so endearing. ‘Do you have the travel bug too?’

‘Um … I don’t really get to go anywhere these days.

This is probably the first time I’ve been abroad since …

’ Since the early days of Dad’s diagnosis.

Since my parents’ holiday budget had got redirected into adapting the house for him, or the occasional burst of private medical care.

I clear my throat. ‘Not for a long while.’

‘A bit of a homebody?’ she guesses, and it’s grating, how interested she sounds, how genuine it feels.

‘Not really. Well, sort of.’ I’ve got nothing against travel, but it’s hard to commit to going away when I’m constantly worried that I might be needed at home – that something will happen, and I won’t be there to help, to make it easier for the rest of them.

Francesca, watching me with a patient smile and wide eyes, looks so engaged with the conversation that I almost want to blurt it all out.

I swallow the urge and settle for saying, ‘I’ve got too much keeping me here. ’

‘Oh! Oh, do you have a partner? Children?’

‘No.’ I scowl; I don’t have a girlfriend for the same reason I don’t travel, when it comes down to it.

I must be curt enough that she finally gives up on her attempts to make small talk, and we lapse into a silence I’m grateful for. My skin is prickling, the discomfort of that subject like a physical itch.

I glance at Francesca, who is people-watching once more.

She doesn’t even seem that bad , which somehow makes it worse.

Unless the cutesy innocent nice-girl thing is all an act?

It’s got to be. Kayleigh’s never had anything good to say about her; I should be on my guard, watch for her to slip up.

That’s what a good brother would do, right?

Help find some ammunition to evict the work wife from Marcus’s life permanently.

Or, maybe, find evidence that there really is something going on between the two of them, and use it as ammunition to stop the wedding going ahead altogether …

Gemma’s still gone when Francesca’s phone buzzes. It’s lying flat on the table, and we’re so crammed in that when I glance over automatically, I can clearly see it’s a text from Marcus. A long one, by the looks of it.

She snatches it up, but not like she’s trying to hide it.

Like she’s just excited to hear from him.

And – I see it. I see that giddy look on her face, the brightness that sparks in her eyes as she devours his text, a faint dusting of pink colouring her cheeks.

That’s not the reaction of someone who’s ‘just a friend’.

I can’t resist a dig. Testing the waters, a little. ‘Boyfriend?’

Now, she flushes, all the way down her neck. She pulls the phone a bit tighter to her, eyes widening. She knows she’s been caught out.

‘N-no. No, nothing like that. It’s … it’s just Marcus. Replying about how we’re all delayed.’

I nod, and it’s like another tally on the board against him.

‘He’s just worried,’ she goes on, the words running together a bit too quickly. ‘Because of the weather. If we’ll all make it. Because we’re missing out on everything tonight.’

‘Sure.’

‘It’s not …’ Francesca swallows, trailing off, and I can’t help but smirk at her expense.

Not what? I want to press. Not what it looks like?

Not like she isn’t harbouring a crush on a guy who’s about to be married , inserting herself into a relationship that doesn’t concern her?

She squirms in her seat. She’s got to know how guilty she looks.

What is she even doing, coming to this wedding?

Is she really going to stand around flirting with the groom, cosying up to him any time she can get close enough?

Is she going to be one of those women who wear a white dress to someone else’s wedding and end up on Reddit?

Is she only doing this to humiliate Kay?

Francesca can’t be oblivious, even if Marcus is.

Are they in on it together? Is it an affair?

If Marcus was going to dump Kay for his ‘work wife’, I wish he’d done it months ago, before we got to this point. I wouldn’t be sorry to see him go. Maybe then, we’d get Kay back.

Something burns, boils, in my chest. Angry and corrosive.

I really hate Marcus. Not just for what he’s doing to Kay, but for what he’s doing to our whole family. And whatever part Francesca is playing in it – I hate her for it, too.

She tries again. ‘We’re … just …’

‘ Best friends,’ I say. ‘Right. I remember.’

This time, when the silence settles, it’s charged, tense. Both of us are on high alert, neither of us saying a word.

Gemma sweeps back over to the table, jostling her way through the gap behind me to get back into the booth and throwing herself down there with a melodramatic sigh. She dumps her phone on the table, not noticing the tension crackling between me and Francesca.

‘Phew! Well, that didn’t go as badly as I thought it would.’

I swivel towards her, and that anger is still there, poison in my veins. ‘Is my sister saved as “bitch” in your phone?’

Gemma blinks, owlish behind her glasses.

‘With a sparkle emoji .’

I grunt, not sure that’s really an answer, and then she mutters under her breath, ‘Besides, it’s not like it isn’t true .’

Francesca lets out a laugh, though she claps a hand over her mouth and coughs to try to hide it, and Gemma glances her way with an appraising look, cool and curious. The slight smile that curves her mouth is something I can only describe as sly.

That hatred burns a little hotter in my chest.