Page 9

Chapter Nine

Francesca

Quite honestly, I would be perfectly happy to take my cup of tea and hole up somewhere far, far away – or as far away as I can get in a compact airport terminal for nine hours – from Kayleigh’s awful brother and her intimidating best friend, and pass the time until the flight with my Kindle, daydreaming about what I’m going to say to Marcus when I see him, how he’ll react, what he’ll say …

He calls me his ‘work wife’.

He talks about me .

That has to mean something, doesn’t it?

But I can’t just run away – not least because I have the maid of honour’s coffee, and she has all my bags.

So I go back to the table she secured and pop our drinks down.

‘One oat milk flat white, extra vanilla,’ I confirm.

‘Ooh, you are a star!’ Gemma wraps both hands around the paper cup, pulling it towards her and making an appreciative noise as she inhales the sweet-scented steam.

She doesn’t mention paying me back for it, and I’m not sure how to ask without sounding rude, but I suppose it was only a couple of quid. It’s alright.

She taps her phone screen, which has a bunch of notifications showing, but apparently not the one she wants to see. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve heard from Marcus, have you?’

‘No.’

I texted him while we were in the queue for security, letting him know about the change of plans.

I was meant to be joining him and the groomsmen and a couple of others for some drinks after dinner, but I definitely won’t make that now.

I reassured him that I’d be there soon, though, and wished him a fun night with everybody.

Gemma clicks her tongue. ‘Damn. And Kayleigh’s phone is off. They’ll be doing cocktail hour before dinner, at this point … Oh, well. They’ll find out soon enough, won’t they! Nothing to do about it now.’

I give a little laugh, but it comes out nervous and awkward. Gemma is polite enough to pretend she doesn’t notice and just keeps smiling at me.

I’m not sure what to make of her. She’s constantly plastered all over Kayleigh’s social media – they’ve been friends since they were preteens, all through school, even getting jobs at the same company and living together.

They’re inseparable . And they’re always out at bars or cool gigs or hosting glam little dinner parties, living their best lives.

Gemma is as striking in real life as she is online.

Coppery-auburn hair in a choppy, chin-length cut and in artful waves – I honestly can’t tell if they’re natural or if they took her two hours with a Dyson Airwrap; glasses with thin, octagonal frames that she make look chic and fashionable, and a glowing complexion.

I don’t think she’s even wearing any makeup right now.

She’s not pretty , exactly, but she oozes confidence and charisma in a way I only wish I could.

This is a woman who knows exactly who she is, and wants to make sure everybody else knows it, too.

But her smile looks sharp. Dangerous, somehow, and maybe a little bit fake. I don’t think those eyes miss a thing, for all the blank, casual expression on her face.

It’s like, for a second, she can see right through me. Like she knows why I’m really here, what I’m planning to do.

It’s like she knows that when I say no, I haven’t heard from Marcus, what I mean is that he left my message on read. With a thumbs-up reaction.

But he probably just saw it quickly and didn’t have time to reply properly. He’s always doing that. He’ll text when he gets a chance, he always does.

I dither next to the table, taking my time putting away my purse, pretending to rummage through my bag for something, wondering if I can make an escape now.

Could I invent some work I have to do? What if they catch me in a lie, though?

This isn’t a very big airport, they’re bound to see me, and see I’m obviously reading a book instead of working, and they’ll know I lied to them …

Leon has joined us by now, slumping into the extra seat that Gemma has pulled over to our small table. ‘No word from Kay,’ he says.

‘We were lits just saying!’ Gemma flaps a hand at me.

‘Honestly, you’d think the pair of them would wait to completely ignore the rest of the world until the honeymoon, wouldn’t you!

Cheeky buggers. Oh, Fran, hon, sit down already.

You’re making the place look untidy! Not like we’ve got anywhere else to be, is it? ’

She laughs, and even that’s somehow both pretty and manufactured. Like, it’s almost too nice to be real.

I shake off the thought. Just because Kayleigh can be a bit up herself …

I glance at Leon. Obviously a family trait .

Still. I shouldn’t hold that against Gemma, and we are all stuck here for the next nine hours – and for the entire long weekend beyond that, at the same resort.

If the wedding even goes ahead …

And what if it does go ahead? What then?

‘You alright?’ Gemma says. ‘You look all out of sorts, Fran.’

‘F-fine. Yeah.’ I sit down, shoving my bag between my knees and onto the floor. My stomach is in knots.

I hadn’t really thought that far ahead … My plan sort of began and ended at talking to Marcus and confessing my feelings to him – and then he would say he felt the same, and …

Right now, faced with the maid of honour and the bride’s brother, those daydreams feel na?ve and juvenile. I can practically hear the gentle admonishments my friends and family would make if they knew the whole truth, all the ‘I told you so’ looks I’d get even as they comforted me in my heartbreak.

How my older sister would give me a cuddle and rub my back and say, ‘Well, it’s his loss! But, really, if he was engaged … don’t you think you should’ve gotten over this crush a while ago?’

How the girls from uni would jump on a group call immediately, and we’d all order ourselves Deliveroo and gossip as per our usual routine.

They’d cuss him out for hurting me just like they did after he started seeing Kayleigh, I’d cry, and then they’d say, ‘Yeah but Fran, hon, he had a chance with you, and he didn’t take it.

And even if he had, you lose them how you get them, so you’re sparing yourself some heartache down the line … ’

As if they know anything about us.

I swallow the lump in my throat, but it doesn’t go away, so I take a few tiny sips of my too-hot tea to try to clear it, though that only succeeds in scalding the tip of my tongue.

Marcus and I – we have something special . That night we spent together, it meant something. It wasn’t only a one-night stand, some random hook-up, or a drunken fumble with a mate that you both laugh about the next day.

You don’t touch somebody you don’t care about like that.

You don’t lie there whispering about your deepest fears and biggest dreams with them until dawn begins to sneak in around the corner of the blinds.

And you don’t flirt with them for years around the office, have everyone talk about you like you’re such a pair, always find excuses to drop by each other’s desks or mundane little things to message about during the workday, and then text all the time when you’re apart, even long after you’ve gotten a girlfriend, if they don’t mean something to you.

Gemma and Leon are busy talking about some of his family, and I sink deeper into the memories.

Marcus popping up on our work’s internal IM system to suggest getting lunch together.

The arm he’d sling over the back of my chair when we were both at after-work drinks, the random texts we’d shoot back and forth, always initiated by him because he’d seen or thought of something that reminded him of me.

I felt that spark the very first time I saw him. All that build-up, culminating in the perfect night together …

He only chose Kayleigh because he thought I didn’t choose him .

Those feelings, that flirtation, it’s never really gone away. No matter how careful I’ve been to make sure I respect the fact he’s with someone else now, to keep things just friendly and not overstep the mark.

But that connection we have …

The way he acts around me …

I just know if I tell him I feel the same way, that I’m in love with him, too, he won’t go ahead with marrying Kayleigh. And I have to tell him. He has to know.

I have to be brave enough. Don’t I owe that to both of us? Shouldn’t he know, before he commits to somebody else for the rest of his life?

I’ve been staring off into the distance, and a noise at the next table draws me back. Gemma is still chattering away, swiping across something on her phone as she does so – Instagram, it looks like – but Leon only seems to be paying her the bare minimum attention.

He’s too busy frowning at me.

He’s actually quite attractive, if only he didn’t look like such a miserable, bad-tempered grouch. He holds my gaze even after I catch him looking, and the deep breath he takes as he straightens up in his chair feels pointed, somehow, like he’s trying to tell me something.

I don’t know him well enough to understand what point he’s making, but I do know it makes my own temper spike again – hot and sharp and raw, the taste of it acidic and unfamiliar in my mouth.

Why does he have to be so hateful? Is this why he’s not on Kayleigh’s socials; she decided to cut his horrid attitude out of her life and not make time for him?

He’s made it perfectly clear he doesn’t like me.

He sounded very disdainful when he said I was ‘the work wife’, which I think I’d be a lot more offended about if I didn’t secretly thrill at the implications of that.

That he thinks I’m a threat . Whatever Marcus says about me …

Leon must have caught on to the fact that I matter to him.

Maybe there are cracks in Marcus and Kayleigh’s relationship that run deeper than he’s let on. Leon must know that, too, but has chosen to resent me for it, blame me , instead of simply accepting that they aren’t right for each other.

That’s got to be it.

Yes, I think, I’m definitely doing the right thing by confessing my feelings to Marcus before the wedding.

But even as I cling to that thought, my shoulders hunch, and I have to look away from the weight of Leon’s stare, suddenly too much to bear.