Page 35 of Love and Loathing

“But you wouldn’t be. Not everyone is. There are people genuinely making a difference. Like my younger brother.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s a human rights lawyer. Defends refugees. Asylum seekers.”

She stared at him and he smiled crookedly at her obvious disbelief.

“Not all the Fords are evil.”

“But you…” She didn’t know how to begin. “You talk about all this stuff like you understand what I mean, what I’m trying to do, and yet you…you…”

“Don’t care?” He gave her a dark smile and looked back out at the view. The sun was falling rapidly, the sky a blaze of apricot and amber. “I’ve learned it’s best not to.”

“Liv. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

He tensed. Said nothing.

“So you cared once, for one person, and that’s it? You’ve given up now?”

He still said nothing. Retreated a little further inside himself. Any moment now, he would turn away, say it was time to head back.

“You’re letting her win if you do that,” Evie persisted before he could shut her down. “She’s still controlling your life. She’s…she’samputatedit. Cut it short. If you can’t love anyone else ever again then—”

“Stop it, Evie. I’m not some worthy cause for you to fly your flag at.”

“So you can tell me how to live my life, but I can’t try to help you?”

“The difference is that I know what I’m talking about.”

She bridled, taking an angry breath. “Because you’re so grown up and mature? When you’re the one acting like a lovestruck teenager, still moping after his first crush?”

“You’ve never been in love at all. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Well if you think I’m an idiot for wasting myself on childish pranks, then I think you’re an idiot for wasting yourself onher. Even you, Aubrey, deserve better than that.”

He glared at her, eyes dark, and she tensed, ready for whatever scathing remark was coming her way. But what he said, so quietly she wasn’t sure she heard it, was: “I’m not sure I do.”

She stared after him as he left, heading back down the hill.

SIXTEEN

After the open view,the dimness of the wood was nothing but vague purple and brown shadows. He could hear Evie on the path behind him, mercifully silent for once, except for her feet on the leaves, the occasional swish of a small branch.

What a total fuck up. Why had he come up this path with Evie, of all people? Just to escape Liv for a moment, her increasingly unsubtle attempts at flirtation. The more he resisted, the more obvious she became, until even Domnall noticed, even George. That was all he needed, losing Domnall, losing his job, just because he’d resisted Liv for the first time in his life.

Even you, Aubrey, deserve better.

Humiliating to have Evie spell out so clearly what he’d known already for sixteen years. He knew it. He’d just never been able to act on it. That’s what he hated. Evie realising how weak he really was.

He heard Evie’s foot slip, the sharp breath she took. He turned, but she had already caught her balance, holding onto one of the young trees at the path edge.

She met his eyes for a moment. He continued onwards.

Dinner to get through. The night to get through. In the morning he’d be on the way back to London, and thank fuck for that.

They reached the opening at the edge of the wood and headed in silence down the pasture together, feet leaving long dark marks on the dew-damp grass. There were a few late midges in the air, sheep in the distance, the smell of old, greasy wool tangled in the scattered gorse, dried dung. It was all less magical seen up close. Much more real.

He thought of Evie, pale and trembling at the edge of Trafalgar Square, traumatised by what, to anyone else, was simple childish fun. It ought to be funny, but he felt dismally sad instead, despairing at such a heart, amazed it had survived the world at all—survived this house and her father.

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