Page 89 of Hot to Go

‘I don’t mind if you date, you know?’ Sam intervenes quietly. ‘I don’t want to hear you having sex and stuff because you’re my brother and that’s a bit grim, but find someone nice. I don’t think it’s supposed to be easy, finding someone to love, but it did sound like this might have been a good thing. Brooke is wrong about a lot of things but there’ve been signs…’

‘Wrong about what?’ Brooke asks, frowning.

‘Sour cream and chive crisps?’ Max says.

She doesn’t try and defend herself. The man has a point.

‘And do you know what I think?’ Sam adds quietly. ‘I think it’s Mum and Dad up there, making it happen, just moving things around like chess pieces because they want you to be happy, Charlie.’

There’s a silence in that room that takes hold of all of us. A tear rolls down Amy’s face. Brooke holds on to Max at that point. Damn you, Sam. I go over to him and ruffle his hair, kissing the top of his head.

‘Perhaps. You lot seem convinced Suzie is the key to my happiness though,’ I say, in resigned tones.

Brooke smiles. ‘I think you can be happy with whoever you want.’

I look over at Max who’s studying Suzie’s photo on Brooke’s phone. ‘Hold up, that is Suzie?’ he asks. He has a confused look on his face, one I recognise from when he has to work out a difficult sum. He scrolls through photos until he sees a selfie of the both of us in Seville. ‘I met her. In Mallorca?’

‘What?’ I say.

Amy raises her eyebrows. ‘Babe, do I need to hear this story?’

‘The day after we fell off the bull?When I twisted my ankle. She was in our hotel. I bumped into her. She…was nice. She gave me a doughnut. What’s that word for it…’

‘Bunyol…’ I mumble.

‘Yeah, that’s the one…’

Brooke claps her hands together. That’s another star she’s throwing up in the sky shining down on us. Another way the fabric of the universe was trying to show us a loose thread and weave us into each other’s lives. I have no idea what any of this means anymore.

‘Hold up,’ Amy says. ‘What bloody bull did you fall off?’ She glares at Max. ‘You told me you both fell down a lift shaft.’

TWENTY

Suzie

‘So this is where you escaped to, eh?’ Paul asks, as we walk through the doors to my flat. The air inside is cool and dark and I walk straight in, depositing my bag and turning on as many lights as I can. In my hand is Beth’s phone. Beth who panicked when I told her to leave me, so, with mine broken, she gave me her phone, her pin code and told me to ring any of the cousins if anything was to go wrong. Like some female Batmen, they’d be there in double quick time to save me.

I storm around my flat, quietly simmering in anger to myself. Why is he here? Why did he feel the need to jump into that moment and just shit all over it. I had Charlie. We had a thing. And now we might not have a thing.

‘Tea?’ Paul asks.

‘I don’t have milk,’ I tell him.

‘I guess just a water then?’ he says.

‘Offering you a drink would suggest that you’re a guest in this house,’ I tell him, taking off my coat and hanging it on theback of a chair.

He takes a tentative seat on my sofa. ‘You have a new sofa?’ he says. ‘But you sent that van to come and get our one?’

‘It was out of principle. I paid for it. It was mine. I gave it to charity,’ I tell him.

He looks annoyed. ‘So, basically, you could have just left the sofa with me…’

I don’t quite know what to say, how to react. All I see are Charlie’s eyes when Paul claimed me as his wife, a blank look which told me the extent of his disappointment, his confusion. But not just him, his two siblings standing there, judging me, all that damage from just the one sentence.

Paul goes into his coat pocket and pulls out an envelope. ‘This arrived.’ I see the name of the solicitors on the envelope and know exactly what is in his hands. ‘No warning? Nothing. Just that arriving at my door.’

‘I am not sure what else you were expecting?’ I ask.

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