‘You’re right,’ I tell her. ‘You can’t turn back now. You deserve to know.’
Fran regards me a moment longer before snatching up the underwear we found for her, bundling it together with her new lipstick. There’s a spark of determination in her pale blue eyes, and she smiles at me before nodding once. I’m already smiling back, and wondering when was the last time I felt this kind of easy friendship with Kayleigh and didn’t have to fake a smile for the sake of it.
Then there’s the sound of someone crashing into a stand, products falling, someone shouting out, and the rattle of several suitcase wheels.
‘Sorry, sorry – shit, I’m so sorry, I’ll …’
We both look over to see Leon, his battered satchel slung over one shoulder and dragging all our luggage behind him. As if sensing us looking, he glances our way, and grimaces.
‘I might’ve lost our table. Also, um, the flight’s been delayed. Again.’
This day just keeps getting better and better.
But when I glance at Fran, she meets my eye and laughs, and then Leon turns around and knocks some boxes of biscuits over, and things don’t seem quite so bleak.
Chapter Twenty-three
Leon
Some of the duty-free staff come over to pick up the products I just knocked all over the floor, and as I’m apologising and trying to help, my satchel smacks into a plastic sign and sends that flying, too.
‘Please, monsieur, we have got this,’ one says with a crisp smile.Message received loud and clear.I wrestle with the three suitcases and get out of their way before I destroy anything else. The girls are giggling – most likely, at my expense, the pair of them standing shoulder to shoulder in a chummy way that has me doing a double take. You’d never know they were strangers until a few short hours ago.
Are they bonding over a mutual hatred of Kayleigh? Or maybe my humiliating path of destruction? I wince, feeling eyes from all around scrutinising me. One half of the unhappy honeymooners with ginger hair is not far off and mutters – loud enough that I can hear – about drunkards in the airport. I duck my head, as if she can smell the single beer on my breath from all the way over there.
Francesca’s holding a few things, so as I approach, I nod at the bundle in her hands and say, in desperate hopes of a distraction, ‘Looks like you two have been busy. What’ve you got?’
Pink colours her cheeks while Gemma says, ‘Lingerie! And some lippy. Look, is this knockout or what?’
She plucks the fabric from Francesca’s limp hands, and I regret every decision I have made in the last half-hour that led to this moment. IknewI should’ve just stood in one spot and waited for them to come find me.
Because now, Francesca’s standing there with her eyes widening in horror and looking too awkward to say anything, and Gemma’s holding up a set of pure white underwear in front of her. The bra is covered in lace. The knickers aremadeof the stuff, to the point they must be more see-through than actually covering anything up.
My whole face feels like it’s burning, and my pulse is roaring in my ears, and I am trying to do anything but picture Francesca in that underwear. Hiding it underneath that loose blouse and casual jeans, white lace hugging the curve of tanned hips, my hands—
‘Seriously,’ Gemma is saying, and I don’t know if she’s doing this to taunt me or if she’s completely oblivious to the path my thoughts just turned down. Please, God, let it be the latter. ‘Tell me this isn’t the kind of woman you’d leave your fiancée at the altar for.’
Francesca finally masters herself and pushes Gemma’s hands gently away, but she looks infinitely more awkward with the underwear gone, and Gemma’s words ringing in the air.
‘Um.’ I scrub a hand through my hair, trying to think straight. ‘I’m not sure there’s a very good answer to that question.’
Gemma clicks her tongue. ‘Spoilsport.’
She hands the set back to Francesca, who thanks her and hugs it close.
Is this really what they’ve been doing? Finding the best underwear to seduce Marcus?
There’s a weird buzzing in my head at the thought.
‘So what’s the plan – you’re going to strut down the aisle wearing that and he’ll suddenly decide to leave Kay for you?’ The mental image is so cartoonish – if only for the idea of Francescastrutting– that I snort a laugh.
She is the exact opposite of every nasty remark Kayleigh ever made at her expense.
‘Um, excuse you,’ Gemma says, and takes a playful swipe at my arm. ‘She can strut if she wants to. Although,’ she adds to Francesca, ‘I do think I’m, like, legally obligated as maid of honour to throw red wine on you if you wear white to the wedding.’
Francesca, at least, is laughing as well. ‘Believe me, if I worethisto a wedding, that’s the very least I’d hope you’d do. Throw a blanket over me too, while you’re at it.’
‘You’d have a lot more than just Marcus wanting to shoot their shot with you,’ I say. But that sounds not quite right, and they’re both looking at me, so I try to explain: ‘I mean if that’s, like, the goal. I just mean that you’re, you know, objectively attractive. Not that I’m trying to objectify you or anything, and everyone knows conventional beauty standards are … And I’m sure even if you were in a blanket you would look … I justmean—’