Page 84 of Glitterland
“My word.”
Niall abandoned even a pretence of subtlety, put his elbows on the bar, and peered around me. David gave him a little wave, and Niall sat back with a stunned expression on his face. He ran a hand through his hair.
“Shut up, both of you.” It was hard to look stern in two different directions, but I think I managed it. “I make one slightly hyperbolic comparison and I never hear the end of it. By the way, Niall, David, David, Niall.” Hmm. Payback time. “David’s a web designer. Niall works for a charitable trust. He particularly enjoys blonds and people with issues, so…” I made ayou two should totally shaggesture. And grinned as Niall went bright red.
“I can’t believe you said that,” he muttered. “You are just the worst friend ever.”
David laughed. “We should probably get married. It’ll make a great story to tell the grandkids.”
“What?” Niall was still visibly flustered which I probably should not have been enjoying to the degree I was. “It was all going really well until my arse of a mate decided to throw me to the wolves and that stole your heart away?”
“Come on,” I protested, “it was funny.” But they weren’t paying much attention to me.
“So, what kind of charity do you work for?” asked David.
“We’re an independent educational equality think tank. We could, ah, do with a new website actually.” Niall fiddled with the straw in my Coke glass. “Perhaps you could come and…maybe…do some consulting for us. We could discuss it, um, over dinner?”
I felt almost sorry for him. He’d gone the ashen colour of a man stuck in the middle of a dreadful line but unable to get out without finishing it.
“I’d love to take a look at your website.” Perhaps David found ineptitude endearing. “And I’d love to go for dinner.”
Niall grinned sappily. “Then it’s a date.”
“I thought you said it was a consultation.”
“It’s a date. For a consultation.” He paused. “Oh fuck it. Fine. It’s a date, all right? Come on a date with me. Save me from myself. I clearly need help.” Belatedly, Niall seemed to remember I still existed. “Err, we’re going to get some food. Do you want to come?”
“Do I want to be the third wheel on your consultative date consultation date? Now let me think about it. No.” I gave Niall’s arm a quick squeeze. “And, anyway, I’m washing my hair.”
I left them to it.
***
Night
Sleepless, staring at the ill-shapen lump of the glardigan hanging from the top of my wardrobe door, Niall’s words echoing incessantly in my mind, Darian’s camera-caught smile burning behind my eyes.
What was he doing? Did he ever think of me? Had he waited in Cambridge? Or longer than that? For the apology I was too ashamed to give. And then what? Had time and memory diminished me for him, taken the sting from my cruelty, the edge from my passion, until I was no longer a lover or a villain but some incidental character who had played a minor role in a life that told itself elsewhere? Was I nothing but the posh nutter who’d slept with him and then been pointlessly rude about it?
If that was true, why would he not fade for me? Was this to be my punishment? He would move on, forget me, and be happy, and I would live like this, trapped within my wasted days, while the world cast at my feet the bright reflections of his image like shells from the receding tide.
His still-unframed photograph was propped on my bookshelf, as it had been from the day he’d given it to me. I had tried to throw it away and, when that had failed, to put it away. But there it was.
Every day, I told myself it was better this way. I’d as good as saved him, and probably myself. Whatever we’d had, it’d been a thing with no future, because I have no future, merely a dreary present that Darian Taylor had briefly made brighter.
I wondered if he suffered in my absence, as I suffered in his. It seemed impossible. When my own happiness was a mystery to me, what hope did I have of being instrumental in someone else’s? I had tried to make Niall happy once, but all I’d done was nearly destroy us both. And even if I went to Darian, after all these months, bearing my too-little too-late apology like a cat with a dead sparrow, what else could I give him? Some pieces of truth. My stitched-together self. Once, he had thought he wanted me, and I had barely believed it then. Would he still?
How could I ask him? How could I be enough?
Then I remembered. Essex Fashion Week, my lies coming down around us like hail, and my gentle Darian claiming his right to be with me. Or, at least, the right to try. An unlikely champion, and Niall an unlikely dragon, but Darian had been the only one to ever take to the field for me. And when it had been my turn, I had simply fled like the coward I was.
All I’d had to say wasyes.
Yes, he is my boyfriend.
Was it too late, now, to pick up my tattered colours and ride out in my tarnished armour?
It was easier, surely, to live uncertain, than with the shame and surety of rejection.
