Page 86 of Glitterland
Through the darkness, came the sharp, sudden quickstepping of my pulse. But it was not fear alone I felt. It was something else, too rare and insubstantial a thing to bear its naming.
When I was young, the world had given me so much and everything had come so easily to me, that I’d hardly needed to try. And if I had ever struggled against my illness—if it had not already eroded me past the point of recognition—it was in a manner invisible even to myself. Through hospital days, my mother’s voice, ringing sweetly: “Just try a little, darling, can’t you try?” I hadn’t even fought to live. Paramedics had dragged me back from the threshold of death.
But I would fight for Darian.
Sacrifice be damned, selfish or not, hopeless or not, I would fight for Darian.
I had no expectations of success, but I would try anyway, with all my meagre strength.
For Darian and for me, for my right to try, and his right to have me, and because I wanted him. I knew he would reject me and I knew it would hurt, but, even so, that nameless seed was still unfurling, unflinching and full-blossomed in the heart of some long-sealed garden.
21
Tomorrow
I stumbled around the back streets of Brentwood, heart pounding, squinting at Google Maps, trying to find Chloe’s boutique. This was such a bad idea.
But then I found it. Bedazzled.
It was, indeed, bedazzling. My eyes recoiled. I pushed open the pink-painted door and stepped inside. More pink. Rack after rack of jewel-bright dresses. Gilded mirrors so ornate even the Victorians would have disdained them. Leopard-print throw pillows arranged on a pink satin chaise longue. And Chloe, in a charcoal grey pencil dress and a set of killer heels, glaring at me. She did not, however, seem surprised to see me.
She tipped up her chin like a woman preparing for battle. “I fink you’ve been totally aht of order.”
“Bang out of order,” I agreed.
Her eyebrows veed into a frown so tight it was like standing at the centre of a sniper’s crosshair. “Are you being funny? Cos it ain’t funny. It’s aht of order.”
I held up my hands in a gesture of abject surrender. “I know.”
“What’s wrong wif you? Why would you say summin like that to him?”
“Because I’m an arse.”
“Yeah,” she said fiercely. “Yeah, you are. I fought you wasn’t. But you was.”
I have so often claimed that I would rather risk hatred than endure pity, but it was only as I flinched from the fury in Chloe’s eyes that I recognised yet another self-deception. Although I had earned it, her mistrust saddened me. There was no safety in being disliked. No solitary pride. Merely isolation, and the acknowledgement of everything selfishness and fear had wrought.
“Is…is he okay?”
“Course he is,” she snapped. “Did you fink I was going let ’im sit arand crying after you mugged ’im off? It was—” She shook her head at the unfathomable awfulness of me. “—so aht of order, disrespecting Darian like that.”
My heart gave a strange little squeeze. His name rippled through my mind, stirring a rush of memories: the curve of his smile, the flattened vowels that once offended my ears, the stutter of his breath as he came, the constellations of freckles across his shoulders.
“’E ain’t been waiting for you or nuffin,” she said sternly.
“Is he with someone?” I asked, unable to stop myself.
There was an excruciatingly long silence. Chloe’s hands clenched into fists. “Oooh, I really wanna say yes. Cos it’d make you go away. But I ain’t no liar so…no, he ain’t. But don’t go finking it’s cos he couldn’t be. Or that it’s anyfing to do wif you. He’s just been well busy wif work.”
“I really need to tell him I didn’t mean what I said.” My voice warbled tragically. “I just want to apol—”
“You better not be sniffing arand trying to get back wif ’im,” interrupted Chloe mercilessly, “cos you proper blew it.” I glanced up and my expression must have betrayed me. “Omigod, you are. What a nerve!”
I sat down on the edge of the chaise longue and put my head in my hands. “I fucked up. But I know I want to be with him. More than anything.”
She did not look impressed. “’Ow many monfs did it take you to work that aht?”
“It was…complicated.”
