Page 67 of Chaos Theory
He shoots me a look.
‘Okay, okay, I’ll tell you. The thing is – there was an incident. An accident. Or an almost-accident, you might say. We were in a car park. The little girl ran off and before we realised it, a car started reversing, straight towards her. Kobi flew across the car park and basically threw himself in front of the car. I’m afraid the car hit Kobi with some force.’
‘And the little girl?’
I’m relieved that his first thought is for Lizzie.
‘She was fine – one hundred per cent fine. Kobi sustained some injuries though.’
‘You mean…’ He puts down his wine glass, raises his voice a little.
Oh no, here we go.
‘What you’re telling me is…’ He speaks slowly.
I brace myself for impact.
‘Kobi saved someone?’
‘Oh. Yes.’
‘Hesavedsomeone?’
‘Yes.’
‘A little girl?’
‘Yes.’
‘A little girl he hardly knew?’
‘Er, yes. They got along well, but I suppose, technically, they didn’t know each other for very long.’
‘Well, well, well.’ Josh sits back and refills his own glass. ‘Well, well, well.’ He looks around for a waiter. ‘Hey, can we get some champagne over here?’
I’m flummoxed. He’s taking this much better than I expected. ‘Josh, are we…celebrating? Don’t you want to hear the rest of the story? I had to make some mods to Kobi’s body.’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ He’s positively beaming at me. ‘You said yourself he’s still highly functional. I’m sure whatever you had to do to him physically can be fixed. But, Maeve – this is big. Why didn’t you tell me this on the phone?’
‘I guess…I thought you might be unhappy about the damage to Kobi’s exterior?’
He leans forward over the table. He takes my hand in his.
‘Unhappy? Maeve, don’t you see? Kobi just made a huge leap here.Huge. He acted autonomously. He made a split-second decision. Hesacrificedhimself, in the moment, for a human.’
‘He was just doing what any of us would have done,’ I say.
‘Exactly!’ He slaps the table. It makes a dull thud through the thick cloth. ‘Exactly! Let’s drink to that.’
10pm
I nudge Josh and giggle at the wallpaper in the hotel lobby, which is unexpectedly hilarious. We’ve stumbled the short distance back to our hotel, after we finished the second bottle of red, and the bottle of champagne, of course. I think there was food somewhere in between.
Josh can’t find his room key, another unexpectedly hilarious turn of events.
‘I’m going to the front desk. What was it you called it? Something cute. Oh yeah – “reception”. Wait for me here?’ He puts his hands on my upper arms as if fixing me in place.
As soon as he walks away, I sink down into a plush armchair, close my eyes just for a second. The evening is going great. I can’t recall ever seeing Josh so happy, so buzzed. He was delighted about the events of Clare, making me tell and retell the story of Kobi’s ‘heroism’, as he kept calling it. Finally, this was the proof he needed that Kobi could be trusted around people. Of course, he said, he always knew Kobi was safein theory, but now we had concrete evidence of it.
