Page 98 of All Right No
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No one had set foot inside the flat for months. The mountain of post wedged behind the front door made it near impossible to open. Luckily, she was skinny, and hence managed to wriggle through the gap.
Home.
Inside, her movements wafted the settled dust into the air. Mould crawled out of the fridge when she opened the door, which she was certain she’d left open. More mould resided on the windowsill inside a plastic bag that had once contained a loaf of bread. Had the flat always looked threadbare and unloved?
Ginny sallied through the flat to her bedroom, stopping in the corridor only long enough to glance wistfully over at Dani’s door. Would they still be friends when news of tonight’s events came out? She slid her phone from her pocket, tempted to pre-empt the storm and send an explanatory text, but she refused to spoil anyone else’s Christmas. This would be Dani’s first spent away from her mother and the witches of St. Agatha. She deserved to enjoy it.
Her woes would wait, and her pillow would serve as well as a friend’s shoulder for crying into. It’s what she’d relied on for years before she’d dared to reach out feelers and start forging new friendships. If only she’d made different choices all those years ago, seen the truth of Miles and not fallen for his charismatic façade. Or if she’d pushed for a divorce right after she’d left him then he wouldn’t still have the power to hurt her, and by extension, Ash.
Not that it was really Miles who’d hurt Ash. Oh, he was showing his typical bullish behaviour attempting to name and shame Ash on the divorce filing. But she was the one who’d kept everything to herself in the first place. If she’d only been honest about who she was… Well, that was hindsight for you. It was easy to look back and imagine that if she’d done it differently then, the present would be perfect. Realistically, her reasons for keeping quiet, had proven valid. What she’d feared was now reality. He’d ended them, but no matter what Ash thought, she’d always been her true self with him, and she did love him with every ounce of her being.
Ginny slipped the engagement ring out of her pocket and back onto her finger. “I never said no, Ash. I never said that, and I’m so sorry I gave you a reason to doubt my sincerity. I love you. I want to spend my whole lifetime with you. Geneva Winters is not who I am. It never had been. She was someone else’s construct.
“I just wanted to protect you, Ash.”
If only Ash had waited a little longer to make his declaration. She hadn’t seen that coming, not really. Not taking into consideration all his hang-ups. “I thought I had time, Ash. I was doing my best to free myself for you.”
***
Ginny wasn’t entirely sure at what point she fell asleep, nor what time it was when she woke. The electricity was still running inside the flat, but at some point during her absence, there’d clearly been a power cut that meant all the clock displays were blinking. Food was pretty scarce too, nothing besides a packet of Ryvita, a few sorry looking fish fingers, some seriously freezer burned broad beans and some even more badly freezer burned ice-cream. She ate the ice-cream out of the tub, and went to sleep again with a belly-ache.
The next time she woke, she didn’t bother with food, just purged in the bathroom and then curled back into the nest of her duvet again.
***
Loud banging jerked her into consciousness an indeterminate time later. At first, she thought it was the neighbours hanging a picture or something, until her door handle began levering up and down too. “Ginny, are you in there? Gin, can I come in?”
Was that…? “Dani,” she croaked.
Ginny cracked open one puffy eyelid, and for maybe two seconds, she floated the possibility that Dani was waking her after a wild night on the tiles so she’d get up and ready for work.
The glint of red upon her finger quickly disabused her of the fantasy that this was a common, boring hangover. Not a single drop of liquor had touched her lips. No, the source of her misery was entirely of her own making.
“I know you’re in there.” Dani beat her hand against the door again. “Right, I’m coming in.”
The door blasted inwards, ripping the simple bolt from the wood.
True to her word, Dani tumbled over the threshold, still in her coat and scarf, and with a pair of enormous sunglasses concealing half her face. She marched right over to the bed, before removing the shades in order to peer down at Ginny shivering under her duvet. “Hey. So youarein here.”
Ginny pulled the duvet tight around her like a shield. She’d deliberately not called anyone, so as not to alarm them, or spoil their Christmas, and she didn’t really want to speak to anyone, anyway. However, the set of Dani’s jaw rather suggested her friend intended some major dissection of the subject.
“I heard some weird rumours about you yesterday. I thought… Well, half hoped, I suppose, that there wasn’t any truth to them, but obviously since you’re here, they’re at least partially based on fact.” Dani paced over to the window and pulled back the curtain, sending a plume of dust into the air. It made little difference to the quality of light in the room. Rivulets peppered the glass, and the sky outside was pigeon grey.
“Want to tell me what’s going on?”
“I’m sure you’ve already heard it all.” Ginny’s voice cracked as she spoke, and threads of fire scored the inside of her throat, exactly as if someone had filled it with shards of glass. She needed water before she could say anything. Not that she wanted to say anything.
“I’ve heard one side of the story. It’s pretty incredible. In fact, I’m pretty sure it can’t all be true. How could it be? I know you. We’re friends. We live together. This is our home. We’ve sat at the table out in the kitchen, and shared a billion confidences with one another over hot chocolate and marshmallows. Therefore, if you were hitched to someone, I’d know that about you… I’d know. Of course I’d know.” As she spoke her voice rose, taking on a reedy, hysterical tone. “Right, Ginny?”
Right—she agreed they were friends. But they’d never been close confidants, not really. Ginny reached out and clasped the glass of water she’d left on the bedside table. Having eased some of the tightness in her throat, she sat up with the duvet gathered around her body. “Dani, we talked girl shit. We talked guys and sex so that you could get a kick out of being scandalised. When did we ever discuss anything serious?”
“We did—all the time.”
“No.” Ginny vehemently shook her head. “We never. I didn’t share my secrets with you, and you never said shit about all the vile stuff your mum and the hags of Saint Agatha did to you while you lived there. Do you imagine I never saw your scars? I saw them. I didn’t pry. Same as you didn’t, when it came to my family and where I’d come from.”
Dani paled down to her collar. Even with two boyfriends who were clearly appreciative of her appearance, she obviously still had major body hang-ups. Her eyes blazed with anger. “So what you’re saying to me is that our friendship was shallow, and all the stuff Spook relayed to Xane last night is true? You’ve broken Ash’s heart, as you’re hitched to someone else, and you’ve kept us all in the dark about who you really are.”
