Churches soothed me, but I had never really understood what they did for people of faith, what it was that kept drawing them back. Sometimes I wished I could feel it, too. To know what it was like not to be alone. To believe that everything happened for a reason. That all sins could be forgiven. But I felt nothing. I didn’t believe in God. I didn’t believe in anything anymore.
When I heard footsteps and cheery whistling behind me, I shut my eyes. I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. Ionly knew one person who could walk through a chapel so heedlessly, without a care in the world. There was nothing Ashton held sacred. Well, almost nothing.
‘Why do I always find you in such depressing places?’ He stopped short beside me, throwing a swift glance at the window before moving to stand directly in front of me so that I couldn’t ignore him. Even in the shadow of night, I could make out his features clearly. That subtle radiance in his eyes, which told me what he’d just been doing. ‘We can start. It’s done. The porter is taking a well-earned nap.’ Pale clouds of breath danced between us, his much more visible than mine.
‘Did you have to?’ I backed away until I felt the pew behind me. Ashton was often hard work, but I found it especially difficult to be around him in the immediate aftermath. My stomach clenched, and the place just below my heart began to pulse unpleasantly. I put my hand there and pressed, trying to contain the feeling.
‘No,’ Ashton replied mockingly. ‘I could have invited him to join our little celebration. But I prefer the company of our other guests.’
‘Who are you bringing this time?’ I didn’t really want to know. It didn’t matter anyway. All the names and faces blended in my mind into a river of inconsequential details. They came and went. We stayed.
‘Zoe.’ The smile that appeared at the corners of his mouth seemed almost genuine. He was good at dissimulating, whether about what he felt or what he was. Once, I’d envied him. Now, I could sense that a part of me despised him for it.
‘Again? Aren’t you over her yet?’ I tried to remember how many times he’d mentioned her. As far as I knew, he’d been seeing her for a couple of weeks–much longer than normal, and it was starting to verge on the problematic.
‘Why? She’s sweet. Quite exceptionally exquisite, actually. I can’t get enough of her.’ He gave me a suggestive wink.
‘Ash, please.’ I looked away, irritated, and rubbed my forehead with the heel of my hand. The throbbing in my chest had eased, but the one behind my temples had worsened. The fickle weather made my head ache. A predisposition to migraines–one of the body’s more taxing habits.
‘What? You asked.’ Ashton grinned and jabbed me in the ribs. ‘You can even have a go yourself, if you like. I don’t mind sharing. Since it’s you.’
‘Ashton.’ The word was little more than a breathless growl. At that moment I would have gladly taken a migraine if it let me get away from him.
‘All right, all right, calm down. We don’t have to.’ He paused theatrically, then cocked his head to one side. ‘She’s bringing her friend, too.’
My heart skipped two beats. When it picked up again, the throbbing was more intense. Painful. I hesitated. Three, maybe four seconds, but even as they passed, I knew they were disastrous. Ashton would register the least hint of inner struggle. He knew me too well.
‘Who?’ I asked, still hoping to sound like I didn’t care.
A knowing smile played across Ashton’s lips. Arms folded, he leant against the wooden pew beside him. ‘Don’t bother. You knowwho. I saw the way she stared at you. You know her.’
Reflexively, I balled my fists, but relaxed them instantly when I noticed his eyes drifting in that direction. ‘I can’t be held responsible for people staring at me. It’s not like I chose my face,’ I snapped.
I’d been afraid he’d picked up on the moment of tension between Mabel and me by the fountain. I’d made every effort not to look at her. But I’d wanted to.
I’d wanted to see if her dark hair was still lightly tousled, if her cheeks were flushed with that same delicate veil of pink, ifher bare lashes were still as thick and wild. I’d wanted to see if I’d imagined the trail of beauty spots on her left temple, or the smattering of freckles across the narrow bridge of her nose, strangely out of keeping with her February face. I’d wanted to see if her eyes still held such depths in daylight, and if I would glimpse again that rare curiosity in the way she looked at people. Atme.
What she’d seen in me that night, what she’d said about me, had come dangerously close to the truth. Dangerously, but also refreshingly. It was a long time since I’d felt like I didn’t have to pretend. The way she stared at me earlier was different. Startled, bewildered, angry, challenging. And ultimately disappointed. I couldn’t blame her for it, and I shouldn’t let it bother me, but somehow the idea was intolerable.
Ashton studied me intently before at last he nodded. ‘Whatever you say. I thought I was doing you a favour. It’s been a while since you gotcloseto anybody.’ He clicked his tongue meaningfully. The sound echoed through the chapel, making the hairs on my arms stand on end under my jumper.
‘That’s not your problem.’
‘Isn’t it?’ Ashton gave a grim smile. ‘I’m the one who has to spend my free time with you, don’t I, my little ray of sunshine?’
‘Nobody’s forcing you to,’ I said tonelessly, although that wasn’t true. I would have given anything to be alone. Far away from Ashton, far away from all of it. But they would never permit it, we both knew that. There were some things you couldn’t escape. One of them was yourself.
Ashton groaned noisily. With a fluid movement he pushed off from the pew, grabbed me by the shoulders and gazed urgently into my eyes. The light was a wash of colour across our faces: Ashton’s cheeks shimmered red, his hair blue, but his eyes were dark and searching.
For a few long seconds we held each other’s gaze, then he shook me gently. ‘You’re my best friend,’ he said, unexpectedly serious. ‘We are your family. I only want the best for you, okay?’ He waited until I nodded weakly, then laughed. ‘Good. So. Maybe you could forget for just one night that you’re the world’s wettest blanket and have a bit of fun?’
Without waiting for an answer, he turned on his heel and strode off down the aisle towards the exit. He didn’t need to make sure I was following. We both knew that sooner or later, I would.
‘If you don’t want Mabel, do you mind if I offer her to Victor?’ he called out, already so far away that his voice distorted as it echoed through the nave. Yet I caught the gist of his words, and the pulse in my temples throbbed harder.Strangely, so did my heart. ‘Evidently, he’s taken a shine to her– what was his poetic turn of phrase?–to her “appealing bitchiness”.’
‘Ashton,’ I repeated simply, although something in me had flinched. I hadn’t failed to notice the way Victor reacted to Mabel earlier. Putting two and two together, I realised he must have been one of the people she was talking about in the small library.
‘I don’t like being referred to as a “contribution”, or treatedlike something you’d win at poker’, she had said. I couldstill see the look on her face. The mute defiance, the steely self-assurance–this wasn’t someone who let other people define her, that much was unmistakeable. She had impressed me straight off the bat. Maybe it was why I’d forgotten, for a fleeting moment, who I was. Who I was supposed to be.
