‘Since the spa,’ Lissa elaborates, glancing around to check no one is within earshot. ‘I mean – did I completely freak you out? Because I know I looked crazy, but I promise I’m not really. Or if I am, I’m notcompletelycrazy and I’m not any different to the person I was when we—’
‘Lissa. I don’t think you’re crazy. Well, no crazier than the rest of us.’
‘Maybe a little bit more,’ Lissa says on a sigh. Given that her friends don’t tend to have meltdowns at the spa and scare everyone so much that the manager insists on giving you complimentary juice for the rest of the day. At the time Darcy said it was a great way to get free drinks and maybe if Lissa had thrashed aroundjusta little more they could have got champagne instead. But since then …
‘Yeah, well, okay,’ Darcy says. ‘Maybe a little bit more. But whoever said crazy was a bad thing? The word needs a PR overhaul in my opinion.’
Lissa snorts quietly.
‘You didn’t freak me out,’ Darcy says after a beat.
‘Okay. Well, good.’ But things still feel off.
‘I just …’ Darcy bites her lip, swivelling her chair to face Lissa head-on. ‘I didn’t know you didn’t like water – or couldn’t swim, or whatever. I never would’ve booked the session if I’d known.’
‘I know,’ Lissa says quietly. ‘I’m sorry. I thought maybe it would be okay.’ And it would have been, wouldn’t it, if her mind hadn’t decided to go elsewhere.
‘I didn’t even know you had a sister,’ Darcy says after another beat. And Lissa knows this is the crux of it.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says again. ‘It’s just … it’s all a little …’
‘Complicated?’ Darcy guesses. ‘Yeah. Mia said. I just figured it would’ve come up, something like that. That’s all.’
‘I should have told you,’ Lissa says, resisting the urge to look around again as she hears footsteps behind her, someone else on their way to their desk. ‘I guess I just didn’t want you to think differently of me.’ She pulls a hand through her hair, matted slightly from the January wind outside. ‘Everything with Chloe … it defines so much of who I am. I suppose I didn’t want it to define who I was with you, too.’
Darcy studies her for a moment, in a very direct, Darcy way. Then she purses her red lips and nods. ‘Yeah. I think I can understand that.’
Lissa feels her chest relax a little. ‘So we’re good?’
Darcy smiles. ‘We’re good, sweets.’
They both turn back to their computers, waking up the screens. They had a company-wide office closure for two blissful weeks, and now Lissa is dreading the daily slog again. She’s decided to stop her job hunt for now – the countless rejections are starting to make it seem a bit pointless. She’s feeling a little lost on that front.
‘So,’ Darcy begins, ‘still convinced you’re seeing visions of your past lives?’
Lissa wrinkles her nose as she clicks on a company-wide email from Liam. ‘I know you don’t believe me.’
‘I never said that.’
‘Right, but I know you think reliving memories from previous lives is unlikely.’
‘We-ll,’ Darcy says, drawing out the word, ‘on the scale of likeliness, most likely being I’ll drink wine this weekend and least likely being one of us will sleep with Liam …’
Lissa snorts, and automatically glances around to check that Liam is in his glass office – the only one of them to have his own office, with the rumour being that he designed it deliberately so he could spy on the rest of them. Seems unlikely, given that it was built before the company moved in, but she wouldn’t put it past him.
‘But you can try to convince me over a drink if you like. Maybe I should go and see this Saskia person myself, as long as she’ll only tell me the good stuff and not the bad.’
‘Well, I mean, she doesn’t reallytellyou about it, it’s a whole trance thing, and also, I was having the memories before I went to see her, but …’ Lissa catches the way Darcy is looking at her, one eyebrow arched, a slight smirk around her lips. ‘Never mind,’ she says on a sigh. ‘But yes to a drink.’
‘Fab, I need something to get me through this month. Friday?’
‘Yes. No, wait. Shit, I can’t do Friday. But any other day, I’m yours.’
‘Thursday, then. Why can’t you do Friday?’
She hesitates. Her instinct is to lie about it – to say she’s seeing her dad or something. But given the conversation they’ve just had … ‘I’m seeing Ash.’
‘Ash?’ Darcy’s voice rises an octave. She glances behind her to where Mark is sitting, right at the back of the office, then drops her voice. ‘Ash as in the hot friend of Mark who came to the pub quiz with us and completely ignored my attempts to flirt?ThatAsh?’
