‘It’s really not on,’ Suzanne complained as she reached for her dry toast and nibbled the edge before putting it right back down. ‘I barely got to see you and now you’re bloody leaving.’
Miraculously, I stopped myself from asking exactly whose fault that was.
Rolling over onto her belly and resting her chin in her hands, Bel frowned. ‘Where is Ren?’ she asked. ‘Shouldn’t he be here, throwing himself around and sobbing? Or at least trying to give you a quick one before you leave?’
‘He’s busy,’ I said. ‘We did the goodbye thing already. Neither of us are big on drama.’
Suzanne crossed her arms over her chest and zeroed in on me with Terminator-esque intensity and I pitied all the people who had to report to my sister. ‘There’s something you’re not telling us. You’ve got the same look on your face as when you borrowed my Juicy Couture tracksuit top.’
‘Suzanne Louise Chapman, that was eighteen years ago, it’s time to let it go,’ I declared. ‘If there was anything to tell you, I’d tell you, but there isn’t, so I won’t. OK?’
‘OK,’ they chorused even though from the matching looks of suspicion on their faces, it was anything but.
‘Right, I still have to pack and sort myself out,’ I told them, ignoring Bel’s horrified gasp as I helped myself to a second can of Coke. ‘So I’m going to pack, I’m going to shower, I’m going to get dressed and when I come back downstairs, I want to see big fat cheesy smiles all round. I’m not ending this trip looking at a load of sulky faces, so that’s an order.’
‘Woah, Suze,’ Bel breathed. ‘She sounds just like you.’
‘No,’ Suzanne replied, smiling as I dragged myself off upstairs. ‘She sounds just like our gran.’
It was the best compliment she could possibly have given me.
‘I love LA but does it have to be this hot though?’ Bel whined from the deep end of the swimming pool, reaching for one of the medicinal frozen margaritas she’d mixed while I was in the shower.
‘It isn’t any hotter than yesterday,’ Suzanne replied from the shallow end. ‘It only feels like it is because we all killed so many brain cells last night, our bodies don’t know how to cope.’
It really didn’t matter which of them was right; the air was sizzling. I felt like a pile of dry grass, ready to burst into flames at any second, and the only acceptable place to be was in the water.
‘We should get out soon,’ I said, checking on the time and not liking what I found. ‘I want to leave enough time to see Myrna.’
I couldn’t see into Ren’s garden from the pool but I’d checked before I jumped in. The curtains were still closed. Was he even awake yet?
‘I know you said you didn’t want to talk about it,’ Suzanne said, lifting up her sunglasses to get a better look at me. ‘But you were out all night and you came home looking like you’d been ridden hard and put away wet. Surely you’re not going to leave without seeing him again?’
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I am.’
‘So everything is OK but you don’t want to see him again?’
‘That’s correct.’
‘Fine. I don’t believe you but I won’t push it,’ she said. ‘But say the word and he’s a dead man.’
‘Then I’ll push it,’ Bel said, swimming towards us, margarita held up out of the water. ‘Because I don’t get it. You write those super deep letters, you roll home at eight a.m. walking like you’ve been riding the bucking bronco at Saddle Ranch Chop House all night, and I don’t want to be rude but Phoebe, babe, you should see your face. It’s giving Buffy after they brought her back from the dead. What really happened?’
‘Nothing,’ I said, an unwelcome squeak adding itself to the end of my sentence. ‘We talked, I explained about the letters, he was not entirely pleased at first but then we talked it all out and then, you know.’
‘Banged it out?’ Bel suggested.
‘For the love of God,’ Suzanne groaned.
‘We spent the night together,’ I offered diplomatically.
‘They banged it out,’ Bel said, smiling as she sucked her margarita through a straw. ‘All night long.’
‘And now I have to go home,’ I said. ‘So I got up, got dressed and left. What’s the point in making it complicated?’
‘What did he say when you left?’ Suze asked.
‘Nothing.’ I swirled the rose-gold reusable straw in my slushy drink.
