And I couldn’t write his story for him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
‘Have you seen Carole?’
Uncle Bryan pounced from behind the candy floss cart, wearing an upsettingly short pair of denim cut-offs.
‘Sorry, no.’ I scoured the crowd for Carole, more for my own benefit than his, but I couldn’t spot her fortune-teller’s silk turban anywhere. ‘Maybe she’s in the loo?’
‘Looked in there,’ he said with a sulky snort. ‘Not like her to leave me alone at something like this. She knows I don’t like …’
‘People?’ I suggested.
He looked so sad, I almost felt sorry for him. Then I remembered what a terrible person he was and got over it right away.
‘You stay out here and I’ll check the house,’ I suggested, spotting Anthony Khan out the corner of my eye. To get through the evening with my sanity intact, I needed to be where he wasn’t. ‘If I find her, I’ll send her down to you.’
‘Tell her I’ve got the hand sanitiser!’ he called after me. ‘Don’t let her touch anything!’
For one second, I considered licking my hands and wiping them all over his face but that didn’t play well with my plan not to ruin Dad’s party. I gave him a thumbs up, turned around and took myself off into the house.
I definitely deserved a prize.
A small crowd had collected around the downstairs loo and there was the usual, small party overspill in the kitchen but I couldn’t see Carole anywhere. I tiptoed upstairs, drawn by the strange sound of voices coming from one of the bedrooms. One was Carole but she sounded distressed and she wasn’t alone.
‘Aunt Carole?’ I called quietly so as not to scare her. ‘Are you all right?’
No answer. I stopped outside her room and pressed my ear against the door.
‘It’s not that I’m not flattered but really, you don’t know me. You don’t know what you’re doing.’
Unless I was very much mistaken, and I definitely wasn’t, my aunt was in her bedroom, behind a closed door, with Joe.
‘Yes. I do.’ A strange quiver elongated the end of Carole’s sentence. ‘And I do know you, like you know me, inside and out.’
‘I know you’re Sophie’s aunt,’ Joe replied, the sound of panic in his voice. ‘You were in the conservatory at lunchtime, weren’t you? You’re the one who asked if I was … oh Christ.’
‘No more talk.’
Carole growled and I pulled back in horror at theecho of creaking bedsprings. ‘Your book has changed me, Joseph. When I started reading it, I expected nothing but mindless smut but I’ve never been so turned on in my life.’
I fought back a retch, very glad to have passed on the prawn toasts after all.
‘Now my eyes have been opened. You can’t expect me to let you slip through my fingers when we’ve been brought together by the forces of the universe.’
‘It was not the universe, it was Hugh Taylor’s birthday,’ Joe said over the scuffling sound of small items of furniture being moved around the room. ‘Please, you really don’t understand the situation and you don’t want to do this.’
‘It’s the only thing I want to do!’
A guttural and frankly terrifying groan carried through the heavy wooden door and, for a second, I considered calling the police. Joe was not safe and if I opened this door, I didn’t know if I was physically or mentally strong enough to help him.
‘I want you to make love to me the way Eric made love to Jenna on the rooftop, and at the lake, and in the woods, and—’
‘Yes, I get the point,’ Joe replied. ‘But it’s a hard pass from me.’
‘The things you wrote,’ Carole moaned. ‘The things you could do to a woman like me …’
‘I could do no things!’ Joe asserted in response, footsteps still moving around the room. ‘It’s just a book. I’m very glad you enjoyed it but — no, don’t take off your cardigan – but it doesn’t mean anything.’
