‘And you’re just some random wanker.’ Desi shoved Callum out the way and pulled me up to my feet. ‘Come on, Lau, we’re leaving.’
Nodding, I let her lead me through the crowd ofMcClays. When we reached the door, I stopped, let go of Desi’s hand and unfastened the chain around my neck.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you,’ I said to Lizzie. The hurt that dragged her fine features down was too much for me to bear. ‘Well, actually, I did but not like this.’
‘Your son will explain,’ Desi added, wrenching my arm almost out the socket as she yanked me through the door. ‘Joel, go and get our stuff, we’ll be in the car.’
It felt like I was underwater. Everyone found their voices at the same time but I couldn’t make out individual words, only distorted sounds and shapes. All I was sure of was Desi’s hand clinging to mine, holding me down, keeping me grounded, and the knowledge I needed to put one foot in front of the other until I was out of this enormous house and this absurd situation.
‘Laura, wait!’ Callum followed us down the hallway, his long stride no match for Desi’s quickened pace. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Home,’ I replied with a vacant, glassy stare. It hurt too much to bring him into focus.
‘Don’t go.’
He reached out to catch my wrist but I pulled away before he could make contact. I didn’t want to touch his hand if I couldn’t touch all of him.
‘We’re done here, Callum,’ Desi said, still marching onward. ‘Go back to your super spy sister and her little friend with the ugly shoes.’
‘They were not ugly, they were comfortable!’
A sudden burst of volume from Shiv stopped us all in our tracks and snapped me out my trance.
‘Who wears Birkenstocks to a wedding?’ Desi thundered back. ‘It is a formal occasion, show some respect!’
‘So you do remember her?’ I asked, the two of them staring each other down in the hallway. Desi nodded.
‘I do now. Honest, Lau, they were godawful. Come on.’ She spoke more softly this time and wrapped a protective arm around my shoulders, a barrier between myself and the others.
‘Don’t go like this,’ Callum begged when we turned to walk away. ‘Give me a minute to straighten it all out—’
‘A minute?’ Desi said, hooting with laughter. ‘Did Father Christmas leave you one of thoseMen in Blackmind-wiper things?’
‘Half an hour then, an hour, whatever. There’s no need for you to leave like this. You’re not going to drive all the way back to London on Christmas Day.’
‘Traffic’ll be a dream,’ she purred. ‘We’ll be home by teatime.’
With an exasperated explosion of a sigh, Callum positioned himself between me, Desi and the door, blocking our exit.
‘You can’t run off like this,’ he declared as though it were a fact, written in stone somewhere simply because he said so. ‘Laura, talk to me.’
But I couldn’t.
Pain, embarrassment, heartache. They all stimulated similar physical responses in the body, many of the same fight-or-flight reactions. There were studies that showed how emotional pain lit up the same areas of the brain as physical pain. The cortisol spiking in my blood told my muscles to swell as my sympathetic nervous system ramped up its efforts. My neck tightenedand my chest felt like it was being crushed. But where I’d been foggy and lost only a moment ago, I suddenly felt razor-sharp and words flew out my mouth, slicing him like scalpels. I was a surgeon after all, I knew exactly where to cut to inflict the most damage. My body chose to fight.
‘And say what?’ I replied, colder than the icy waters of Loch Ness. ‘You don’t need to worry about me, worry about fixing things with your family. This was all about them, remember, not me. Either way, it was all over tomorrow anyway, isn’t that what you said?’
It did hurt, saying those things, but in the same way it hurt to press on a bruise after it had already turned purple, or to poke at a loose tooth. The damage was done, at least I was in control of my own agony now.
‘Forget about the flat,’ I told him as Desi and I separated to walk around him across the foyer. ‘I’ll find somewhere else. Sorry to leave you in the lurch without a tenant at the last minute.’
Callum stopped at the foot of the stairs and we were almost at the door, almost out of the house.
‘Is this about last night?’
My spine stiffened, ramrod straight, and my internal switch flipped so hard, everything went blank. It didn’t hurt. I wouldn’t cry. This was nothing. He was nothing.
‘Are you OK?’ Desi whispered, one hand on the doorknob.
