My phone spills more. “It’s just that he promised he’d make it worth my while.” My voice repeats the once-in-a-lifetime chance Flynn had dangled like a carrot. “He said I could stay here rent free until the lease was up. Look after the place for him and pick up his post until he got back from the project those investors backed. Then we’d auction everything I restored for him and split the profit. I was gonna use it to get the certification I’d need to set up my own restoration business.” We both have to hear how strangled I sound. “How am I gonna do that now he’s had everything taken? He won’t even answer his phone.”
I close my eyes, which gifts me an action replay of finding this place all but empty. Opening my eyes again confirms thatI didn’t dream what actually happened. A bare bulb now hangs from a ceiling rose above us, and I hear all about it.
“They even took the light fittings, Kev. The chandeliers I found and bid for.” I must have drunk some more booze. I hear gulping and a soul-deep sigh. I also hear myself admit, “I don’t know why he did it. Or where I am, Kev.” I sound so smashed. “Come and get me?”
Harry takes a turn at sighing. “You dropped a location pin in the group chat. Blake and I were closest.” His focus is on those horse reins he unravelled from my wrists. Now he rolls up that black leather, slow and careful. So is what else he asks me. “You said you were looking after this place for Flynn. You two… you weren’t together?”
“Together? No.”
“You were working for him?”
“I wasn’t on Flynn’s payroll. He said we were business partners.” I feel stupid as soon as that slips out.
Harry lets the horse reins unravel like the timeline he verbalises. “Since last October?”
“Yeah. Flynn turned up at a meet-up.” One that I’d hesitated to enter, hovering at the window like a moth drawn to much brighter beings. “He stood outside with me. Asked if you’d be coming. I told him you were?—”
“Away at a boat show.” Harry nods. “Then what happened?”
“He asked what I did. We ended up talking furniture, and I showed him some pics that matched the vibe he was looking to furnish his new place with. He said I had a good eye for quality pieces and asked did I want to skip the meet-up.”
“Did you?”
“Yeah. He brought me back to this place. It was empty. I filled it for him.”
Harry squints. “Then he left London?”
“For his project? Yeah.”
“We must have just missed each other. It’s February now. You’ve been expecting him to come back for you this whole time?”
“Notforme. To sell up and split the profit on everything I restored to make him look…”
I don’t saylike you,but that is what Flynn had wanted—to pass for Harry’s kind of old money that comes with land and titles.
“He—” I don’t know how to describe someone who made me feel like the smartest person on the planet each time I found hidden treasure for him. “It was good timing, that’s all. I couldn’t stay where I was living, and he needed someone to…” Again, I don’t have the vocab to describe someone who now feels as solid as smoke between my fingers. “He made me…”
Harry presses his lips together, then breaks his silence to describe Flynn in perfect detail. “He made you feel like you could take on the world together, and nothing and no one could stop you. That anything and everything would be possible if you just listened to him. He talked you into putting your life on hold based on a future promise. Did you get any of that in writing?”
“No.” I can never let my cousin find out that I might as well have rolled over and shown Flynn my bare belly. “We shook hands on it. Like I would with any friend.”
“Oh, darling. I’m not sure Flynn knows how to be one.”
“I thought you said Charles was a good judge of character.” I scrub at my face. Scrub at my chest too, which helps my itchy skin but doesn’t do much for an ache under my ribs that shows no sign of easing. “He must have liked Flynn to tell him about our meet-ups, yeah?” That has happened a few times over the years, long-lost Heppel Exes added to our ranks by our common hookup denominator.
Harry was the first man Charles Heppel added to that group. Now he runs a hand through sun-bleached hair, tugging on it as if he’s tangled. “About that?—”
Blake interrupts with the bark of a drill sergeant. “Carpet Burns, where are you hiding the coffee?” We leave the bedroom behind to find Blake freshly showered in the kitchen. All three of us are in our boxers, and he notices that I can’t stop scratching. “What’s brought on those hives?”
“Red wine. It hates me.” I scratch some more. “Some antihistamine will sort it.” I have to settle for ice. “Call me Vincent, yeah?” I rub a cube over raised welts while Harry hunts for mugs, which is pointless. Apart from a few pans, anything kitchen-related is long gone. So is any coffee, but Harry turns his back to root through another cupboard, and I let out a sound that reminds me of my cousin—Kev huffed like someone had punched him hard in the gut the day he visited me in hospital when I was a nipper. My reason for wheezing this morning is a swarm of scars covering Harry’s back. They sting me into silence.
Those scars do the opposite to Blake. He swings into action again, this time by getting chatty, which I wouldn’t have guessed from the few meet-ups I have attended. “What’s that?” He doesn’t point at those godawful scars, thank fuck. He gestures at the only proof left in this building that Flynn ever lived here.
For once, I can summon an instant answer. “A vision board.” Images of tropical islands and shipwrecks surround the kind of whiteboard most people use for shopping list reminders.
Harry touches a bullet point written at the top of this one. His finger drags down past more checked-off boxes, and he huffs. “Well, at least he was up-front with you about his plans.”
Blake confirms he heard my drunken voice note. “You mean that dick Flynn?” He tilts his head to one side. “Looks like adrunk spider wrote a to-do list.” He looks my way. “Can you read his handwriting?”
