‘Yeah.’ I give her a brave smile. ‘I’m going to find Carys.’
Bridget snorts. ‘I do not understand you two.’
‘Why’s that?’ I say, even though I wish I hadn’t.
‘You just can’t help yourselves. Always looking for each other, even though you hate each other. If one of you was a boy, I’d think you’d have a pash about it.’
She laughs at the absurdity of it and storms out the bathroom, and I cannot help but wonder if that was some low-grade accidental homophobia, or a warning.
I walk through the bar, saying hi to a few people as I pass, and make my way out to the front of the bar. There’s no cameras out here, and Waify Liam, who walks past me back into the bar reeking of cigarettes, is the only production member I can see.
So where is Carys?
It takes me a few minutes to find her. She sits cross-legged across the road from the bar, on a bench that overlooks the river. She’s alone.
‘Bit cold out here,’ I say, sitting down without asking her permission.
It’s clear she’s had a few to drink. Her face is flushed pink, almost red on the apples of her cheeks. ‘I didn’t notice.’
‘Long day.’
‘Long day,’ she agrees.
I’m conscious that our conversation is still potentially being recorded out here, even if we’re not actively being filmed.
‘I’m sorry your mum couldn’t be there today,’ she says.
‘Same to you,’ I say, recalling her twin sisters cheering her on as she spun in her princess dress.
She scoffs. ‘My mum thinks this whole thing is just another instance of me getting Carys’d away.’
‘You mean carried?’
‘No, that’s just what she calls it. When I’m impulsive, or don’t think things through.’ She laughs, a loose sound that comes from a few too many shots. ‘Mother knows best.’
‘That’s not very nice.’
‘Not all of us can have kind mothers,’ she says in an offhand way that breaks my fucking heart. ‘She’s not… I mean—’
‘I understand what you mean.’
I want to reach forward and take her hands, but I don’t want to force her to look at me because that feels like top of the list of autism 101 no-nos. So does touching her without asking. There’s so much I haven’t asked her, haven’t taken the time to ask. No wonder I keep finding her outside crying in the middle of the night.
‘God, I’m so tired,’ she sniffs. ‘Everything is justsomuch all the time.’
‘I can imagine,’ I say, before adding, ‘Me too.’
‘And,’ she sniffs, ‘it takes so much energy to hate you.’
I laugh, despite myself. ‘That almost sounds like a compliment.’
It gives me a little thrill when she laughs. ‘Oh dear. Not again.’
We both laugh then and everything, for just a moment, feels normal. Like we haven’t spent the last week breaking each other’s hearts repeatedly. Like we’re just two women on a dating show, talking on a bench at night about our upcoming weddings.
‘I should have listened to you,’ she says quietly. ‘About Peony. They’re still talking, I think.’
‘Fuck, I’m sorry.’
