She glances over at me.
‘I mean it,’ I insist. ‘I’m sorry he’s not being careful with your heart.’
‘It’s not his fault. It’s not like I’ve been taking good care of it either,’ she sighs.
We sit in silence for a moment, and I wish I still had my bad margarita. Or even a good one.
The sound of a throat clearing makes me turn around, and I see Posh Louise crossing the road to us. ‘Hi, darlings. We’re all done filming for the evening, so you guys can just have fun for the rest of the night. Can you hand over your mic packs?’
I unclip mine with ease, as Carys wriggles out of hers. I’m relieved to get rid of them. Maybe, for once, Carys and I can speak plainly.
‘Thanks, Louise,’ I say as she waves us goodnight.
We watch as cameras are packed up, and the team slowly disappear into their van. No one else leaves.
‘Everyone else is having too much fun,’ Carys says, reading my mind.
‘Do you want to go back in?’
‘Not on your life,’ she laughs. Her skin is goosepimpling in the cold air.
‘Okay, but we can’t stay here either. You’ll catch a cold for your wedding day. That seems like bad luck.’
‘Will you walk me home?’
In another world, walking a girl I fancied home from the bar had a very different connotation.
‘Not like that,’ she says quickly. ‘I’m just so tired I think I might get lost, and I don’t really have the money for an Uber. Not until we get paid.’
I check the route and realise we’re actually much closer to the flats than I thought – only a twenty-minute walk. I turn my phone to show her the route. ‘That seem alright?’
She nods and gets up from the bench. ‘I need to move.’
‘Do you need to tell Patrick?’ I ask, as I fire off a quick text to Warren.
Carys doesn’t answer me. Woof, it must be bad.
We don’t talk much, and instead I enjoy the quiet of London in the early hours of the morning. It’s nice having a clock now, but it also means I’m very aware that it is 2 a.m., a time when I’m very rarely out of bed.
My shoes go from pinching to biting just as we get inside the building, and I kick them off when we are in the lobby. The porter looks completely unbothered. The things he must have seen.
Carys walks right over to the lift and presses the call button.
We step in, and I press the button for the twentieth floor. The familiar rise kicks in, but as we near the tenth floor, Carys suddenly leans forward and hits the emergency stop.
The lift grinds to a halt.
‘Carys, what are you doing?’ I gasp. I’m not afraid of lifts, but I’ve seenMission Impossibleenough times to have a healthy distrust of their mechanics.
‘I want to talk,’ she says. ‘For the last time.’
Chapter Thirty-ThreeCarys
I can’t leave things unsaid.
Tomorrow, the whole cast has a last day off while we finalise things for our weddings. After that, everyone gets married. I might see her at the filmed reunion, but that’ll be it. Dolly Doherty will walk out of my life forever.
‘Could we not have done that in your flat? Or, you know, anywhere that’s not a tiny, enclosed space that could fall at any moment,’ Dolly says, pressing her palm against her collarbones. It’s possibly the first time I’ve ever seen Dolly look so freaked out.
