As the sedatives really sink in, she starts to doze. I try to compose a message to Evie. It’s not as simple as telling her Mum isn’t well, because I know she’ll ask for details and I can’t share the trigger for tonight’s collapse. And if I tell Evie where we are, she’ll appear here in an instant. It’s not fair to ruin her night. But that leaves me with no valid excuse for ditching the formal at the last second, when I’m the one Evie rescued after Alicia Brown first spread those rumors.
In the end, all I can do is typeIt’s Mum. I’m really sorry x.
But the message won’t send.
A couple of hours later, they’ve done a blood test and they’re a bit concerned about Mum’s white blood cell count.
“It could indicate an infection,” the doctor explains. “Your mum is immunocompromised from the chemo, as you know. Emotional stress weakens her system further and makes her more susceptible to whatever’s going around.”
My own blood pressure rises.Is this all my fault?I’mnevergoing to tamper with someone’s past again. The speed with which she collapsed after I showed her the photo leaves me with zero doubt that it was the trigger for the panic attack that led us here, though she must have already been struggling with the infection.
My skin is clammy. I’m hot and cold and shivery and finding it very hard to breathe. I’ve felt alone with Mum during various emergencies in the past, but never more than now, when I can’t even voice my guilt. It’s tearing me up.
“Listen, we might keep her in overnight and get some IV antibiotics into her, just to be on the safe side. She’s sedated and peaceful now. And you look like you have somewhere to be …”
I really don’t want to go to the formalnow. But if my message isn’t going through, turning up in person and apologizing may be my only option. I can’t afford to blow up this friendship.
There are plenty of odd looks once I arrive at the venue. The staff in the hotel foyer direct me to the function room. It takes a minute for my eyes to acclimate to the dark, and, as I scan the room, the room scans me. I feel like I’m never going to forget the blue-green patterned carpet in this room. The chandeliers. The round tables adorned with candles and flowers. The dance floor and lights. Muffled laughter. People staring and pointing at the billowing sleeves of my shirt—so out of place beside every other boy here, most of whom have ditched the theme and taken the less attention-seeking route, not that I care.
Finally, I see her. She’s in the center of the dance floor, under the twinkling lights of the disco ball, lit up.
In the sixties-inspired go-go dancer dress.
Wrapped around Oliver.
age NINETEEN
44
Evie
Whenever I imagined Rome, it wasn’t like this.
I saw myself and Bree tearing around the city on mopeds, in vintage dresses à la Audrey Hepburn inRoman Holiday. We’d attract the attention of two sophisticated Italian boys who’d order us pizza and wine and entice us into hot holiday flings that we’d brag about to our grandchildren in seven decades’ time when we’d totally lost our filters in the nursing home.
Instead, I’m crying in front of the Trevi Fountain in the heat of the Italian sun, under perfect blue skies, with the perfect boyfriend. Miserable. I sold out on our gap-year dream.
“If he really loved you, he’d wait,” Bree had argued when I first broke the news. “That’s proper romance! Putting you first …” It had sent me into a defensive spin that ended with us both in tears.
“I guess Italy will always be there,” she’d added more softly, trying to fix it a while later. “We can still meet up and do Pemberley, Evie. He wouldn’t want to go to that bit, anyway.”
“The Trevi Fountain wasourdream, though,” I’d conceded. We’d infused some sort of incantation into it, as if tossing in those coins together would cement our friendship for the rest of our adult lives. I just feel so guilty about ditching her. Andage so torn, because Oliver has otherwise been handing me the trip of my dreams. The entire itinerary has been thoughtfully planned to maximize all the things I want to do, with hardly any of the stuff he’s into.
“I’ve been before,” he’d argued. “I want your first time to be special. This is all about you, this trip. I want you to be happy.”
Water splashes from the fountain into the pond, hundreds of coins glinting in the sunlight. All those wishes. Thathope! A busker plays an Italian folk song on the accordion nearby, as tourists make wishes and cram in for photos. Eventually it’s our turn. I sit on the stone wall of the fountain and pose for a photo for Oliver—an experience that should be so iconic—but instead I burst into tears.
“Sorry!” I gasp, crying. “I love you.”
He pulls me up and into a hug. “It’s okay, I get it.”
But does he? I feel like if he really understood, he wouldn’t have insisted we travel to Italy, knowing how much it meant to me to do this with Bree.
All I can think about is my galloping fear of what I’m missing out on right now in London. Bree is there with Isabelle, Ella, and Olivia—friends whom we weren’t deeply entrenched with at school but would sit with in classes if one or the other of us wasn’t there. Seeing the photos she posted earlier of the four of them at a pub in Soho—beers full, smiles wide, arms draped around various hot strangers—made my heart hurt. She looked genuinely happy beside some new girl she’d gravitated toward, like she wasn’t even missing me.
My photos probably look like that too. Shiny, sparkly photos of Oliver and me soaking up summer in Rome, devouring chocolate gelatos outside the Colosseum. Images of us in a gondola in Venice, my head nestled on his shoulder. Standing beneaththe Juliet balcony in Verona. A seemingly blissful week in a tiny B&B in a Tuscan village near Florence, crumbling stone walls, vineyards, glasses of crisp white wine on white tablecloths—glamorous trappings disguising the true difficulty of that whole experience.
Candles.
