Her shoulder presses against mine. The natural physics of two people sharing an armrest in the dark. But it registers anyway, a patch of heat bleeding through my jumper. I don’t move. Neither does she.
The film plays on, and I’m not watching a single frame of it. I’m too busy memorising the weight of her against my arm.
On screen, the CEO with amnesia is learning to make gingerbread with a ruggedly handsome tree farmer who has no personality beyond his flannel shirt.
‘Do you think he actually knows how to fell a tree?’ I say. ‘Nobody makes a living selling trees for three weeks a year. What does he do the other forty-nine?’
‘Probably OnlyFans.’
I laugh so loud that a woman five rows ahead turns backwards to glare at me.
Ava presses her knuckles against her mouth. ‘You’re going to get us thrown out,’ she hisses.
‘I’d like to see them try.’
She grins. I grin back. The noise of the cinema fades, and for a minute it’s only us, two people who’ve found a frequency nobody else can hear.
Then Ava reaches for the popcorn, and her sleeve rides up.
Her arm stretches across my line of sight, wrist exposed in the cold blue light.
Bruises. Faint now, fading to green, but the shape is unmistakable. Even in this dim light. Four oval marks on the inside of her wrist. Fucking grip marks. I’ve seen them on my mum’s arms, twelve years ago, when she’d wear long sleeves in July.
A cold stone settles in my gut.
Ava’s already pulled her sleeve down. She trembles as she scoops popcorn, a fine vibration she’s trying to hide.
Four fingers. The spacing of a man’s hand holding tight enough to leave evidence. The urge to leave the cinema and find that fucking piece of shite and break every single one of his bones is so visceral I taste copper on my tongue.
But I need to tread carefully here, so keep my voice neutral. ‘That wrist looks a bit sore.’
She locks into a wire-tight brace beside me. ‘What? Oh, this.’ She tucks her hand under her thigh. ‘Just physio. Deep tissue work. I bruise like a peach, honestly. It’s embarrassing.’
Physio on a foot doesn’t leave marks on a wrist.
I know she’s lying. She knows that I know. The air between us thickens with everything neither of us says. I could ask who did this to you – even though I’ve a bloody good idea – and watch her walls slam into place. I could demand answers and watch her bolt for the exit. If I push now, I lose her. She won’t come next Tuesday.
And she might need someone next Tuesday.
I want to be there when she needs me.
I swallow my questions and bank them. Instead, I force the air in and out of my lungs and a sentence out of my mouth that doesn’t include the words kill or Nevin.
‘It’s been four days. You’d think someone at her massive corporation would have noticed she’s currently shovelling snow for a bloke named Brock in the mountains.’
The steel in her frame doesn’t disappear, but it softens. Her hand comes out from under her thigh, and she reaches for more popcorn. ‘They probably assumed she went on a very aggressive wellness retreat.’
‘Is manual labour a recognised cure for corporate burnout?’
‘The London specialist would know.’
We’re back to normal, but I don’t forget what I saw. The shape of those marks. How she tried to hide them. Something is not okay with Ava MacKinney. Far worse than a tendon injury. Something that fits a shape I recognise and hoped I’d never see again.
The film ends with a kiss in front of snowy trees and a montage of the CEO swapping her corner office for true small-town love.
Minutes later, we walk out through the foyer. The temperature’s dropped since we went in, and the car park’s glazed white. A thin crust of hardened slush is everywhere. I clock the treacherous ice instantly.
Ava takes one step, and her right foot slides. She catches my sleeve. ‘Jesus. It’s a skating rink out here.’
