There were no kisses on the text and she’d made it abundantly clear there’d be no more kisses in real life either. At least it was honest and upfront, not a hint of the game playing there had been in so many of his exchanges with Meredith. He knew where he stood with Eve. He might wish things were different, but he liked her directness – he liked everything about her – and if they had to remain just friends, that was still something to cherish.
To his relief, the ball wasn’t all waltzes and couples twirling their partners around the dance floor. There was an excellent band, playing a mixture of upbeat music and slow dance songs, spanning the last five decades. Eve was on the dance floor now,with Eden, Aidan, Isla and Meg, singing and dancing along to ‘I Have Nothing’, with the kind of air grabs that would have made Whitney Houston proud. He smiled, enjoying seeing her having such a wonderful time and looking, for a few moments at least, as if she didn’t have a care in the world.
‘Another beer, Drew?’ He turned to the man he was incredibly grateful had come into his sister’s life. He’d never known Eden as happy as she was lately and she deserved it more than anyone, after what both their mother and her ex-partner had put her through. It gave him hope that moving on from a life with an addict was possible. He didn’t ever want to stop helping people, but he wanted it to be on a professional basis, not slap bang in the middle of his personal life. There might always be blurred lines, but he never wanted something like that to consume his whole life again.
‘Another drink sounds great. I’ve promised Eden I’ll dance with her later.’ Drew looked like he’d rather pull his own teeth out. ‘And I’m going to need to loosen up a bit, otherwise, it’ll look like she’s pushing a wardrobe around the dance floor.’
‘She won’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do, Drew. Trust me, you don’t have to pretend to be anything you’re not for Eden’s sake. She likes you just the way you are.’
‘I know and that’s exactly what makes me want to push myself out of my comfort zone. It’s not that Ihaveto, it’s that Iwantto. For her.’ Drew shrugged and Felix nodded. They were going to go the distance, these two; he just knew it. He had no idea what gave him such confidence in making the prediction, after all he’d been convinced at one stage that he and Meredith would make it. This time he was certain, though, and he just hoped that next time he found someone willing to take a chance on him, he’d be half as good at working out the chances of success as he was when it came to his sister’s relationship.
Felix was still waiting at the bar when his phone started to ring. It was Karl, his friend and former colleague from San Francisco who’d promised to keep an eye on Meredith and who was doing his level best to track her down after her recent phone call. It was seven hours behind in San Francisco, which meant it would be one thirty there and Karl would probably be on his lunch break at the clinic. It was probably nothing, just a quick call to let Felix know there were no updates and to offer reassurance that Karl was still trying. Felix considered letting it go to voicemail, but there were still quite a few people in front of him in the queue for the bar and it was far enough away from the music to be able to make himself heard without having to shout, so he pressed the button to answer instead.
‘Hi, Karl.’ Felix wasn’t sure the call had even connected for a moment because it seemed to be silent, and then he heard his friend take a deep breath.
‘Hey, Felix.’ The melancholy in Karl’s tone was as obvious as it would have been if they’d been standing face to face, instead of thousands of miles apart and it felt as if Felix’s blood was rushing in his ears.
‘What’s wrong. Is it Merri?’ Another pause, followed by what was quite possibly the deepest sigh Felix had ever heard.
‘I’m so sorry, buddy, there’s no easy way to tell you this, but she’s dead.’
Eve came off the dance floor still laughing and struggling to catch her breath. She hadn’t had this much fun in a long time and it was all the more wonderful for how unexpected it had been. Singing along to a medley of classic songs hadn’t been what she’d thought the fundraising ball would be like, but sheshould have known better than to expect any event organised by Gwen to be boring. Her throat was sore from a mixture of shouting out the ‘tune’ – a somewhat generous description of what they’d done to the songs – and from laughing at just how into the performance Aidan had got, flinging his arms out wide as if he really was Whitney, on stage, giving her all for an audience of adoring fans. His lip-syncing had been so flawless that it couldn’t possibly have been the first time he’d done it. Desperate for some ice-cold sparkling water, she’d offered to get the others a drink as well and was heading towards the bar when she caught sight of Felix.
He looked every bit as gorgeous in his tuxedo as she’d expected him to. He was tall with broad shoulders, his dark hair a tiny bit longer than might be considered ‘appropriate’ to pair with such formal attire, but the slightly just-got-out-of-bed look made him all the more appealing as far as Eve was concerned. He was on the phone, and as she got closer she could see this was no ordinary call. The colour seemed to have drained from his face and she realised he was pacing, like a caged animal. As he turned, his back faced towards her for a moment, the tension visible in the ramrod straight set of his shoulders. When he took another couple of paces and turned to face her again, their eyes meeting, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that the call had brought him bad news.
‘You okay?’ Eve mouthed, anticipating the answer before Felix shook his head, and she was close enough now to hear his conversation.
‘Thanks, Karl. I’ll let you know as soon as I can work out when I can get there… Okay, yeah, you too.’ He ended the call and held Eve’s gaze, still not speaking.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ She broke the silence and he nodded, before finally uttering four words.
‘Yes, but not here.’
They headed outside, despite the fact that even in spring it was cold by this time of night. When Eve had given an involuntary shiver, Felix had insisted on removing his jacket and putting it around her, the scent of his aftershave taking her back to the night they’d kissed and making her long to do it again. She hated herself for even thinking that, and not just because of Max this time. Felix had been given bad news and her role, as hisfriend, was to listen and comfort him. Not stand there imagining what it would be like to kiss him again.
‘Meredith has died. She overdosed again and this time it killed her.’
‘Oh God, Felix, I’m so sorry.’ Her hand flew to her mouth and she kept it there, hoping it would help her resist the urge to reach out to him.
‘I feel like it’s my fault.’ He screwed his eyes shut for a moment. ‘Maybe if I’d sent her the money she asked for, she’d have been okay.’
Eve was already shaking her head, no longer fighting the desire to reach for him, and she took his hand. ‘If someone is hell-bent on self-destruction, nothing anyone else does will change that. The only change can come from them and, if you had sent Meredith the money, she’s far more likely to have spent it on drugs than anything else.’
‘I know logically that you’re right.’ There was so much pain in his eyes that it twisted something in Eve’s chest. ‘But I’ll never know that for certain.’
‘You won’t and it’s the what-ifs that always hit the hardest at times like this.’ She was still holding his hand, her thumb now gently stroking his palm in a gesture that was far more intimatethan she had a right to be. But in that moment it felt as though they had a connection with one another that no one else quite did. ‘When Max was assaulted, I drove myself mad with what-ifs. What if I’d arranged to pick him up earlier, so that he wouldn’t have been walking back down that precise road at that precise moment? What if I’d suggested he did something else for his stag do, or swapped shifts with someone so he ended up choosing another night? None of those thoughts could have changed the outcome, all they did was torture me. What’s done is done and sometimes I think facing that reality is the hardest part of it all.’
‘I need someone to blame and, if not me, then who the hell can I pin it on, so that I can believe it wasn’t because I didn’t do enough?’ Felix’s eyes searched her face, desperate for her to give him an answer that would offer some comfort.
‘Sometimes there isn’t anyone to blame, it’s just circumstances and bad luck; an accident that could have happened to anyone. I know that’s not the same for Meredith and it definitely wasn’t the same for Max. I’ve got someone to blame, the guy who hit him and you can try and find someone to blame as well. Maybe it’s the person who sold Meredith the drugs that killed her, or whoever helped get her hooked in the first place. But it doesn’t help nearly as much as you might think.’ Eve swallowed hard, knowing that what she was about to say was a conversation she should have with Max’s mother, too, but suspected she never would. ‘Annie is obsessed with getting revenge on Brandon Moorcroft and I get it, I really do, but what she doesn’t seem to realise is that increasing his sentence won’t undo what’s happened to Max. He’ll still be living with the consequences of a severe brain injury and Annie won’t be happy in the way she thinks she will.’ Eve paused for a moment, shaking her head, before continuing.
‘She’s obsessed with it and I’m terrified of what it might do to her if she doesn’t get what she wants, or even if she does and sherealises her heart is still broken. I think her anger and bitterness is stopping her from acknowledging the pain and I’m scared of what will happen when she has to move on from the idea of revenge, one way or another. I think trying to find someone to blame and pouring all your emotions into that can be every bit as self-destructive as blaming yourself. It’s just a way of staving off the grief, but you can’t bypass that, no matter how much you might want to. You have to let yourself feel it.’
Felix looked exhausted as he nodded in response. ‘I left San Francisco because I didn’t want to have to hurt for Merri any more. I thought leaving would enable me to forget what she was doing to herself and the fact that I hadn’t been able to help her stop.’
His eyes were glassy and Eve finally let go of his hand, putting her arms around Felix instead and holding him close. ‘You can’t run away from caring when you love someone. It doesn’t matter how far you travel.’
She was vaguely aware that she was partly speaking to herself now, acknowledging that it would have been impossible to outrun the pain of what had happened to Max and all the plans they’d had for their future, no matter how tempting it had sometimes felt to want to try.
