“He did. He couldn’t speak. His mum had to help him back into the house.”
She bursts out laughing. “Theonetime you lose your cool and I’m not there to see it! If I wasn’t so happy that it happened, I’d be fuming! Well played!”
“It wasn’t my proudest moment.”
“Trust me, Freya, if anyone deserves it, it’s him.” She sits back in her chair, looking baffled. “That is amazing. Hands down, that’s going to be the best thing to happen all year. Nothing will beat that.”
“Um, how about your wedding this summer?” I laugh. “That’s got to win, surely.”
“My wedding is not going to beat you kicking Matthew in the balls,” she states in her most serious voice. “Did Ruby film it?”
“Thankfully, no. It really wasn’t planned.”
“You’re my new hero, Freya Scott. I want you to know that.” She laughs, and points her cigarette at me. “You know what you should do?”
“What?”
“Buy yourself a big, statement ring.”
“What do you mean?”
“For that left hand,” she explains. “When you feel the timeis right, you should go buy yourself a big, gorgeous ring to sit on the middle finger of your left hand. Then, every time you look at that hand, you won’t feel sad. You’ll feel proud.”
“Proud of what exactly? Kicking someone in the balls?”
She chuckles. “Proud that you got through this.”
I glance down at my finger, the indent from the ring still lingering. The back door suddenly swings open and Kelly bursts out into the garden.
“This is where you’re hiding!” she cries happily, clapping her hands together, her maid of honor tiara wonkily sitting on her head. “Isabelle’s been looking for you both. She wants you to have a go at pinning the junk to the hunk. Totally understand if you want a time-out though, we can always move on to ‘Mr. & Mrs.’”
“We were just having a smoke,” Niamh explains, stubbing out her cigarette. “But I amsoready to pin the junk to the hunk. What do you reckon, Freya?”
“Born ready,” I declare, jumping to my feet.
“Apparently, when it comes to junk,” Niamh says to Kelly with a grin as we head back into the house, “Freya knows exactly where to aim.”
CHAPTER SIX
It comes out of nowhere.
One minute I’m having a nice time, fully under the impression that I’ll emerge from the hen do unscathed, and the next minute I’m engulfed by an overwhelming sense of loss. It’snota good time to fall apart. I’m surrounded by a wonderful bunch of people having brilliant fun. I don’t want to ruin it. And, perhaps more than that, I don’t want anyone to see me crumple into a mess.
I’ve never been one for public displays of affection or emotion. I know I can sometimes come across as cold. I once had a performance review in an old job where an anonymous colleague had described me as “standoffish” and “hard to read.”
(Fuck you, Jeffrey. I know it was you who said that. Just because I didn’t fawn all over your homemade almond brownies that one time like everyone else. They were dry, Jeffrey. Dry.)
I’m aware it’s something I should work on. There’s no denying that Matthew was the chattier one of the two of us when it came to socializing and meeting new people, and I’ve always envied Ruby for being so open and warm and bubbly. People are instantly drawn to her. She’s never reluctant to show how she’s feeling. When she and Leo started dating, I was involuntarily engrossed in their relationship, because she told me absolutely everything: how she got major butterflies in her stomach when he smiled, how vulnerable she felt after telling him she really liked him, how irrationally angry he made her.
I never really wanted to show anyone the intricacies of my relationship with Matthew, not even Ruby or Leo. We never argued in front of anyone, but we never kissed in front of them, either. And that was all me. It’s not that I desperately wanted to be private, I just didn’t think our relationship needed to be on display. We were happy and fine. We had arguments, like every couple, but they weren’t important enough to talk about or dwell on. They were over stupid stuff (like how he couldn’t just close cupboard doors, he apparently had to slam them).
I’m good at holding it together. And for some reason, I’m determined not to let anyone think otherwise. So when I’m suddenly struck by this all-consuming emotion in the middle of Isabelle’s hen do, I have to get out of the room. Clutching my stomach—because it genuinely feels like a physical pain that is going to cause my legs to buckle from beneath me—I stumble out of the door and close it firmly behind me, before scrambling up the stairs to the bedroom I’m sharing with Niamh as fast as I can.
I shut the door and inhale deeply, tears rolling uncontrollably down my cheeks. With my back to the door, I slide down until I’m sitting on the carpet and hug my knees to my chest, pressing my forehead against them as I quietly cry alone.
There had been a few moments throughout the day that had caused a pang to the heart, but I genuinely believed I had shaken them off. The first wobble happened when, after discovering that I was truly terrible at pinning the junk on the hunk (I pinned it to his left nipple), Kelly jumped up and announced it was time for “Hen Confessions.”
“Each of you has to write down a funny or outrageous story that’s happened to you,” she informed us, handing out pieces of paper and pens. “It can be anything. Drunken night out, embarrassing moments, relationship disasters. And then Isabelle has to read them out and guess the hen who wrote it!”
