Page 66 of The Last Kiss
There’s a slash of betrayal in her expression and my stomach flips. I think I’ve just traversed the Sister’s Coalition Agreement.
“It’s Henri. I told you about him in January.” I whisper back, knowing full well he is too close not to overhear the start of my interrogation, because believe me this is only the start. I’ll still be under it when he’s back in gloriously sunny France and doing what he does with cheese.
Her eyes widen. “That’s love bite man?”
From behind I can see his cheeks curve. Yep, he’s listening alright.
“But you haven’t seen him in months?”
I wince. “That’s not strictly true.”
Liv’s onslaught of hostile attack questioning is ceased by the screech of Paige as she skids into the hallway so fast she leaves track marks in the thick carpet. She shudders to a halt and stares up at Henri. I sigh. “Jeez, you could have brushed her hair.”
“I tried. She was waiting for you.”
Paige looks like a character from an awful cartoon movie she made me watch one Saturday afternoon. Wearing just knickers and with her hair hanging in her face in knots she looks like she should live with dinosaurs.
“Happy birthday, my beautiful.” I drop to my knees and hold my arms wide for her to jump into, which she does with a crushing blow to my chest.
“Easy with Aunty Jules,” Liv warns, and I glare at her. Henri’s gaze is on me and I can feel it burning through the layers of my skin as he tries to see inside my locked treasure chest of ‘sad’.
“It’s my burfday,” Paige tells me, holding up three fingers.
“Wait.” I uncurl a fourth from her tight fist. “You need an extra one because you are…”
“Fithe,” she explains through her hair.
“Four. You’re four, and the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” I tell her earnestly, because thankfully, she is all her mum and very little of her dickhead dad. Snuggling in closer I whisper in her ear. “Where’s the big bear?” Which makes her bounce in my arms.
“Mummy gots it upstairs. She said bad, bad words.”
“Did you make her have soap?” I ask, trying to brush her hair back and balance her in my arms.
“I twieds, but she said her drink was soap.” She scrunches her nose, sniffing out the obvious lie.
“To be fair, it probably tasted like soap, so shall we let her off?”
Paige nods, wide eyes luminous. “She’s sad.”
Liv’s cheeks colour when I glance up at her.
“I know,” I whisper. “Shall we get dressed for your party to cheer her up? Look I wore your favourite red cardigan.” I make a show of swinging the long line knit around my thighs.
She eyes me approvingly and then looks at her mum before giving me a slow nod. “Sorry,” I say to Henri. “I’ve got urgent auntying to do.”
“Don’t mind me,” he smiles and all three of us girls just stare at him dazzled. “Although. I want to see my bear.”
Paige’s eyes widen. “It’s amashing.”
“Oh, I know.” He nods with all seriousness and then turns to Liv holding up the bottles of wine he insisted we stopped to buy, to which I’d agreed, not knowing it was going to take forty minutes of perusing labels. “I’ve bought some wine, shall we?”
I breathe a sigh of relief that he’s going to face the kitchen audience by himself. Sure, that makes me a bad person, but if I sporadically shout ‘lover’ again at anyone today or this lifetime I’d spend all eternity remembering it. Bad enough I’ve said it once to Liv.
As I carry Paige up the stairs, her strangling around my neck like a limpet on a rock, I consider the word lover. What is that? Someone you are sexually active with? Someone you are fond of, maybe too fond? But lover sounds like it should be fun, and while this isbelieve me I’ll die a happy woman remembering how Henri woke me up this morning with his mouth in unexpected placesit feels bittersweet too.
Maybe if I wasn’t dying. Maybe if he wasn’t living in France with his grieving mother, then lover wouldn’t be the right word at all. Maybe it would be more.
I catch myself smiling in the ornate white mirror on Paige’s bedroom wall. I already know that I don’t think Henri would ever have a ‘word’. He simply just is, and I can let that be. Let this be.
