Page 49 of Romantic Hero
I swallow down the acid in my throat. ‘Okay. Well. Josie was pretty much perfect in every way, but sometimes she could be really selfish. And ordinarily it didn’t bother me – it was just a tiny part of a generally incredible picture. But there was this one day, she’d promised to come with me to watch a play at The National. I’d been wanting to see it for so long, paid a fortune for the tickets and less than half an hour before we were due to set off, the guy she’d been casually seeing at the time called her and invited her to some wanky restaurant-opening in Mayfair. She barely even apologised when she told me she’d much rather do that than go watch some stuffy play. She wasn’t sorry in the slightest. Iwas seriously pissed off and I told her so. At first she laughed, thought I was kidding, which just made me madder. I told her she was selfish for flaking out on me at the last minute, that she only ever thought about herself. She asked me if I really needed her to “hold my hand” to go to the theatre. I’d not slept well the night before and somehow we got into a shouting match. Our first ever. And when she yelled that I needed to let her do things on her own every once in a while, I got really mad and called her a self-satisfied bitch. Ugh.’ My stomach twists at the memory. Her surprise at how I spat out the words with such vitriol. The way her face dropped at my name-calling. ‘It was seriously out of character for me, but I remember being so furious that day. Not just because she’d been so flaky about the theatre, but because I knew deep down she was right. I did rely on her too much and I’d been noticing her trying to do more stuff without me. I tried to apologise to her, but before I could, she held up her hand and snapped that she’d had her fill of me. That she was going out to have fun with people who actually liked her. About thirty minutes later she got into a car accident. She never came back. Gone. Just … poof! No more Jo.’
‘Christ, Gertie,’ River murmurs. ‘That’s … I can’t even imagine.’
‘She was only twenty-four.’ I meet his eyes. ‘And I haven’t even got the guts to go to her grave and tell her I’m sorry. Tell her that of course she wasn’t a self-satisfied bitch. Not at all. That I only said it because I was rattled by how much I needed her when she clearly didn’t need me at all.The last thing I ever said to my sister. Probably the last words she ever heard – “You’re a self-satisfied bitch”. So, yep, that’s what happens when I get angry.’
River grabs hold of my hand with both of his. ‘Should I run you a bath?’ he asks. ‘Would that make you feel even a little better?’
I look up at him with a suspicious frown and laugh darkly. ‘Yousureyou’ve never been a boyfriend before?’ I ask, in an attempt to lighten the sombre mood a touch.
River scowls but it’s playful. ‘How dare you even ask such a thing.’
‘River?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m so sorry. Operation True Love has been a resounding failure.’
His face softens. ‘You got nothing to apologise for. This was all just … an idea. A guess. A crap-shoot, let’s be honest. It might not have even worked anyway. Like you said, we don’t know for certain what any ofthisis.’ He pauses before by the bathroom door. ‘Bubbles, right? The lavender-y ones?’
My eyes well. ‘Lavender-y bubbles, yes, please.’
‘Coming right up. And Gertie?’
‘Yeah?’
‘It was OperationWindbag.’
*
By the time I get out of the bath I feel utterly exhausted. I notice that River is already asleep outside on his chaiselongue, no blanket, no pillows, just splayed out in the cool evening air like a total psychopath. But he has left me his pillow mint, stacked on top of mine.
I eat them both and burrow into the blankets, left only with the terrifying reality of no Josie, no final story for Bedlam Creek and now, categorically, no Henry.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Are you alive, Gertie? Can you please let me know? I am at your flat. I let myself in after knocking for ten straight minutes and starting to worry that you had slipped in the bath and died, or choked on a burger and died, or stabbed yourself with a fountain pen and died. Haha, my imagination was running away! Maybe I should be a writer? Just kidding! But you are not home and your neighbour says she saw you getting in your car with a man who was not Henry. A man who she said looked like a younger, more sexually charismatic Matthew McConaughey crossed with Tim Riggins fromFriday Night Lights. His name is Lake or Forest or something? What is going on? Are you going off the rails? Has this man taken you? Why are you afraid, Gertie? Please let me know so that we can address the ramifications of this on your deadline.
All best,
Bridget x
I wake up hours later, not because of the headache caused by the too many bottles of beer, but because of the immovable vision in my mind of the very particular way Henry was holding Marisol. His palm was splayed across her lower back, just above her bottom, and he was pressing her to him like he couldn’t get his body close enough to hers. It looked … desperate somehow, but in a really sexy way. Henry never held me that way, not even in the first months of our relationship, the so-called ‘Let’s-fuck-on-the-side-of-the-road’ phase. Of course he spooned me and cuddled me but he never ever held me that way, like if he couldn’t hold me he might die. I adjust my pillow and then turn over because it’s 4.30 a.m. and way too early to be awake, but as I do, I notice a tiny flickering light casting yellow glimmers onto the wall from outside.
Is River awake too?
I head over to the French doors and open the curtain to see that he is indeed awake. There he is, sitting up on his chaise longue, a candle on a stool by his side, reading the first Bedlam Creek book.
He jumps a little as he spots me watching him through the glass. I pull open the French doors and step out into the balmy air, gasping slightly at the expanse of clear sky sprinkled full of stars, so unlike the thick smog of London.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,’ I say, leaning awkwardly against the wall.
‘Well, you did. I thought you were a creepy English ghost.’
‘I do resemble the living dead at daft o’clock in the morning. But would a ghost be wearing such cool Christmas tree pyjamas?’
River dangles the open book on the wooden arm of the chaise longue. ‘That’sexactlywhat they’d be wearing. Something completely befuddling, just to make everything more terrifying.’
I nod thoughtfully. ‘You know, we never hear stories of people seeing ghosts in modern-day clothes, do we? Don’t you think that’s weird?’
