Apparently it is unacceptable workplace conduct to give your co-worker a bloody nose, so on suspension I run over to Adam’s. I know he will be in. It is his first wedding anniversary – or rather the anniversary of his first wedding – and he always takes the day off work. He knows I generally find myself coming over there to keep him company. He never objects.
I find him sitting in the dark drinking Veuve Clicquot, the same champagne they had at their reception. He is watching the wedding video, smiling softly to himself. Adam is a real romantic, although you wouldn’t know it unless you are close to him.
‘Dan! What are you doing here? How did you …?’
I remind him about the spare key, for use in emergencies.
‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Right. I thought I’d changed the locks after, you know?’
I shrug and sit down next to him, wincing as the scars of last night’s research make themselves felt. After that initial first shock, though, the pain can be endured.
He sips some champagne and presses pause on the video. The best man is in the act of handing over the rings. I understood when Adam didn’t ask me to be best man. After all, if I’d been there at the altar with him and Helen, his loyalties would have been divided.
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there to comfort you, that night,’ I say.
‘It’s okay, mate,’ he says, punching me lightly on the arm. ‘Your aunt was sick.’ He presses play again on the television.
We sit there, listening to each other’s breathing. Or at least, I listen to his. It is regular but deep, and every so often, he sighs. The grief is still there, it seems. It reminds me of old times, when I was fourteen and the grief was mine, and he sat next to me in church. I held hands with his mother, on the other side of me. She squeezed my hand. I took Adam’s hand and squeezed it. He didn’t squeeze back. At first. I wonder now whether I should take his hand and squeeze it? But no. He understands without that, now, having read my earlier work.
On screen, with the best man out of the way, the bridal couple are revealed again. Helen has mistakenly worn a strapless dress. It is either to show off her cleavage or the family wedding jewellery. Both are too showy.
‘She looked beautiful,’ comes a voice from behind us.
I jump and turn. Nicole is here! She is wrapped in a silk dressing gown – at 11a.m. The luxury of not having to earn your keep. It doesn’t look like there’s much on under her dressing gown. That doesn’t interest me. But it would interest Luke. It interests Adam, too, unfortunately, despite this being his and Helen’s day – he strokes her silken arm.
Nicole is not in the market for his seduction, though.
‘I just wish Helen had been more careful,’ says Nicole, ‘on her ride.’
‘But then you couldn’t have married Adam,’ I say, which is true.
Nicole stares at me as though I have missed the point. Apparently it is rude to state the obvious.
‘Dan just means we have to be thankful, Nic. That’s all,’ says Adam, playing peace-maker.
‘Yes, that’s all,’ I say. ‘Don’t misunderstand me.’
‘Helen would be happy for us,’ says Adam. ‘Believe me. She was a very generous person.’
I’m sure Nicole has heard it all before, had her second-wife guilt assuaged while she delights in her inherited husband. But still, there’s no harm in comforting her. If it will bring her close to Luke.
‘Come and join us, Nicole. Plenty of room.’ I pat the sofa next to me.
‘No, I’m fine. I’d be intruding. I’ll go and take a shower or something.’
‘I insist,’ I say.
‘Yes, come on, Nic,’ says Adam, looking at her. ‘I want to mark the past, but I can still celebrate our future, hey?’
You can see why Nicole thinks Adam loves her. When the sapphire of his eyes is directed on you, the world sparkles. Plus, Nicole apparently enjoys the idea of being celebrated. She moves to join us on the sofa, and stands between me and Adam, waiting, apparently expecting me to shift over so that she can sit next to Adam. I do shift, but closer to Adam, leaving her with the bit of sofa on my other side. Rolling her eyes, she sits down next to me. Even a banker’s sofa is not big enough for three adults to sit next to each other without touching. On the one side, is Nicole’s leg, pressing into mine. On the other, is Adam’s, resting comfortably against me. I know which one I would like to touch. But that is forbidden to me. Adam made that clear, after book two, by not responding, when he’d read it.
Nicole’s dressing gown has come slightly loose, revealing pale inner thigh on both her legs. I lean over her, and gently pull the dressing gown over thighs, tightening the sash. She gasps and pushes me away, standing up.
‘Don’t!’ she says.
Even Adam has to look up at this.
‘What?’ he asks.
‘Dan touched me!’ Nicole exclaims.
‘I was trying to protect her modesty,’ I say. ‘The belt had come undone.’
‘He touched me!’ Nicole says again.
Adam leans over me to pat Nicole’s leg.
‘I don’t think Dan’s interested in that kind of thing, honey,’ he says, reassuring her. Then he takes a sip of champagne and turns back to the screen.
He knows, you see, that I only love him. He will have read that, when he read book two. We’ve never discussed it, but he must have read it. By now. What he doesn’t know is the full extent of how the method will manifest itself, with Nicole.
Nicole shoots a glance at me, pulling the dressing gown tight around herself. This will make things a bit more difficult for Luke. But there are ways round resistance.
Nicole stands abruptly. ‘I’m going to have that shower.’ and she leaves us to it.
Once she’s gone, Adam turns to me. ‘Is this going to be an issue?’ he asks. ‘Because I need you to get on with Nic. Like you got on with Helen.’
I resist the urge to snort. Helen hated me. Plus, I never got invited over as much when she was alive. Even when I dropped by, they wouldn’t open up. Adam’s got better about that, since she died.
‘I never said how grateful I was for your support,’ Adam says earnestly, ‘after the accident, and the, you know …’
‘The break-in.’
‘Right. The “break-in”.’
We stare at the wedding video. ‘I do,’ says screen Adam. I remember sitting in the congregation, wishing I’d given him book two sooner. I gave it to him after the rehearsal, the night before, asking him to read it before the big day. He laughed and said he needed to sleep, to keep his stamina for the big day. I suggested he read it on honeymoon. He laughed again, clapped me on the arm. ‘Mate, you crack me up!’ he’d said.
‘She died doing what she loved, you know,’ I say, in case it will make him happy. I don’t think the idea of Adam dying doing what he loved would make me happy. Particularly if it was Nicole.
‘Right,’ he says. ‘She just loved cycling along cold dark lanes.’
‘While you were out partying,’ I half-joke. She just loved that, too – nagged him about it. If she’d lived, she would have guilt-tripped him for not collecting her.
‘It was a work thing. You saw that, on Facebook – I had to go out with the guys. But listen, Dan mate, it’s so important we all get on: you, me and Nic.’ He looks at me, his cheeks flushed. I know it’s the champagne, but I wish it wasn’t.
‘I know what,’ he says, reaching into his pocket. He pulls out a wad of cash. ‘Here. Take her out.’
‘What?’
‘Take Nic out for the day. The park or the zoo and lunch, or something. I need to be alone, with the video, today, do my grieving – you know that.’
I nod, and accept the money. I will take Nicole out.
But first, that shower.