by Anna Bloom
“Well you’re late. Half the rugby club are thinking of stampeding the bar while they wait.”
Hannah chuckled. “I’ve warned Josh that if he so much as sniffs a pint before the wedding, I’m calling it all off.”
I bet she would too. Hannah took no prisoners, not ever. Shoot 'em down and leave them for dead. I loved her for it.
The teenager who used to kick boys in the nuts was never far from the surface. The fact she had chosen a rugby playing Scot for her future seemed a perfect match.
“Right then.” The three of us looked at one another and I tried to clear my throat again. “Hannah.” Ronnie nodded gently in encouragement and I pulled a velvet box out from behind my back. “Something borrowed, something blue, and something old.”
“What?” Her eyes widened. “I thought we weren’t doing traditions?”
“Lassie, you’ve got me in a skirt. You can’t have it both ways.”
She chuckled, but her slender fingers shook as she took the box. “What is it?”
I reached for Ronnie’s hand, entwining our fingers together. It was the way I planned to go when my time came, our fingers still tightly bound, our grip on one another, never lessening.
“These are my mother’s. Ryan and Liam said you should have them too. We all clubbed together to have them reset into something for today.”
Hannah opened the box and stared at the sapphire and diamond drop earrings. We’d gone for an elegant Art Deco design.
“They are the same colour as your eyes.” Hannah looked up at me, tears lining her own.
“Heaven and slate.” Ronnie whispered.
“I can’t take these. I’ll wear them today and then you should keep them for Poppy.”
I folded my spare hand over Hannah’s, pressing her fingers down on the box. “I’m the proudest father today, Hannah. Thank you for letting me be part of your life.”
She nodded just once, and I cleared my throat. “Right, let’s get you married. We need a wee dram of whisky and a reel.” I thickened my accent and watched Ronnie go glassy-eyed.
Ha. You could take the boy out of Scotland, but you couldn’t take Scotland out of the man.
The End
Read on for an exclusive extract from The Other Side of Blue
The Other Side of Blue
Six Years Ago
The house rattles as Luca bashes through the back door. It’s got a familiar bang, the hinges a little too loose, the pull a little too hard. Luca manages to make the act of shutting a door insolent. It’s one of his life skills.
Kicking my legs as I lay on my tummy, stretched across my bed, I turn the page of my book and listen to the sounds in the house below.
The party finished early and from what it sounds like, Luca has come home alone.
I snort and flick another page, my eyes word blind to the text on the paper.
From outside the window a trash can lid echoes as it closes and the skin along my spine prickles, the hairs on the back of my arms bristling in the cool air from the inch my window is ajar.
Blue must be home too. I strain my hearing for any sound of a girl, any giggle or whimpered sigh but nothing reaches my ears.
I breathe out a sigh of relief. There’s no noise from next door. As I have all too many times I imagine Blue padding through his house, where he might skip a step, double check his foot placing so as to not make a sound.
I’ve never been in Blue’s house. Of course I haven’t.
I’m Luca’s sister, the annoying hanger on they have to watch during summer when they ride up and down the road on their bikes. Watch Lyra while I go to the store… the hairdressers… the anywhere other than here.
Sure that he’s now through the house I roll off my purple comforter and peep around the edge of my curtains.
Blue’s room is opposite mine, matching rectangles of glass facing one another.
His navy drapes are half pulled, but the light isn’t yet on; the naked bulb blank where it would normally illuminate a circle of light in the centre of the room.
Luca stumbles on our stairs, his muffled curse filling the silent night. I wait for Mom to tell him to keep it down but she doesn’t stir, whether she asleep or avoiding, who the hell knows.
There’s a knock on my door and I dive for my bed, flattening myself on the mattress just as Luca cracks a gap between the hallway and my room. “Hey, Ly, you still awake?”
Yes, waiting for you and Blue to come home… I don’t say this, I’m not stupid. Instead I motion to the book and the dog eared pages. “Riveting read,” I wince the lie. Truth, I would have been asleep by now but my brother has stayed out late and part of me needs to know they are home safe more than I need my own sleep.
I can sleep during trig tomorrow, would possibly make it more exciting.
“Good party?” I ask, rolling onto my back and hooking my hands beneath my head, feigning an innocence my heart pounding on the inside doesn’t want to be part of.
Go away, Luca so I can look out the window.
Luca shrugs, his shoulders raising and then falling, but his lips curve with a smile that makes my stomach turn. Please don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.
But I do, desperately.
What Luca does, Blue does.
Inseparable from three years old, where one friend treads, the other isn’t far behind.
“Cate was gunning for Jack.”
I nod slowly. “Was he playing?” I swirl a strand of hair between my fingers, wrapping my index finger tight to make a ringlet of my loose curls.
Luca doesn’t think I know what him and Blue do. Of course I do. I have ears and eyes, normally superglued to the boy in the house next door.
Blue, is Jack.
He’s Jack to everyone, Jack Cross, bad boy green eyed terror of the neighbourhood.
To me, he will always be simply Blue.
It’s the colour I’d paint his soul if it were ever mine to own.
But then I’m twelve and a half.
And given to whimsical fancies that I can sense the colour of his soul.
Blue and Luca are eighteen.
I snap my book shut. “Do you need anything?” I narrow my gaze.
“Fiesty, is it the monthlies?”
I lob a pillow at Lucas, mainly because he’s said something so antiquated as monthlies. That’s Gram’s words there.
Gram. The grownup in the house.
“Night, Lyra.” He waves his fingers at me, his smile taunting and as soon as he’s turned, I launch for the door, clicking it shut with the weight of my back.
From the spot by the door I can see straight into Blue’s room.
The globe of a naked lightbulb is lit and he’s leaning against his windowsill, his eyes direct on my window.
My heart catches, races, my tongue drying and tingling as I fight to move air through my lungs.
And then it comes, the shout, the crash, the scream. The symphony our small neighbourhood hear all too often while turning deaf ears in its direction.
It must have been the bin; he woke him up.
I lift my hand in a small wave and Blue’s face shadows. I watch as he moves towards the window and lifts the sign I read more than I’d like.
Play for me.
He nods, a smile so tragic and so perfectly crooked brightening his face for a split moment, and I can see across the small gap between our houses the muscles in his arms flex under his T-shirt.
I turn and pick up my violin from my desk, running my thumb across the strings to check it’s still tuned. Satisfied, I pick up my bow and tuck the violin under my chin, balancing the bow on the strings, stepping towards the window.
Blue sits on his window seat, his arms looped around his knees, his head resting on his arms, his eyes on me as I play above the shouts and cries of his parents ringing through the night below us.
I play until my fingers are numb and he slips away, switching off the globe of light and I put my violin back on my desk and diving under the covers
and locking my memories of the beautifully broken smile of the evening in my memory box, just in case I never get to see it again.
Coming October 15th 2020
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Acknowledgments
Thank you so much to all my Bloomers who have stuck with me throughout this year.
And what a year it’s been. It’s fair to say life has changed for us all. Adjusting to it hasn’t been easy.
I keep thinking to next year, what will our lives be like then?
This book wasn’t easy to write, three children and Wes home, time was difficult to find. I’d never want to release something I wasn’t 100% satisfied in. I finally achieved it with the pages of this book.
Nikki Ashton, Sarah Dale and Lynn Newman… thank you thank you, thank you. I love you all.
Nina and Twink, thank you for sticking with me and checking in.
Ann Walker, I love your, “I’ve just got one little question.” You make me smile.
Andrea, mate. Gah I couldn’t do this without you.
Nikki Groom, partner in crime, thank you for making me laugh.
Lastly a thank you to my family. Wes, Lana, Jake and Thea, my Lockdown jail mates. You all mean the world.
Mum, Dad and Verity. I love you.
Keep well and safe,
Anna xxx
