by Lovett, Jo
‘Yeah, she wasn’t going down the tulip discussion track.’
‘I know. Which is ridiculous, because who doesn’t love a tulip chat?’
Dan took a mini olive-on-bread canapé from an offered platter. ‘You know, I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation about tulips.’
‘I mean, I can offer you some tulip talk right now, if you like, because you have missed out.’
Dan laughed. God. Evie really hoped that one day she’d stop going squishy inside at the sound of his laugh and the way his eyes crinkled and, basically, just everything about him.
Twenty-Seven
Now – August 2022
Dan
Later that evening, Dan leaned back lazily in his chair at the top table and watched Evie for a moment as she made her way across the marquee to visit the loos between main course and pudding. It was taking her ages to get there: she had to stop for so many chats. Dan didn’t think she had any idea how much she lit up every room or conversation that she was in. And he was pretty sure that she had no idea how good she looked in that bridesmaid’s dress. In fact, she acted like she never realised how good she looked on any given occasion.
Angus’s mother, sitting next to him, coughed, and he nearly jumped. Shit, he’d been totally ignoring her. And Max, on her other side, had also got up to go somewhere, presumably also the loo. The two of them had been chatting away for pretty much the whole meal, which had meant that Dan had had the perfect excuse to spend the entire time talking to Evie without it looking like it meant anything. But now poor Helen looked a bit lost.
‘This is a delicious meal, isn’t it, Helen?’ he said to her.
As he listened to her telling him about the cruise she and her husband had taken around the Balkans recently, it was a struggle not to keep looking over to see whether Evie was on her way back.
In the end, she came back with Max, who could hopefully take the reins on the Helen conversation again.
‘So I had a really good chat with Max and Greggy outside the loo,’ Evie whispered after she’d sat down, shaking her napkin out in her lap. ‘They told me about getting engaged last month but not announcing it yet until Sasha’s wedding’s over. That’s so lovely. So you’re going to have another family wedding next year.’
‘It is lovely.’ Dan nodded. ‘Greggy’s perfect for Max.’
‘Max has actually got the perfect life when you think about it.’ Evie looked up at the waiter as he placed her dessert in front of her and said thank you with a big smile, which made the waiter nearly drop his tray.
‘Got it?’ Dan straightened the tray in the waiter’s hands and turned back to Evie. She had no idea the effect she had on people. ‘Yes, he and Greggy are perfect together.’
‘Not just that,’ said Evie, taking a small mouthful of her crème brûlée. ‘Everything. His job. They’re talking about adopting together. I always get the sense that he’s so happy in his own skin.’
‘Really? I don’t think so.’ God, he hadn’t meant to sound so harsh. Evie was staring at him, her eyes wide open.
‘I’m sorry?’ she said.
Dan suddenly wanted to explain.
‘How can he be happy in his own skin and in his job?’ he said, doing his best to keep his voice low. Max was sitting only two seats along. ‘He should have been a top athlete. A star. He was a great footballer and he was also on course to make the GB athletics team. The Olympics. And instead he walks with a limp and he’s physio to that team, to people he used to beat.’ And all of that was Dan’s fault.
‘But he’s got a great career now and when he talks about it he’s so animated, and he has so many plans for the future. And so many athletes and sportspeople get injured at a crucial moment and it’s all over. If he hadn’t had that accident it could easily have been something else. Like that girl Sasha used to play netball with who fell off a kerb and twisted her knee the day before her England trials and never got to play for England even though everyone said she was the best wing defence ever. And, even for the tiny number of people who make it to the top, elite sport doesn’t last long. You need another career afterwards. And Max has a fantastic career.’
Dan shook his head. Evie was wrong. ‘But all he ever wanted to do was get to the GB team. I ruined that for him.’ God. What had he just said? He never talked about this. He looked down at the table, put a couple of sugar lumps into his cup and stirred his coffee very deliberately.
‘You did?’
‘The accident was my fault.’ That was only the second time he’d ever said that out loud. He looked up from his coffee cup to see how Evie was reacting. She had her eyes fixed on his face and she looked… sympathetic. Well, that was the wrong reaction. She should be condemning him.
‘Dan. I’m so sorry. What happened? If you’d like to say? I never heard exactly.’ That was because no-one knew the exact details, not even Lucie and Sasha. Their mother had shut them all down and never talked about it.
He shook his head. ‘You shouldn’t feel sorry for me. You’ve misunderstood. It was my fault. We’d been drinking. We were jostling in the road. I gave Max a big shove and he tripped, and a car came round a bend and hit him.’ It was strange saying this out loud. Straight after the accident, at the hospital, he’d told his parents. His father had told him he was a moron and his mother had hugged him and said he should never ever say again that it was his fault, because it wasn’t. That was the kind of thing that mothers said, and when you were little it helped, but when you were sixteen, and you knew they were wrong, it didn’t. The one thing Dan had gained from what she’d said that day was the understanding that she definitely couldn’t deal with talking about the accident. So he’d never mentioned it again.
He added another two sugar lumps to his coffee and stirred some more. This time he couldn’t look at Evie. He didn’t want to see the sympathy in her eyes change to condemnation.
‘Oh my goodness.’ Bizarrely, her voice had softened. ‘Dan, you can’t think that that was your fault. Presumably you didn’t know the car was coming. Presumably he’d been shoving you too. Presumably it was all good-natured.’
‘No, it wasn’t good-natured. We were properly arguing. About our father and his affairs.’ Dan looked up at Evie again. ‘We were really angry with each other. Max wanted to tell our mother and I didn’t. He was right, of course.’
‘I’m not sure he was necessarily right – I don’t think it would ever be that clear-cut? She might already have known and not wanted to be pushed into acting on it. And it would be unbelievably hard to hear that from your child, surely. But more importantly, did you want to injure Max severely?’
‘Well, no, obviously not long-term. Not severely. But in that moment I wouldn’t have minded giving him a nosebleed. I absolutely acted in anger.’
‘Everyone gets angry sometimes, though. You clearly didn’t want anything really bad to happen to him. Was he equally angry with you?’
Dan nodded but didn’t say anything. He didn’t really have his voice enough under control to speak.
My first point—’ Evie tapped one of the fingers of her left hand with her right forefinger ‘—is that if you were equally angry and a bit drunk and you were shoving each other in anger next to a road then either one of you could have got injured in many different ways. Arguably you’re both lucky that nothing worse happened.’ She tapped another finger, hard. ‘Secondly, to my eyes, Max is genuinely really happy in his life now, maybe happier than you seem to be right now. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise. Maybe life as a top GB athlete wouldn’t have been for him. I mean, he loves his lazy weekends with Greggy and his social life and his cooking and his career and his curries. I mean, all sorts of things that he wouldn’t have got to do if he’d been an athlete all the way through his twenties. Have you ever talked to him about it?’
‘No.’
‘Maybe you should. Maybe you’d discover that I’m right.’
Dan added two more lumps of sugar to his coffee and did some more sti
rring. ‘I guess you do have a point,’ he said. Really just for something to say, because he didn’t know what he thought about what Evie had just said. If she really did have a point. While she was talking, it had sounded like it made sense. Except he knew that it didn’t. He knew that it was his fault.
‘You’re trying to work out the flaw in everything I said, aren’t you?’ Evie said. ‘You think I’m wrong but you can’t work out why?’
Dan twisted his mouth, gave his coffee another stir, and nodded.
‘I don’t think I’m wrong,’ Evie said. ‘And I think it’s really important to talk about things that upset you, otherwise they eat away at you.’
‘I don’t actually know what I think now,’ Dan said, round a sudden very large lump in his throat. He took a big drink of his coffee to hide his face because it felt like his eyes might be glistening. ‘Oh my God,’ he said.
‘Coffee really sweet and really cold?’
‘So disgusting. I’m almost gagging.’
Evie sniggered. ‘I think you put about eight sugar cubes in there. Want one of those chocolate truffles to take the taste away? They’re quite bitter. I’m just going to say one more thing about the accident. Talk to Max. Tell him what you told me and listen to his answer. Anyway.’ She reached for the plate and handed it to him. ‘Funny how dark chocolate’s more addictive than the sweet stuff even though it isn’t even that nice.’
‘I think it’s the caffeine content. And something like theobromine. I read about it recently.’
As happy chatter bubbled around them, and Dan and Evie’s conversation meandered from chocolate and tastebuds through favourite books to great film adaptations, thoughts about the accident and Max chugged away at the back of Dan’s brain.
When they stopped talking to clap while Sasha stood up to give the first speech, Dan said under cover of all the noise, ‘Evie, thank you. For your pep talk. I think it might have made sense.’
‘Hey. I always make sense.’ She smiled at him. ‘I really do think you should talk to Max about it.’
Dan looked at his older brother’s profile. Max turned round and caught his gaze and grinned at him. Dan smiled back. Maybe he actually would talk to him.
Although… Yeah, it would be hard. And right now it was Sasha’s wedding reception. Another time.
When dinner was over, Sasha hauled a supposedly reluctant Angus up onto the dance floor for the first dance.
‘Oh my goodness.’ Evie’s jaw was literally on the floor. Most people’s jaws were. ‘Angus is amazing. He must have been having serious lessons. He’s like a Strictly pro.’
‘I know. Wow. Hmm. He’s setting the bar high for the rest of us. The perfect excuse not to dance this evening, I think.’
‘What? No. You have to dance. It’s your sister’s wedding. You can’t let her down.’
Dan rolled his eyes but allowed Evie to draw him towards the dance floor when the first song ended and Sasha beckoned everyone over. If he was honest, he’d always had a lot of fun dancing with Evie in the past.
They joined a large group of enthusiastic dancers, including Max and Greggy, Lucie and her husband, and various friends and their other halves.
About five songs in, the band changed to a slow song, and, following Sasha and Angus’s lead, everyone around them coupled up into waltzing stances. Dan looked at Evie. It would probably be stranger not to dance with her than to dance with her. He raised his eyebrows at her and held his arms out a little. After a moment’s hesitation, she smiled at him and stepped forward.
And as soon as he was holding her close, it felt good. One arm round her waist, the other holding her hand, able to inhale her – frankly, seductive – scent, feel her gorgeous softness against him, he was overwhelmed with memories of their night in Vegas. Kind of wrong of him, given Matthew – currently playing golf, apparently all he ever did – but they were only dancing. It wasn’t like he was going to act on his thoughts.
They danced slowly, languorously, closely, their fingers laced together, swaying in time to the music, not really talking, just enjoying the moment. Dan was enjoying it, anyway, and he was pretty sure that Evie was now, from the way that for a few seconds she’d held herself tense and at a slight distance, and then she’d relaxed right against him.
The next one was also a good one for slow dancing to.
It was a disappointment when the song ended and a very upbeat one – which made it kind of ridiculous to carry on with the waltzing – started.
They were still swaying together gently, when Greggy tapped Dan on the shoulder and said, ‘It has to be my turn to dance with gorgeous Evie now. I think she deserves a partner who can pull some serious moves, and, if I’m honest, I’d have to call you a little conservative as a dancer.’
‘Are you joking?’ Dan said. ‘I’ve been moving my feet and everything.’
Evie laughed and loosened her arms from where, Dan now realised, they’d still been round his neck. Dan reluctantly took his own arms from around her.
‘Fancy some fresh air?’ Max had popped up on the other side of them from Greggy.
‘Yeah, why not?’ Not really.
Dan couldn’t resist looking over his shoulder as he and Max walked towards the marquee entrance, just to take a quick look at Evie and Greggy. He frowned as a man he didn’t recognise held out his hand to Evie and gave her a quick twirl, and then relaxed when she shimmied back towards Greggy.
They smacked straight into a wall of freezing air the second they stepped outside the tent.
‘Woah.’ Dan’s breath was visible in the air. ‘That’s fresh.’
‘Yeah, great for clearing your head.’
‘How come you need to clear your head?’
‘Well, I don’t really.’ Max led the way towards the path that wound round the house. ‘I just thought it would be nice to have a chat.’
‘Okay.’ Little bit weird.
‘So I was chatting to Dad earlier.’ Max stopped in the shelter of the porch next to the kitchen door. Oh, right.
‘Great.’ Dan could feel his shoulders growing tense.
‘And I just wanted to say that I know that you can’t bring yourself to speak to him really. And I totally get that. He treated Mum appallingly, for years, and obviously we aren’t party to their conversations, but it doesn’t seem like he’s ever apologised properly. But he’s our father and it feels like if we don’t speak to him, we might suffer more than he does. And in fact do we actually want him to suffer? You know, the whole two wrongs don’t make a right thing. He’s our dad. And in some ways he was a good dad while we were growing up. And I’m feeling a lot better about things now that I’ve spoken to him. I’m going to meet him for lunch soon. Re-establish proper contact.’
Dan didn’t want to re-establish contact and he didn’t want to think about their father possibly having been a good dad at times. But as Evie had said about his parents, things weren’t always black and white, were they? An image flashed through his mind of their dad bowling patiently to him and Max in the village cricket net for hours on end so that they could perfect their batting. And one of him joining in village carol-singing with great, good-humoured enthusiasm. And, further back, of him reading bedtime stories to Dan. There were so many memories. Some not brilliant – his father was definitely quite abrasive at times – but also a lot of good ones.
He shook his head and kicked his shoe against the wall of the house. What was it with this evening? Evie trying to get him to talk to Max and now Max trying to get him to talk to his father? Did everyone he knew think he had stuff he needed to talk about?
Nope. He wasn’t talking.
‘I can’t,’ he said.
‘Okay. Fair enough. Just putting it out there,’ Max said. ‘So how are things with Evie?’
‘There are no things with Evie,’ Dan said, trying not to snap. Had Max and Greggy ambushed him and Evie on purpose to orchestrate this chat?
‘Just, you know, every time I’ve ever seen you together, you seem
to work so well together.’
Dan shook his head. ‘She has a boyfriend. There’s nothing between us.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Max, mildly.
Dan suddenly wondered what would happen if – in a parallel universe; he wasn’t actually going to do it – he did talk to Max about the accident.
‘What?’ asked Max.
‘Nothing,’ Dan said.
When they got back inside, Dan saw that Evie was dancing with a smarmy-looking, boringly handsome man who he didn’t recognise. All he wanted to do was dance with her himself, but obviously he couldn’t just walk onto the dance floor and pull her away.
Maybe he’d get himself a drink. Yeah, he was a little bit thirsty. As he skirted the dance floor, he kept an eye on Evie. Just in case she looked like she wanted to stop dancing, that was all.
She must have felt his eyes on her, because she looked over and smiled right at him.
Dan stopped walking and smiled back at her.
She stood on tiptoes and said something to the man she’d been dancing with – Dan really didn’t like the look of him, if he was honest – and wove her way across the dance floor towards Dan.
‘Hey,’ he said, still smiling, when she got to him. ‘Drink?’
‘That would be lovely. Dancing’s hot work.’
They turned and started to make their way over to the bar, their steps falling in together.
‘Max just told me that he’s been talking to our father and he thinks I should too.’
‘How do you feel about that?’
‘I don’t think I can. Definitely not now, anyway.’
‘Maybe think about it in your own time? There’s no hurry, is there?’
Dan nodded.
‘Want to dance again when we’ve finished our drinks?’ he asked.
‘Definitely. Although you have big shoes to fill now. Greggy’s a fantastic dancer.’
Twenty-Eight
