Damage (15 page)

The kiss.

The realization that Blunt was just like her in his insecurities and vulnerability.

That beautiful, blissful moment.

A babble of voices interrupted them, rising above the background buzz of the people around them, and the sultry tones of that silver-haired singer.

Holly pulled away, still cradled in Blunt’s arms. She glanced across towards the source of the noise and saw a young woman tottering on high heels, arms akimbo, hair in disarray.

It took a moment to recognize that it was Ruby. Holly didn’t normally see this side of her sister’s life, dressed up to the nines and showing every indication that she’d already spent much of the evening partying hard.

Ruby peered around, getting her bearings. Then her eyes lighted on Blunt and a crooked smile broke across her face.

She must have seen Holly – hard not to notice the woman in his arms when you notice Blunt himself – but in that instant she showed no sign of having recognized her. It must have been the same as when Holly first spotted her: unaccustomed to seeing her sister like this. When was the last time Holly had been glammed up, and out at a big party?

“Hey, Nick,” said Ruby, taking a couple of unsteady steps towards him.

Holly stepped back, breaking away from his embrace, and still Ruby didn’t appear to notice her.

Even then, Holly didn’t make the connection. Maybe somewhere deep down inside there was the first spark, the first connection being made, but the pieces were yet to slot into place.

It was the look on Blunt’s face that did it.

She’d seen that look before. The flash of distaste – it wasn’t clear if that was directed at Ruby or at himself – and the almost reflexive raising of his hands as if to fend her off.

She was old news, history.

Ruby was just another one of his tarts and he didn’t want anything more to do with her.

§

He glanced across at Holly, then, and it was clear he didn’t fully realize what was taking place.

This drunken young woman staggering towards him was–

“So you’ve met my sister, Ruby?” said Holly.

His eyes darted open and his jaw sagged. He glanced from Holly to Ruby and back again.

Ruby... For the first time she noticed Holly, squinted, and then her eyes widened too as she realized that this was
Holly
.

“Oh my God, Holls, I...” She put a fist to her mouth as if she were about to try to swallow it.

“I can explain.” said Blunt. She felt his hand on her arm and shrugged it off. “It’s not what–”

“It’s not
what?
” she demanded. Then: “But it
is
, isn’t it? It’s exactly that.”

“She... It was a while back. God, Holly: she... your
sister?
She’s a
Colcroft?
”

And Ruby... She stood there, mouth still hanging open, staring at her sister. Finally, she said, “I’m sorry, Holls. I really am.”

Holly didn’t know what to feel. She should be rational about it all and see that this should be no surprise: she knew about Blunt’s history, and she knew Ruby was no angel either. And she knew that whatever had happened between them was in the past. Why should she feel jealous over one fling among many? He could hardly undo what had already happened. Neither of them could.

But...
Ruby
.

The time for being rational might come, but it certainly wasn’t here yet.

She looked at Blunt, her eyes brimming, the room becoming blurred.

She looked back at Ruby. Her sister mouthed the word
sorry
again, then turned and pushed her way through the throng of bodies as fast as her precipitous heels would take her.

Holly went after her, suddenly intensely aware of the heat and the noise and the closeness of the space around her.

“Ruby,” she called, but it was as if her voice were sucked away into the interior of the Hall.

Out into the lobby. It was brighter here, and the press of bodies not so dense, but already Ruby was lost to her.

Holly peered around.

A waiter paused, proffering a tray of drinks. People laughed, one man staggering back and gesticulating wildly. Voices swelled, filling the air. It was disorienting, dizzying.

She didn’t know what she would do if she found Ruby. What she would say. She didn’t know if this pursuit was a violent impulse or if she just wanted to fall into her sister’s arms so they could sob together over things that could never be undone.

She didn’t know what Blunt must be thinking. Whether he was angry or embarrassed or simply confused.

She pushed through more bodies, and found her way to the front doorway.

Pausing at the top of the steps, she surveyed the scene: the cars pulled up before the Hall, the marquee on the lawn, more lights and people and bustle.

She heard a revving of an engine, a mechanical squeal.

Lights flared. Holly recognized the distinctive tilted circles of the headlights of a Mini – Ruby’s Mini.

She heard a crunch of gravel as wheels spun, a machine-gun rattle of stones spraying up and hitting the bodywork of cars around the Mini. The car jerked back and Holly heard a thump of bumper against bumper. Another wheel-spinning spray of gravel and a scraping of gears and then Ruby’s car lurched towards the right, steering on full lock to get out from between other parked cars.

Holly felt a hand on her shoulder. Blunt had come after the two of them.

“Fuck no,” he muttered, as Ruby’s car skidded through a knee-high box hedge and onto the grass.

For a heart-stopping moment Holly thought her sister was going to drive straight into the marquee, then the Mini skidded sideways, steering locked again, before the wheels found purchase on the grass and she managed to swerve away from the big tent.

“No!”

Blunt was shouting now and for a moment Holly didn’t understand why he was suddenly panicking like this and then he called out again and she got it, and she felt utterly stupid that she hadn’t understood immediately.

“No! Sarah, no!”

He ran down the steps, his limp emphasized by the turn of speed, and started to thread his way through the parked cars.

Holly hung there, eyes jumping between Blunt and the twin beams of the Mini’s headlights.

Sarah
. Ruby racing off in her car was bringing it all back to Blunt: the night he’d lost his wife.

But what about Ruby?

Holly ran down the steps to the gravel. Blunt had reached the box hedge now, and was running through the gap Ruby’s car had made. Holly plunged after him.

Ahead, those twin beams swung wildly again. Ruby must have tried to turn and skidded on the grass.

Holly reached the low hedge and stepped over. She wasn’t going to get anywhere in her heels so she reached down and tugged them off. The grass was cold and damp through her stockings, a sudden, physical shock to the system.

A deep, metallic thud brought her attention back to what was happening.

She looked across and there was something different about the Mini’s headlights now. They’d stopped moving, and their alignment had altered, one beam high and pointing off at a strange angle.

A tree.

Ruby had crashed into one of the big oaks that grew in the grounds of the Hall.

Holly ran, but Blunt was ahead of her.

By the time she reached the tree, he was standing there, hands held out as if he had been reaching for the car and then frozen in mid-action.

The Mini had hit the tree head-on.

The windshield was broken and the engine had stalled and Blunt was still frozen.

Holly reached the scene, stepped past Blunt and took hold of the door handle on the driver’s side. She heaved and for a moment it resisted, then it gave and she tumbled back. Ruby spilled out, landing in a heap, partly on top of Holly as the two went sprawling to the ground. Ruby cried out and her limbs flailed, looking for purchase, and then Holly wrapped her arms around her sister and held her firmly, making soothing noises, trying to calm her.

“It’s okay,” she murmured. “Hey, Ruby, it’s okay. You’re okay. You’re safe.”

Ruby twisted, tumbled off her sister and onto her back and then her arms were around Holly and they lay there hugging and sobbing.

§

The next few minutes were all a blur to Holly.

Calming Ruby, her sister all tears and smelling of drink and her entire body heaving with deep sobs. Checking that she was okay, that somehow, miraculously, she’d driven full-on into an oak tree and emerged with only a few bruises and aches, nothing broken, nothing bleeding.

Seeing Blunt still standing there. Watching as he crumpled slowly to his knees, his hands on his thighs, a panicked-animal look in his eyes. Trying to calm him, too. Telling him it was okay and realizing that he wasn’t even here, right now: he was somewhere else, somewhere dark – gone back to an awful night the year before when he had lost his wife and he had wished it was him and not her.

People gathering around them. Such a surreal sight: all those tuxedos and ball gowns gathering around a wrecked car, the three of them still on the ground, a sudden sense of shock having descended over them.

Getting shakily to her feet. Ruby quiet now; Blunt silent, too, still looking like a creature in shock.

Unsteadily, they headed back up towards the Hall. When they reached the gravel Holly had forgotten even that she had discarded her shoes somewhere in the dark. She took one step and squealed at the stabbing of stones and that seemed to be the thing that broke the spell.

She stepped back, Ruby caught her, and suddenly the three of them were standing close.

She looked at Blunt and he still had that lost look, but there was something else, too.

“Sarah...” he gasped.

Holly put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, Nicholas,” she said. “But Sarah’s not here.”

He jerked away. “Don’t you think I know that?” he snapped. “Don’t you think I’m not aware of that every single second of every single day? It should have been me. I should have been driving. I shouldn’t have been drunk. I shouldn’t have been dragging her broken body out of the wreckage. I... You know what they told me? They said if I hadn’t tried to move her she might... But I had to move her. I had to get her out. There was the smell of burning in the air. I couldn’t leave her like that.”

Holly stared at him, the horror of that night only now really penetrating. What could anyone do in that situation? Leave your loved one in the wreckage, knowing the car might go up in flames at any moment? Or move them, knowing you might be making things worse? How could anyone make that judgment?

And yet on that awful night Blunt had been forced to do so. Forced to choose, knowing that the consequences would be with him forever.

No wonder he was so torn apart. No wonder he had stood there frozen beside Ruby’s wrecked Mini.

She reached for him again, but he was lost to her.

Tears streamed down his face as he spun away, then barged past, across the gravel and up the steps.

“Out of here! Everyone out!” he bellowed into the Hall.

Holly rushed after him, oblivious to the sharp stones even as they cut through her stockings and into the soles of her feet, making them bleed.

By the time she reached the doorway he was inside, still shouting, barging his way past guests. A waiter was on his knees, clearing up the debris of a tray and broken glasses on the floor.

Blunt reached one of the tables where glasses and bottles were arranged, seized one side and tipped it back in a great crashing of breaking glass.

“Out!”

He came to the next table and tipped it.

Someone reached for him and he flailed a fist wildly, not making contact but almost throwing himself to the ground with his own momentum.

“Out...”

He was against one wall now. He reached up and found the corner of a picture frame, hauled it down and hurled it to the floor.

“Out...”

She went to him, stood before him until he met her look.

“Nicholas.”

“Out!”

“Nicholas.”

“Get out. You’re not...”

Her
. Not Sarah.

He turned away from her. Guests backed away as he staggered towards the stairs and started to climb.

“All of you: out!”

She watched him, not knowing what to do or how to react. Feeling guilty that her first response was a selfish one: a sense of something wonderful that had been offered to her and was now being withdrawn. She remembered how he had made her feel, how they had talked for hours, how they had chatted and laughed as they walked through the grounds of the Hall with Alfie only that morning.

She knew the man he could be, but now she saw only the broken, embittered man that he found it so easy to become instead.

“Out!”

She turned and joined the flow of guests heading for the exit, leaving a trail of bloody footprints behind her.

Tonight the party was well and truly over. Perhaps forever.

§

There was a crush in the doorway. Nobody wanted to be the last to leave, with their host kicking off like this. She could hear them gossiping all around her. Speculating about what had happened, why Blunt had blown up like this.

She wondered then if this was a first. Or was he, perhaps, prone to this kind of outburst? She thought not. Yes, he was erratic and moody, but this was different; this was triggered by something very specific – Ruby crashing her Mini and taking him right back to the night he had lost his wife.

Ruby.

Her sister stood outside among the parked cars. Waiting. Her eyes darted as she scanned everyone as they emerged from the Hall, and then she saw Holly. She opened her mouth, then closed it, uncertain.

Holly paused. She still didn’t know how she felt.

Ruby and Blunt.

She knew it meant nothing – Blunt had even appeared to have half-forgotten; he certainly hadn’t known who Ruby was. But still.

Ruby.

§

Holly gave her sister a brief nod, and walked on past her.

It was all she could do not to wince with every step, the gravel sharp on the soles of her torn feet. She stepped through the space left by the Mini, through the flattened gap in the low box hedge and now her feet were cold and wet as well as sore.