My first thought when I wake up is that I’m going to be sick. But when I try to move, I feel even worse, so I just try to stay very, very still and hope it goes away. My feet hurt. A lot. Actually, everything hurts. I don’t remember coming home and I feel that stab of panic that I’ve probably lost my bag or my phone, but one of my hands is hanging off the bed and I think it’s my phone my fingers are resting on.
I try to remember coming home, but there’s nothing. The last thing I can remember is eating a hot dog, I think. Something with ketchup, anyway. Ketchup. Something about ketchup tugs at the back of my brain, but I can’t quite grab it. I roll over and press my forehead into the pillow. The back of my neck feels crunchy. And my mouth is horribly dry. I feel around the floor next to my phone and find a water bottle. I manage to bring it up into the bed and get the lid off, but when I try to tip my head back to drink some, it feels like my brain is going to burst. I hold onto my forehead with my other hand and force some water down. I’ve only just got my head back on my pillow when my mouth fills with fluid again and I lurch out of my bed, stagger into the bathroom, and drop to my knees in front of the loo.
Once I’ve finished throwing up, I haul myself to standing using the sink and let out a squeak of horror when I see my reflection. Obviously I didn’t take my make-up off and Leonie’s ‘smoky eye’ is smeared all over the place. I look like a raccoon. A very sick and pasty raccoon. I clean my eyes with a cleansing wipe, but it doesn’t really help. The raccoon effect has gone, but I still look sick and pasty.
I stagger back into the bedroom and find Elyse in Leonie’s bed, sitting up against the pillows and looking down at her phone. I can see the shape of Leonie under the duvet next to her. Elyse looks up at me and grins.
‘Fuck me,’ she says. ‘You look horrific.’
‘Thanks,’ I say, wincing.
‘Did you just vom?’
I start to nod, but it hurts my neck, my head, my eyeballs. ‘Yeah.’
‘How many shots did you have?’
‘How should I know?’
‘I didn’t even see you buying them,’ she says. And then she snorts and points at me. ‘You know who you look like? Voldemort.’
‘Don’t say his name,’ Leonie mumbles, her voice muffled from the duvet being over her head.
‘You think You-Know-Who is scary, wait til you see Milly,’ Elyse says, but Leonie doesn’t even move.
‘Why did you sleep in here?’ I ask Elyse.
‘Didn’t want to wake Mum,’ she says. And then, ‘Luke was worried about you.’
My stomach drops and I clamp my hand over my mouth again, but the sick feeling goes back down.
‘Oh god,’ I say when I can. I stagger over to my bed and lie down, curling up in a foetal position, shame burning in my stomach.
‘What?’ Elyse says.
‘I don’t remember,’ I mumble. ‘I think I said some stuff.’
‘Said stuff?’ Leonie says from under the duvet. ‘You were trying to lick his face.’
I roll onto my belly and pull my knees up under myself, feeling a stretch in my lower back. ‘No, no, no.’
‘I mean, he looked pretty into it.’
‘I wasn’t,’ I say.
Was I?
But I remember. Sort of. It feels like it might have been a dream, but I can definitely see his face, close and a bit blurry. And I remember looking at his mouth. His lips. Oh god. Oh god, did I bite his lip?
‘I half expected him to be in here when me and Leonie came in, actually,’ Elyse says. ‘You two got the first cab. He was really keen to get you home. I thought he was on a promise.’
I turn my head away from the pillow. I need to breathe. Or maybe I don’t. Maybe I should just lie here until I slowly suffocate.
‘Was I dressed?’ I say, my stomach flipping with panic. ‘When you got back? Did I have clothes on?’
‘Fucking hell, Mil, of course you did. You were face down on the bed, drooling and snoring. Your knickers were showing, but you were decent enough. He took your boots off, I think, that’s all.’
I have a second of panic that my feet were probably rank, thanks to the boots, but it’s soon overwhelmed by the total mortification I feel about Luke bringing me back here, hammered. And whatever the hell I was doing to him at the bar. I think I tried to undo his shirt. I remember laughing because my fingers felt soft and bendy and I couldn’t work the buttons. I try to picture his face – was he laughing too? – but all I can see is him frowning at me, looking confused. And then I realise. That wasn’t last night. That was last time. After the funeral.
Everyone is slightly hung-over. No one is as bad as me, but none of us is feeling that great. Stefano has made a huge breakfast for us all and we’re all slumped around the table, looking rough. Not Luke though. Luke hasn’t come down yet.
‘You had a good time, then?’ Stefano asks us, laughing.
‘Great,’ Toby says, folding a piece of pastry into his mouth.
‘You are an excellent dancer,’ Leonie tells him. ‘How did I not know that?’
‘Dunno,’ Toby says. ‘I can’t believe you’ve never seen my smooth moves.’
Leonie snorts and tips her head back to down a glass of fresh orange juice.
‘What’s that?’ I ask her, pointing at her neck.
She reaches up and touches the very spot I’m looking at. ‘It’s a spot, I think,’ she says.
Elyse tugs her hand away. ‘That’s a love bite, Leonieeeee. Mum is going to keeeeel you.’
‘It’s not!’ Leonie says, pushing Elyse’s hand away. ‘It’s a spot. And Mum isn’t going to see it.’ She tugs her top over it, but it falls away immediately. ‘And no one’s going to tell her. Capisce?’
‘Shit, all right, don Corleone,’ Toby says. ‘Who gave it to you, anyway?’
‘It’s not a love bite,’ Leonie says again.
Something flits across my brain. Something to do with last night. With Leonie. But it’s gone before I can catch it.
‘You’re not going to be able to cover that in your dress for the wedding,’ Elyse says.
‘Shit,’ Leonie says, cutting into the frittata that Stefano’s just brought out. She turns to Elyse. ‘You can cover it with make-up though, right?’
Elyse shrugs. ‘I can have a go.’
‘Morning!’ I hear Toby say and I look up just in time to see Luke coming through the door from upstairs. I feel like my entire body is vibrating with embarrassment and shame. I pick up my latte and hide my face in the enormous cup.
‘You rough?’ Toby asks him.
Luke sits down next to Toby, so pretty much as far away from me as he can be, yet still at the same table.
‘Nah, I’m good,’ he says.
I can’t bring myself to look at him, focussing instead on the food and coffee. More coffee.
‘Have you decided what you’re going to do next year?’ Elyse asks Toby a bit later, after we’ve all had coffee and food and are feeling a bit livelier.
‘Not yet.’ He’s still eating toast. He must’ve had half a loaf by now. ‘I think I’ll probably take a year out – work here and maybe travel around Europe a bit? Gia’s been travelling around as much as she can and it sounds great.’
‘Would your mum be okay with that?’ I ask him.
He grins. ‘She’ll have to be. I’m a man now.’
‘God,’ Elyse says. ‘What a terrifying prospect.’
But I’m thinking about what Leonie said. About this possibly being our last summer. If Toby’s talking about travelling he won’t be here next year. So even if we do come back, it won’t be the same. It’s never going to be the same.
‘What about you, Luke?’ Leonie says and kicks me under the table to make sure I’m paying attention. As if there’s any chance I wouldn’t be.
‘I’m going to Liverpool to study English Literature,’ Luke says, adding sugar to his coffee.
I feel my mouth drop open.
‘No way!’ Leonie says. ‘Milly’s going to Liverpool too!’
‘It’s not definite,’ I say instantly. ‘And not to the university.’
‘She keeps saying she’s not going,’ Leonie tells them. ‘But she sent back her acceptance just before we left home, so I think she probably is.’
I picture the envelope in the pocket of my suitcase and stare down at my coffee.
‘That’s so great,’ Toby says. ‘I remember Dad – I mean your Dom – argh! – I mean your dad … sorry. I remember him telling me you were applying, is what I’m trying to say. He was really proud.’
‘Yeah, that’s cos he went there,’ Elyse says.
I’ve got that tight feeling in my throat again. Yes, me and Dad used to talk about it, but I never really expected it to happen. Did I? I can’t remember now.
‘What do you want to do?’ Elyse asks Luke. ‘After uni, I mean.’
‘Journalism, I think,’ he says. ‘Or maybe teaching? Not really sure yet. That’s one of the things about an English degree – you keep your options open.’
‘Yeah, either that or it’s completely useless,’ Toby says.
Toby asks Elyse about her course and then Luke says, ‘Do you know what you want to do, Leonie?’
Leonie’s just shoved a huge chunk of frittata in her mouth so she gestures for a couple of seconds and then, crumbs flying, says, ‘I’m thinking about medicine.’
‘You’re what?’ I say at the same time as Elyse says, ‘Are you?!’
‘Yeah, I think so,’ Leonie says.
‘Since when?’ Elyse asks.
‘Since … you know … since Dad,’ she says.
Elyse and I stare at her. I had no idea she’d been thinking such a thing and apparently neither did Elyse.
‘I just think if there was something I could do to make a difference, you know, to stop the same thing happening to anyone else. Not that I think I’m going to be able to, you know, cure heart disease or whatever, but if I could do some research and make some progress …’ She picks up a piece of bacon and folds it into her mouth.
‘I think that’s awesome,’ Luke says.
I do too. And it makes me realise again how much Leonie’s grown up in the past year without me noticing. It worries me what else I might have missed.