We all cheer and shout, and bounce our umbrellas up and down, showering raindrops, until Edie is safely inside. Everyone follows her through, and you can see how overwhelmed she is when she is escorted to her throne in the ballroom. Her face lights up as she casts her gaze around the place, and I can only imagine how many decades’ worth of memories are playing across the show reel of her mind.
I’m thrilled when she walks up to Anton and places a kiss on his smiling face, and know as she disappears among a crowd of friends and family that she’s going to have the night of her life.
I stay on the periphery, letting Edie enjoy her moment, smiling as the reflection from the glitter balls dazzle their way around the room.
I can see my mum, sitting at one of the tables with Auburn and Van, sipping a glass of champagne that’s just been delivered by Martha in her waiter’s uniform. I note that Auburn isn’t actually drinking, which is unusual in a social situation, and that Van is perched on the table, looking at his phone, distracted.
The music starts – a nice easy waltz to begin with – but nobody seems quite ready to dance just yet. Without Zelda and Mateo bossing us around, it’s entirely possible that we’ll all just decide to rebel, and break-dance or do the Macarena instead.
I glance over at the corner of the room where the music lives, and see Matt in there, staring at buttons and looking slightly confused. I decide to make his life easier by fetching him a can of Guinness, which I open, and pour into a champagne flute. He’s a man of simple tastes.
‘Ah,’ he says, accepting it gratefully. ‘At last, a proper drink!’
‘Plenty more where that came from,’ I say, passing him the rest of the can.
We stand together for a few moments, silent, watching the party unfold before us. Edie is unwrapping her presents with glee, and Cherie is stuffing the used paper into a bin bag next to her. Anton is looking very pleased with himself next to them.
‘Are you looking for Tom?’ asks Matt, suddenly. He’s a quiet bloke, Matt, but not unperceptive.
‘No. Yes. Maybe,’ I reply, laughing at myself by the end of it.
‘Well, it’s good to have a plan,’ he responds, smiling at me. ‘He left once he’d put the music on, and we all trooped outside to make Edie’s rainbow arch. Looked like he had a lot on his mind. So do you.’
‘No, honestly – my mind is completely empty,’ I reply. ‘A blank canvas. Nothing in there but tweetie birds and unicorns.’
He raises his eyebrows at me, and obviously doesn’t believe me. I’m shocked – I think I look exactly like the kind of person who has tweetie birds fluttering around in her head.
‘You should go and find him,’ he says simply. ‘Take him a drink. Not the Guinness though – that’s all for me.’
I grin, and walk away. He’s probably right. I should go and find Tom – even if it’s only to say thank you for helping us all organise this night for Edie. Without him and his lightbulb moments, we’d all be crammed into the café right now, sweating our fishnets off.
The problem with that plan soon becomes clear – I can’t actually find Tom anywhere. He’s not in the ballroom, and he’s not in the food and drink room, and he’s not outside in the garden – which is lucky, as he’d need a flotation device. I check a couple of the side rooms, and even sneak past the tape that cordons off the cloakroom area. I lurk outside the toilets for a while, because I’m classy like that, and am rewarded only by the sight of Laura doing that weird jumping around dance us ladies do when our tights are falling down in the gusset region.
I check the ballroom and the other rooms again, and even in the big storage cupboard under the stairs, in case he’s done a Harry Potter.
After all of this comes up empty, I have a lightbulb moment of my own, and suddenly have an idea as to where he might be. Where a man like Tom might go off to if, as Matt said, he had a lot on his mind.
I stand at the foot of the stairs for a moment, fondling the wooden pineapple-shaped bottom-stopper and admiring the polish of the banister, and come to a decision.
I run up the stairs, quickly before I can change my mind, and make my way up to the second floor. To that same corridor where all of this began – the corridor where my once-evil and now-just-annoying older siblings goaded me into opening the door of a room they’d persuaded me was haunted.
I still feel nervous now but for different reasons. I walk past the other doors, the smell of fresh paint still strong up here, and down to the end of the hallway. I pause outside, and wonder whether I should knock. Eventually I decide I don’t need to – I certainly didn’t last time, and anyway, he’s probably not even here.
I take a deep breath, and turn the handle, and push the door open. It still bloody creaks, like something out of a horror film.
Sure enough, there he is – sitting alone in the windowsill, shrouded in moonlight. He glances up as the door opens, and I see I’ve caught him deep in thought. At least this time neither of us screams or runs away in terror.
‘Hey,’ I say, edging into the room and closing the door behind me. I can hear the sound of Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’ coming up the stairs, the one we practised the paso doble to, and wonder if Cal is doing his bullfighter thing again, making little horn shapes with his fingers.
‘Hey back,’ he says, quietly. It’s dark in here, apart from the moonlight, but for some reason I don’t flick the magical switch next to me. Something tells me we might both be better off in the shadows.
He’s tugged his bow tie loose, and it’s hanging around his neck unevenly. His jacket is still on but unbuttoned, and the laces on his proper grown-up man shoes are undone.
‘You look like James Bond after a heavy night at the casino,’ I say, walking towards him slowly.
‘And you look better than all the Bond girls put together in a blender and mixed up,’ he replies.
‘I should hope so,’ I answer, pondering the image. ‘Even Pussy Galore wouldn’t look good if she’d been run through a blender. Are you all right? Why are you hiding away up here?’
‘I’m not hiding away. I’m … Okay, I’m hiding away. There are a lot of people down there, and I’ve done my bit. Nobody needs me hanging around making very bad small talk.’
‘What about me?’ I say, reaching out to stroke his hair. Soft and velvety as usual. ‘I might need someone to make very bad small talk with.’
He takes my hand in his, and holds it steady. He looks into my eyes, and he’s not smiling. He’s not smiling, or laughing, or looking like he’s in the mood for banter. I feel my breath catch in my throat, and suddenly feel even more petrified than the time I burst in here as an 8-year-old.
‘You don’t need me, Willow,’ he says, sadly. ‘And that’s okay. I understand why you’re making the choices you are – but I’m not sure how easy it’s going to be to live with. I thought it would be all right. I thought I could be Joey, and you could be Phoebe, and it’d all be fine in the end. But when I saw you tonight, looking like you do … well, I realised it’s not going to be easy. In fact, it’s nothing to do with how you look tonight – you could have walked into that room wearing a bin bag and reindeer ears, and I’d have felt the same.
‘It’s you – being around you, but not being with you. I think I can get there, in the end. But I’m not there yet, and I—’
‘Need some time?’ I finish for him, knowing exactly where that sentence was going. Time. It’s what I keep telling myself will cure everything – but right now, there seems to be so little of it.
I lean forward, and kiss him gently on the forehead. I understand – I have to. This man, like all of us, still carries traces of the time when he was a child – when he was a boy, growing up in this very room, feeling unwanted and unloved. And now, I can tell, he feels that way again, and it’s all my fault. I didn’t set out to hurt him, but I have.
‘Yes,’ he says simply, wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me in close. He buries his head in my chest, and I hold him there for a moment. I am the one causing the pain, and the one attempting to console him. There is something truly screwed up about that.
‘Yes,’ he repeats, pulling away from me as though he realises the same. ‘Some time. I’m going to go back to London for a bit. Not forever, I promise – I’ll be back here at some point. And I’m only a few hours away, if you need me, for anything. I won’t disappear on you – I just need a break. I just … need a bit of time to get my head sorted. Then when I get back, I’ll be the best friend you ever had.’
I nod, to show that I heard him, but I can’t risk speaking out loud. If I speak, I’ll say the wrong thing. If I allow myself to open my mouth, I’ll tell him I don’t want him to be my friend. I’ll tell him I love him. I’ll beg him to stay, and be so much more than my friend. I’ll let my desperation persuade me to make promises I can’t keep, and make demands that I can’t justify.
I can’t speak, because I know that doing that wouldn’t be fair. I know it wouldn’t, no matter how much I want to. I can’t expect him to hang around waiting for my life to get simpler. Waiting for me to have less responsibility. Waiting for me to feel able to commit to anyone other than my mother – because that probably isn’t going to happen.
So I stay silent. I nod again, and I kiss him one more time, and I leave him – alone there, perched on the windowsill, in that room he grew up in. Shrouded in moonlight.